School students who had COVID-19 report stigma and bullying. How can we stop it?

Posted on August 24, 2021 by particularkev

Brian Moore, Charles Sturt University and Stuart Woodcock, Griffith UniversityQueensland school students have reportedly been bullied after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and have struggled to return to school as a result. The Queensland Department of Education stated it hasn’t heard of any bullying related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Given the nature of bullying, this isn’t necessarily surprising.

Stigma related to being diagnosed with COVID-19 has the potential for school students to be devalued, rejected and excluded. This is synonymous with bullying and may reflect students looking for someone to blame for the impacts of COVID-19 on their lives.

Bullying is often misunderstood. It’s a specific type of aggression that occurs repeatedly, is harmful and involves an imbalance of power. This behaviour could include verbal, physical and indirect or social bullying (which arguably includes cyber-bullying). It’s often unclear who should take on the responsibility of acting on bullying.

All types of bullying, especially indirect and social bullying, are often hidden. As a result, bullying can be very difficult to identify and address – even more so in the case of online behaviour and cyber-bullying. This lack of visibility probably explains why the Queensland Department of Education hasn’t heard reports of bullying.

How is the pandemic a factor?

Being empowered is not something we generally think about with school students. Youth are typically at the whims of other people’s power. The ongoing uncertainty, restrictions and lockdowns due to COVID-19 seem likely to reinforce this lack of power and control.

Coping with stress and school or study-related problems were already the most common concerns reported by Australian adolescents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people have experienced increased stress. They may be especially vulnerable to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression during lockdowns.

These impacts might lead to some students seeking to exert power and control by bullying other students in relation to being diagnosed with COVID-19. This could be one problematic way students attempt to cope with their situation.

However, this may or may not be the case. Bullying is a complex behaviour. We simply don’t know enough about the COVID-positive students being bullied and there may be a broader context to these reports.

For example, there may be a history of bullying that parents, teachers and schools are unaware of. This is especially the case with indirect, social and cyber-bullying.

Bullying can cause lasting harm

The impacts of bullying are relatively clear. Bullying and emotional abuse are a significant concern for young people. It’s a common experience, which can have long-term negative impacts on mental health and overall wellbeing.

Bullying can result in feelings of rejection, exclusion, isolation and low self-esteem. Bullying appears to be linked to serious mental health issues like depression.

However, it’s less clear how to intervene successfully when bullying occurs.

Why is it so hard to overcome?

Anti-bullying approaches are the main way schools deal with bullying. While these approaches claim strong support, the actual evidence for them varies considerably.

Some anti-bullying interventions which focus on universal, whole-school approaches reduce bullying. However, other approaches often achieve no reduction. Even more concerning, some result in increases in bullying.

Bullying behaviour is often presented as a simplistic relationship between “victim” and “bully”. This is problematic, as bullying is a complex cyclical relationship.

Behaviours exist when they’re useful. Given that bullying occurs across human cultures, it’s interesting to consider whether and how bullying benefits some people. If it does, simply saying we don’t accept bullying may not be an effective solution.

Another way of thinking about bullying is that it’s a way of describing power imbalances in relationships. Providing school students, parents and teachers with an understanding of this might be a valuable way forward.

So, what should schools and parents do?

This is a difficult question to answer. It often falls to teachers and schools to act on bullying that occurs both within and outside school.

Schools are certainly part of the solution, as they’re an important part of all students’ social world. But it should be emphasised that schools are only a part of the solution to bullying.

Schools can contribute to breaking down COVID-related stigma, but we need to be conscious that schools and teachers are not medical professionals and that the stigma reflects broader community concerns. A systemic approach involving schools, medical professionals and students’ families is more likely to have a positive effect.

Schools use a range of strategies to support students being bullied. These include:

using a consistent whole-of-school approach
providing education about bullying
focusing on prosocial behaviour such as co-operating with others to achieve common goals
providing access to mental health support where appropriate.

Where students have experienced bullying after contracting COVID-19, schools might supplement these approaches by reinforcing health advice that medical professionals have provided. This is a teachable moment, but teachers aren’t health experts, and medical professionals aren’t education experts. Reinforcing official health advice will have more face value and be more difficult to dismiss.

Parents and caregivers should talk with their children about bullying and normalise their feelings and concerns about COVID-19. As with schools, there is a need to reinforce the health advice from medical professionals. Look after your child’s basic mental health – like sleep, diet and physical activity – and seek help if you need to.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.

Brian Moore, Lecturer, School of Education, Charles Sturt University and Stuart Woodcock, Associate Professor, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

School students at the heart of a COVID outbreak change the story of how it spreads

Posted on August 9, 2021 by particularkev

Naomi Barnes, Queensland University of TechnologyThe central role of schools in the Brisbane COVID-19 outbreak means the virus might move through the community differently from previous outbreaks. Previously, the focus has been on the spread of the virus through the aged care sector and via service workers. People in education systems move and interact differently.

Sociology can provide a useful lens for understanding how the virus is moving. The type of insight sociologists can give is an organised story behind the contact tracing list based on their knowledge of how the sector at the centre of an outbreak works. Epidemiologists and policymakers can then draw on these systematic stories to help communicate the transmission risks and manage public responses to their decision-making.

An analysis of the Queensland contract tracing list shows many of the exposure sites are typical of school children travelling on public transport. Their families are also driving them around to attend social, medical and educational activities after school.

How do children change the spread?

Sociological network analyses can methodically explain the nuances and dynamism of how the virus will move differently via children compared to adults. It will move differently again for university and TAFE students and teenagers.

For example, primary school children are more likely to move through multiple sites after school. Sporting lessons and care outside school hours (categories of multiple exposure sites on the list) mean children could move from one big group to another big group.

A teenager will move differently again. Teenagers are more likely to move independently to and from school, their after-school activities and home. They use public transport more than younger children do, bringing them into contact with larger groups than in the family car. They also congregate in places like shopping centres to do things teens like to do: shop, share food and canoodle.

Families, especially those with more than one child, have after-school activities in varied places, hugely multiplying possible exposure sites. Children will encounter more people than an adult who goes to the shops, gym or takeaway after work. But an adult may be a parent and have the child, who has been in multiple big groups through the day, with them.

School contacts extend far and wide

Currently, there are nine Brisbane schools at the centre of the spread of the Delta variant of the virus. Many of these schools are connected via postcode. But postcode does not tell the whole story.

The more concerning narrative is that these schools are connected systemically. For example, Brisbane Grammar School boys will most likely have sisters at Brisbane Girls Grammar. The primary school, Ironside State School, is a feeder school for many affected schools. In other words, primary school children have older siblings at the high schools.

Many of the schools are also independent schools that children commute to from all over Brisbane. This means the single child or set of siblings at one school affected by the virus could very easily move the virus outside the area. On the contact tracing list, we are seeing cases emerge not only in neighbouring suburbs but also in suburbs in completely different areas of Brisbane.

What does this mean for managing outbreaks?

This movement of the virus through the education system reveals a need to shift the decision-making about schools, teachers and examinations away from only how the virus might get into schools to also consider how the virus is getting out of schools.

Schools can manage social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing when the students are at school but cannot oversee those things out of school. No matter how careful a school is about its COVID-safe procedures, the Brisbane outbreak has shown that those who manage education spaces, like principals and teachers, cannot control all the variables. Public discussions that suggest they can is simply unreasonable and demoralising.

A sociological approach to COVID planning, especially network approaches, like I use, would support governments to make systematic decisions about the social sectors. Current decision-making processes have only considered the surface-level (though still important) purposes of schooling in society, like teaching, assessment and care during work hours. By considering the nuances and dynamic nature of school life, sociology can shed light on options for school closures, examinations, remote learning and schooling the children of essential workers.

Thank you to sociologist Dr Mark Bahnisch for support on this article.

Naomi Barnes, Senior Lecturer, School of Teacher Education & Leadership, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus: is it safe for kids to go back to school? And what about the new mutant strain?

Posted on January 22, 2021 by particularkev

Asha Bowen, Telethon Kids Institute; Archana Koirala, University of Sydney; Fiona Russell, University of Melbourne; Kristine Macartney, University of Sydney, and Margie Danchin, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

A year ago, in late January 2020, Australia reported its first cases of COVID-19. Since then, we have seen almost 29,000 confirmed cases and 909 deaths.

As cases climbed in Australian cities in 2020, many students did their schoolwork from home. Australia, including Victoria, came out of lockdowns at the end of last year. But due to outbreaks in New South Wales and Queensland over Christmas and New Year, that impacted on Victoria, restrictions remain in some places.

So what now, for the new school year? Is it safe for students to go back to school?

What we learnt in 2020

Australian health officials, paediatricians, and federal and state education departments worked together to understand how SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — is transmitted in Australian schools.

They also kept updating, as more information came to light, what schools can do to provide a safe learning environment for children and staff.

Up to the end of term 3 in New South Wales, 49 student- and 24 staff- cases were linked to schools and early learning centres. Each of these cases, and their contacts, were followed since the pandemic began. Schools had low rates of transmission — with 51 transmission events (38 students, 13 staff) out of 5,793 contacts traced (<1%) — in terms 1, 2, and 3 when COVID-19 safe measures were in place.

Key measures were:

limiting adults in the school and early learning centre grounds
staying home when unwell with cold-like symptoms
getting tested early.

Most schools and early learning centres in NSW reopened after only a few days.

In Victoria, up until the end of August 2020, 1,635 cases were associated with early learning centres and schools. These consisted of 254 staff, 599 students and 753 household members, out of a total of 19,109 cases in Victoria during their second wave.

Two-thirds of infections in early learning centres and schools did not progress to outbreaks (two or more cases) and more than 90% were small outbreaks (fewer than ten cases).

While transmission has been connected with a Victorian school in the media, transmission events often have a more complex basis than just occurring in the classroom. Schools are often located in a multi-generational community and cases in this large school cluster were linked to high community transmission rates rather than infection in the school.

These studies confirm that when SARS-CoV-2 is detected in a student or staff member, it is very unlikely for other students or staff to be infected at school with the processes put in place in 2020 to provide a safe learning environment.

In Western Australia, almost 14,000 asymptomatic staff and students were swabbed at the school in terms 2 and 3. No cases of SARS-CoV-2 were detected, consistent with the absence of community transmission in that state.

But why are other countries closing schools?

Overseas, studies have shown schools can implement health strategies to safely keep schools open and minimise SARS-CoV-2 transmission risks.

In the US, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention noted that: “trends among children and adolescents aged 0–17 years paralleled those among adults”. However, the organisation also reported:

as of the week beginning December 6, aggregate COVID-19 incidence among the general population in counties where K–12 schools offer in-person education (401.2 per 100,000) was similar to that in counties offering only virtual/online education (418.2 per 100,000).

In Norway, where testing is strong, schools were open with mitigation measures in place. There was minimal child-to-child (0.9%, 2 out of 234) and child-to-adult (1.7%, 1 out of 58) transmission.

Other countries have chosen to close schools as a last resort in national lockdowns in the face of extremely high rates of community transmission and daily case numbers, which meant only widespread reductions in population movements could be effective. This is not the case in Australia at the start of term 1, 2021.

It is common for viruses to evolve and there have now been several new variants of concern such as those identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil which are more transmissible. The potential of such variants entering Australia is uncertain, and so is the risk of transmission in schools.

Reassuringly, if community transmission of such a variant occurs in Australia, we have established experience to monitor, and hopefully halt, its spread.

So, what should Australia do?

Remote learning provides considerable challenges to keep students engaged, reduces the close supervision and support in the classroom, and provides an added disadvantage for children with mental-health conditions, disabilities or special needs.

For parents, it is difficult to work effectively, provide for the family and maintain their well-being when their child is learning from home.

Based on the above evidence, schools are safe to open. But states should adopt mitigation measures — including when to add masks, reduce attendance or close schools — according to a traffic light system from green (standard measures) to red (close schools) based on the degree of community transmission. The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has recommended this approach for Victoria. Education departments around Australia can consider a similar approach.

This is consistent with the recommendations of Australia’s National Cabinet and international advice.

It is important schools and early learning centres continue to adhere to their local COVID advice. Parents and guardians should check their contact details are up to date so they can be contacted easily, regularly check what restrictions are in place and, when unwell, get their child tested and stay at home.

In 2020, students and staff rapidly learned to regularly wash their hands, adapt to cleaners in the school throughout the day, socially distance and wear masks when required. These public health interventions, vaccination, and testing and tracing will remain the mainstay for the year ahead in Australia.

Monitoring well-being and building resilience will also be core educational activities in the months ahead.

Asha Bowen, Head, Skin Health, Telethon Kids Institute; Archana Koirala, Paediatrician and Infectious Diseases Specialist, University of Sydney; Fiona Russell, Principal research fellow, University of Melbourne; Kristine Macartney, Professor, Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Sydney, and Margie Danchin, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

7 tips to help kids feeling anxious about going back to school

Posted on May 31, 2020 by particularkev

Mandie Shean, Edith Cowan University

As COVID-19 lockdown measures are lifted, some children may experience social anxiety about the prospect of returning to school.

People with social anxiety may fear embarrassment or the expectation to perform in social situations, or worry exceedingly about people judging you poorly.

In certain situations, people with anxiety may find their heart beats quicker as adrenalin is released into their blood stream, more oxygen flows to the blood and brain, and even digestion may slow down.

These are helpful responses if you need to run away or fight danger. But social situations are generally not life threatening, and these physical symptoms can interfere with socialising.

People with social anxiety may fear looking silly, being judged, laughed at or being the focus of attention. For anyone, such experiences might be unwelcome but for those with social anxiety they pose an unacceptable threat.

Social anxiety in Australian children

One Australian report found that about 6.9% of children and adolescents surveyed have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, 4.3% experience separation anxiety and 2.3% a social phobia.

Social phobia (social anxiety) is more common in adolescents, whereas separation anxiety (intense anxiety over leaving caregivers, such as parents) is more prevalent in children.

These figures only account for those who have a diagnosis of anxiety. They do not include undiagnosed young people who experience high stress in social situations.

Not all children will be happy to be back in school.
Tom Wang/Shutterstock

Any recent prolonged absence from school may have increased social anxiety, as avoiding what you fear can make your fear become greater.

This is because you do not get to learn that the thing you fear is actually safe. Your beliefs about the threat go unchallenged.

Anxiety can also increase through what pyschologists call reduced tolerance. The more children withdraw from the situations that cause them fear, the less tolerance they have for those situations.

Anxiety can affect education

The educational cost for students with anxiety is considerable.

The research shows students with poor mental health can be between seven to 11 months behind in Year 3, and 1.5 – 2.8 years behind by Year 9.

That’s because these students experience more absences from school, poorer connection to school, lower levels of belonging and less engagement with schoolwork.

7 strategies to help overcome social anxiety

So what can children do to overcome anxiety as they return to school? Here are some useful tips.

deal with some of the physical symptoms. It is hard to think if your body is stressed. Use calming strategies like mindfulness or breathing exercises. Slowing your breathing can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger and confusion. Useful apps to help you control your breathing include Smiling Mind (iOS and Android) or Breathing Bubbles (Android only).
anxiety increases while using avoidance techniques such as avoiding eye contact, not raising your hand to answer a question, or not attending school. So the most effective way to deal with social anxiety might be to face it. Allow your child to have small experiences of social success – give their opinion to one person, start a conversation with someone they know – so they can learn to feel safe in these social situations.
fear and anxiety are normal and benefit us by helping us to respond efficiently to danger. Rather than read your body as under threat, think about the changes as helpful. Your body is preparing you for action.
while avoiding your fears is not the answer, being fully exposed to them is not the answer either. Providing overwhelming social experiences may lead to overwhelming fear and failure, and may make anxiety sufferers less likely to try again – or at all. Start small and build their courage.
supportive listening and counselling are less effective than facing your fears because these approaches can accommodate the fears. While you want to support your child by providing them with comfort and encouragement – ensure you also encourage them to face the fears that cause the anxiety.
you cannot promise negative things won’t happen. It is possible you will be embarrassed or be judged. Rather than try to avoid these events, try reframing them. Remember that that we all experience negative social feedback, and this does not make you silly or of less value. It makes you normal. Or, rather than see it as embarrassing, maybe it can be funny.
remember it is the “perception” that something is a threat – not the reality. Reasoning with your child to help them see your perspective may not change theirs. This reality only changes with positive real experiences.

Breathing Bubbles in action.

What we think is truth is often revealed as untrue when we face our fears. There is joy in social situations. Keep turning up to them.

Mandie Shean, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Don’t want to send the kids back to school? Why not try unschooling at home?

Posted on May 22, 2020 by particularkev

Rebecca English, Queensland University of Technology and Karleen Gribble, Western Sydney University

As schools resume for most Australian students, a new group of parents have emerged.

These parents have decided to give home education a longer term try, finding their children have improved academically and benefited from the calmer home learning environment.

This change may mean some families move to a more child-led way of learning. This approach can be described as unschooling – an informal way of learning that advocates student-chosen activities rather than teacher-directed lessons.

Unschoolers learn through living and are in charge of their own education. Students have the freedom to learn through a variety of means including play, household tasks and personal interests, as well as work experience, travel, books, elective classes, mentors and social interactions.

A parent sent this to her child’s teacher during the lockdown to show how he had learnt fractions while cooking.
SOURCE? CREDIT?, Author provided

Sometimes the name unschooling leads people to believe children aren’t being educated or taught anything at all. But unschooling allows children to explore and learn in their own way. It’s a different form of education to that of schools, but it can work extremely well.

During the coronavirus shutdown, schools were providing schoolwork for children to do at home. Some suggested they just focus on the basics, which left plenty of time spare.

Some families found online learning wasn’t working for their children and negotiated with teachers about alternate ways of meeting learning outcomes.

Many parents improvised their children’s education. And so they were unschooling, even if they didn’t know it by name.

Who invented unschooling?

Unschooling is an educational philosophy developed in the 1960s by theorists including John Holt and Ivan Illich.

Their ideas, particularly around children exercising the liberty to choose the direction of their learning, are becoming increasingly popular in educational research.

Illich and Holt said traditional schooling could confuse the creation of a product – such as a test result – with learning. They argued learning is a process, not an end point.

While such ideas may seem radical, Holt was building on a well recognised foundation of educational philosophy: that children learn best when the learning is meaningful and accessible to them.

A typical day unschooling

In unschooling, parents work with their children to meet their educational goals.

This means they support their children’s interests and associated learning. They recognise the learning inherent in life activities and may enrich it via conversation or direction to other sources.

At the heart of unschooling is a belief that, in a rich and stimulating environment, children cannot not learn.

There’s actually no typical unschooling day, as what happens depends on the family and child. In unschooling families, any interest may form the basis of learning.

For example, an interest in dinosaurs may trigger a series of activities, such as:

children read books and write stories about dinosaurs (Literacy)
they measure the size of lizards and compare them to dinosaurs (Numeracy)
they explore how dinosaurs died out (Science)
they consider how dinosaurs may have influenced our culture, such as with dragons (Humanities and Social Sciences)
they watch Jurassic Park to see how dinosaurs are represented in film (the Arts).

Children may talk with their peers about their love of dinosaurs and use this as an opportunity for socialisation. They may need a lot of assistance from a parent to do this or may explore on their own.

Everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning, gardening and shopping can also be learning opportunities. Benign neglect, leading to boredom, provides an opportunity for children to discover new interests and activities (and for parents to get some of their own work done).

Cooking involves lessons in weights and measure.
Alena Ozerova/Shutterstock

How do students get assessed?

Unlike in school, unschooling assessment happens on a daily basis, through observing the children’s experiences. Parents may compile photographs or scrap books of their children’s learning experiences and keep them as records.

But many unschooolers will do formal assessment for careers that need certification. They may also do tests in line with university aspirants who do not come straight from school. Or they may go straight to TAFE or study via Open University, both of which don’t need formal test results for entry.

Unschooled students often do very well at university. For example, in the US, unschoolers are sought after by prestigious institutions including Brown, Cornell and Columbia.

One study of 75 unschooled adults found 83% had gone on to some form of formal education after school, and most were “gainfully employed and financially independent”.

Research suggests unschoolers’ success may come down to an intrinsic motivation to learn that’s been fostered through their unschooling experiences.

Evidence of unschooling in the lockdown

During the coronavirus crisis, if your children alternated their schoolwork with other study based on their needs and interests, they were unschooling.

If you went for a walk and identified plants or animals, and discussed them, that was unschooling. Cooking and decorating a sibling’s birthday cake was unschooling.

Discovering your children’s interest in Ancient Egypt and then watching documentaries about the subject was unschooling.

If your child decided to read the whole Harry Potter series in a week, that was unschooling.

It’s entirely possible to unschool and still meet the government curriculum requirements.

In fact, the Singaporean education minister, Ong Ye Kung, effectively recommended unschooling when he said students should take advantage of their time away from school to “learn outside the syllabus, read widely, be curious, find your passions”.

Children following this advice may have benefited, rather than been disadvantaged, from their break from formal learning. For some, continuing home-based learning may be advantageous.

Each state and territory has a legislative framework which allows parents to home educate their children. Support is available from experienced home educators online and through home education support groups.

Rebecca English, Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology and Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Students less focused, empathetic and active than before – technology may be to blame

Posted on April 29, 2020 by particularkev

Pasi Sahlberg, UNSW and Adrian Piccoli, UNSW

Teachers say most students have lost the ability to focus, are less empathetic and spend less time on physical activity.

These are some of the results from our Growing Up Digital Australia study, in which we surveyed almost 2,000 teachers and school leaders across Australia.

We asked them how students from primary school to year 12 have changed in the last five years, and what might explain these changes.

Nearly four out of five teachers said they saw a decrease in students’ ability to focus on learning tasks, 80% saw a decline in students’ empathy and 60% observed students spending less time on physical activity.

These downward trends could be caused by many factors. But a good starting point is to look at the undeniably biggest change in children’s lives in the last decade – screen technology.

Growing up digital

Educational technologies have opened new opportunities for teaching and learning.

Teachers use technology to make complicated content more understandable, students learn how to communicate their knowledge across digital platforms like podcasts, and schools use technology to report students’ performance.

But a 24/7 connection to the internet comes with possible downsides too. Researchers and health experts around the world have expressed concerns about the possible consequences of heavy screen use on children.

The steady increase in depression, anxiety disorders and other mental health issues among young people has been well reported. And researchers have debated whether screens may be a possible reason for young people’s declining mental health.

It is hard to prove a direct causal link between worsening health outcomes and extended time spent on digital devices. But we can learn much about these complex relationships by exploring views and experiences of teachers, parents and young people themselves.

So, what do we know?

According to a recent poll by the Royal Children’s Hospital, 95% of high-school students, two-thirds of primary school children and one-third of preschoolers own a screen-based digital device.

In an earlier study we found 92% of Australian parents think smartphones and social media have reduced time children have for physical activity and outdoor play.

Most children in Australia own a digital device.
Shutterstock

Four out of five parents said social media was a distraction in their child’s life, that impacted negatively on their well-being and family relations.

Another survey showed young people spend one-third of their time awake staring at screens.

In the Growing Up Digital in Australia study, 84% of teachers said digital technologies were a growing distraction in the learning environment.

One teacher told us:

The numbers of students with cognitive, social and behavioural difficulties has increased noticeably. Students appear to have more difficulty concentrating, making connections, learning with enthusiasm and increasing boredom in school.

Similar results were found in a study in Alberta, Canada in 2015.

Our data tells us more than 90% of teachers think the number of children with these kinds of challenges has increased over the last five years. Anxiety among students was also a common concern.

What parents can do

As most Australian children are studying from home this term, and perhaps next, parents will most likely make similar observations of their children – both positive and negative – as the teachers in our study.

Parents might see how fluently children use technologies to learn new concepts. They may also notice how hard or easy it is for their children to concentrate and stay away from the distracting parts of their digital devices.

If a child can’t get through all the tasks their teacher assigns them, it’s important for parents to know this doesn’t mean they are a poor learner or failing student.

Parents can try to understand how children feel about learning – what makes it interesting, what makes it boring and what makes it challenging. A student could be finding it difficult to get a task done due to distractions. The best help in that case is to support the child to stay away from the causes of distraction, which may be their smartphones.

Teachers should also, as much as possible, design learning activities with elements that don’t require any technology. For example, projects that include building, drawing or communicating with others at home can be easily done without devices.

Parents and teachers can work together to find smart ways to teach children safe and responsible use of media and digital technologies. Learning to regulate our own screen behaviours as adults and modelling this behaviour to our children can be a much more effective strategy than simply banning devices.

Studying from home can also be a good opportunity to help children learn to cook, play music or engage in other home-based activities we may wish we had time for but tend to void in our busy daily schedules.

Spending more time with children – with technology and without it – is now more important than ever.

Perhaps the best way to improve the quality of Australian education is to change how we do things. We should understand children are not who they used to be and better learning requires changing the ways both adults and children live with digital devices.

Pasi Sahlberg, Professor of Education Policy, UNSW and Adrian Piccoli, Professor of Practice, School of Education, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘I have never felt so frightened’: Australia’s coronavirus schools messaging must address teacher concerns

Posted on April 19, 2020 by particularkev

Claire Hooker, University of Sydney

Parents have heard confusing messages from federal and state governments around sending children to school. As students in Victoria started term two on Wednesday, the state government told parents to keep children at home if they can.

In some cases there have been reports of children being told they have to study at home even though parents want to send them to school as they find it hard to work otherwise.

But in a Facebook video this week Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government wanted schools to open up for all students in three to four weeks.

And in a later press conference he maintained expert advice has consistently been that schools are a safe space for children.

[…] teachers are more at risk in the staff room than they are in the classroom when it comes to how the health advice plays out and the impact of this virus on children as opposed to teachers.

That means that we need to have proper arrangements in place for teachers and other staff in schools […] to protect their work environment, but […] that doesn’t lead to the same rules applying for students because they have a different level of risk.

While Morrison may be communicating the correct information, his message keeps being rejected by many Australian parents and teachers. This is because of mishandled communication that conveyed confusing and contradictory information, leaving teachers feeling unconsulted, scared and outraged.

Schools are safe, or are they?

There is good evidence for keeping schools open, including a recent rapid review of several studies on the topic, that indicated closing schools contributes very little to reducing the spread of the disease.

And yet school closures have been among the most contentious and emotive issues in Australia’s COVID-19 strategies. This has resulted from significant failures in risk communication from the government, including many inconsistencies in messages about transmission risks.

For example, when the Prime Minister made a statement banning indoor gatherings greater than 100 people (including staff), he did not even mention schools except to say later that they would remain open.

This is despite the fact schools involve gatherings of greater than 100 people. And the design of many make implementing recommended social distancing measures impossible.

Morrison’s statements also expressed concern about kids infecting grandparents, but not about kids infecting older teachers, some of whom are also grandparents. This caused outrage among many teachers.

President of the NSW Teacher’s Federation Angelo Gavrielatos who reportedly sought a response to such contradictions tweeted:

The response from the Commonwealth Deputy Chief Medical Officer was “Sorry. I can’t reconcile the contradictions”.

These inconsistencies left parents and teachers – especially those who face significant health issues themselves or in their immediate family – feeling both terrified and unvalued. Twitter account Stories From Teachers, contain heartfelt expressions of teachers’ fear. One said

I have never felt so frightened, disregarded and psychologically mangled in my whole entire life.

Any government plans to return students to school will require careful communication to be acceptable to many teachers and parents.

How governments should respond

People show decreased cognitive processing in high concern situations. This means we should expect many teachers will experience heightened perceptions of risk in their workplace. The best response is to tolerate any early over-reactions.

Effective communication requires emotional intelligence as well as compassion and empathy (practising non-judgment and avoiding sympathy).

Handbooks on risk communication, such as the WHO Guideline, emphasise communication is a two-way street. This means government and school leaders need to focus as much on what teachers and parents can or need to hear, as on what information they want to convey.

The basis for effective pandemic communication is trust. Trust is fundamental to achieving a coherent public response in an uncertain and unfolding situation. Without it, messages may be ignored or outright rejected.

To rebuild trust, communication will need to begin with listening to the concerns of parents and teachers. All discussions about schools, such as the release of any new modelling, need to explicitly acknowledge the implications for these groups.

Showing respect for teachers and parents requires authorities to trust them by sharing information early, and being transparent and open about deliberation and decision making. Being explicit and honest about uncertainty is particularly important.

If the government doesn’t know the answer to questions such as “how many school-based transmissions have occurred in other countries?”, that needs to be stated clearly.

It’s getting better but we need action

In the prime minister’s video message, he thanked teachers, saying what they do each day “matters amazingly”. Showing value for teachers was a good start.

But his words will prove insincere if teachers don’t see them backed up with actions in the actual environments where they work.

Actions can communicate more strongly than words. Teachers will only feel their concerns have been heard if they see actions that mitigate and monitor risk.

Actions that can be considered include:

extensive additional testing for teachers and students
partial return to school to reduce crowding
giving staff extra sick leave without requiring medical certificates so they can remain at home if symptomatic
making it easier for teachers to work from home if they have demonstrated health needs.

Perceptions of risk decrease as people gain an increased sense of control. So school leadership can support staff to take actions that give them a greater sense of safety. These include staggering bell times or spending five minutes of lesson time with students cleaning desks and chairs.

Actions that show value for staff might include additional professional development days where teachers decide on their individual best use of the time.

Communicating value for teachers will be the key to successful communication around schools in the weeks to come.

Claire Hooker, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator, Health and Medical Humanities, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

So you’re going to school online – here are 6 ways to make the most of it

Posted on April 19, 2020 by particularkev

Claire Brown, Victoria University and Rannah Scamporlino, Victoria University

Effective learning is a two-way process between the teacher and students, meaning both need to engage.

If a student simply sits and listens to new information without engaging or applying it, it’s called passive learning. Active learning is where students engage with new learning making connections to concepts they have learned previously.

According to one of the world’s leading university educators, Harvard University’s Professor Eric Mazur, “interactive learning triples students’ gains in knowledge”.

Here are six things students can do while studying online to ensure they are learning actively and and making gains.

1. Organise a learning space and dress for learning

Balancing a laptop on your knees on your bed, or with the television on in the background, is not the best way to study. Students learn best when their learning space minimises distractions.

A good learning space has a table and chair, good lighting, good air flow, is away from distractions like television and noise, has good connectivity for digital devices, and is organised with the usual things students have at school such as pens, paper, calculator and others study materials.

Learning online is like being at school in that you need to be physically and mentally prepared to learn. One study suggests what you wear can affect your attention to a task. So it might help not to be in your pyjamas even if your study space is in your bedroom.

2. Organise your learning time

Students with good time management skills tend to do better academically.

There is no easy answer to how long students should be studying at home each day. Students should plan a study timetable dividing their day into learning, revision and rest blocks.

“Zoom fatigue” has been identified as an emerging problem with online studying and meetings caused by the different ways our brains process information delivered online. One suggestion is an online session should be no longer than 45 minutes with a 15-minute break.

Back-to-back sessions should be avoided and the time between sessions should be used to step away from the computer to rest your brain, body and eyes. It is important to stand up and move around every 30 minutes.

Students should work with teachers to revise their schedule each day and stick to what works for them.

3. Manage distractions

Because students will be studying in an different space, they may get distracted by what other people are doing. If you can, share your study timetable with others in the house, and ask for their help to keep focused.

When you’re in a learning block of time, turn off social media and close browser tabs you don’t need. If you’re using the Google Chrome browser, it has an extension called Stay Focusd. Students can use this to set the period of time to block potential distractions like notifications from Instagram, Snapchat and other applications.

If you are sharing a digital device with other family members, try to agree on a roster that fits with everyone’s timetables. Work out who needs the device at specific times and put that time on a master timetable that is shared by everyone.

4. Take notes

Our memories are not stable and we frequently overestimate how much we can remember. We forget at least 40% of new information within the first 24 hours of first reading or hearing it. That’s why it’s important to take notes.

Use different-colour markers to make connections between concepts.
Shutterstock

Research is unclear about whether it is better to take notes digitally or by hand. Some researchers think it is a matter of preference.

The most important thing is to follow a good note-taking process. This involves:

writing an essential question that captures the key learning points of the topic
revising your notes. Use different colours and highlighters to make connections between chunks of information; add new ideas and write study questions in the margin. Compare notes with a study buddy to improve and learn from each other
writing a summary that links all the information together and answers the essential question you wrote down initially
revising your notes within 24 hours, seven days, and then each month until you are tested on that knowledge.

5. Adopt a growth mindset

In the 1990s, American psychologist Carol Dweck developed the theory of the growth mindset.

It grew out of studies in which primary school children were engaged in a task, and then praised either for their existing capacities, such as intelligence, or the effort they invested in the task.

The students who were praised for their effort were more likely to persist with finding a solution to the task. They were also more likely to seek feedback about how to improve. Those praised for their intelligence were less likely to persist with the more difficult tasks and to seek feedback on how their peers did on the task.

The growth mindset assumes capacities can be developed or “grown” through learning and effort. So if you don’t understand something straight away, working at it will help you get there.

If you are engaging in negative self-talk, change the words. For example, instead of saying, “This is too hard”, try saying, “What haven’t I tried yet to figure this out?”

6. Ask questions and collaborate

Ask teachers questions about anything that is unclear as soon as possible. Give teachers frequent feedback. Teachers appreciate suggestions that help improve student learning.

Set up online study groups. Learning is a social activity. We learn best by learning with others, and when learning is fun. Studying with friends helps clarify new concepts and language, and stay connected.

Claire Brown, National Director, AVID Australia, Victoria University and Rannah Scamporlino, Education Coordinator, AVID Australia, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is homeschooling? And should I be doing that with my kid during the coronavirus lockdown?

Posted on April 5, 2020 by particularkev

Rebecca English, Queensland University of Technology and Karleen Gribble, Western Sydney University

“How to home school” has been trending on Google for the past few weeks as more and more children stay home from school because of COVID-19.

So, what is homeschooling and is this what parents whose children are learning from home are now doing?

What is home education?

Home education is one of the world’s fastest growing educational movements.

In its broadest sense, home education can be understood as any form of education that occurs outside of a physical school. It includes the 20,000 or so students registered for home education in Australia, as well as distance education students – who are enrolled in a school but learn remotely.

There are a wide variety of home education approaches and they lie on a spectrum. Highly structured approaches that mirror school, with a detailed curriculum and lots of book work, lie at one end. Most people can imagine what that looks like because it’s not that different from traditional schooling.

At the other end is unschooling, where children choose the direction of their learning. In this approach, there may be no formal written work.

With unschooling, the choice is as much of a lifestyle as an education. Parents act as facilitators of their child’s learning, sourcing and providing access to resources and then getting out of the way. Research suggests unschoolers are more likely to be satisfied with their education and have an intrinsic motivation to learn.

Most home educating families’ approaches fall somewhere in between and use a mix of parent-directed and child-directed learning.

What are the legal requirements of home educators?

Each state and territory in Australia has its own laws and requirements around home education. In essence, parents need to apply to register their children. Some states such as the Northern Territory require you to follow any Australian approved curriculum (such as the Australian Curriculum, Montessori or Steiner).

Others, including Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT, stipulate you just need to cover key learning areas such as English, Maths, Science, Arts, Technology, Health, Humanities or Languages.

In New South Wales, parents need to follow the NSW Syllabus, which is based on, but not the same as, the Australian Curriculum.

Regardless of where they are located, parents indicate their intention to home educate by completing a form from their state’s education department. They then need to develop a plan of their approach, and to show their plan will meet the child’s individual learning needs.

Age levels and year levels are less important in home education – children’s work is targeted to where they are up to not their age.

Parents can buy a pre-packaged curriculum and resources or they can develop their own. They can use tutors and group classes, as well as activities like scouts and sporting teams, and everyday hands-on activities as a part of their learning. If they need to, parents can adapt to better meet their child’s needs.

At the end of the registration period, most states and territories require parents to report on their child’s progress.

Are we all homeschoolers now?

To some extent, when it comes to educating your child at home, this situation is unique – in other respects it’s not.

Many homeschooling families have brought their child home to learn because of a crisis, such as related to bullying, health, or a disability.

But families in this new wave of accidental home educators don’t have to register their children with their state or territory education department. The child’s enrolment is maintained with their school.

And, in most cases, the schools are sending work home. Reports on the ground suggest this is working well for many families.

But some parents are reporting difficulties implementing what they’re being asked to do at home. This is particularly so when they’re balancing their child’s education with their own work requirements, or where the schoolwork is worksheet heavy.

If this is your situation, you are not alone and schools are trying their best to make this work. Hopefully, with more time, things will run more smoothly.

What new homeschoolers can learn from the old

Many long established home education families work from home as well, so they empathise with parents’ new found juggle of work and schooling. There’s some things schools and parents can learn from how home educators manage things.

Think about other ways of learning apart from book work. Some children thrive on book work, but others need more hands on tasks. If your child is struggling, talk their teacher and see if he or she is open to you covering the content in a different way.

For example, an alternative to doing fractions through worksheets might be cooking a meal. Cooking allows you to introduce other concepts such as addition and mass (mathematics), following a procedural text (literacy), discussing your experience of learning to cook (humanities and social science), nutrition (health), and even the science of molecular gastronomy. And everyone gets fed.

That’s something else to keep in mind – kids can sometimes help their parents with the things they need to do. Whether that’s cooking or helping you set up the technology for an online work meeting. Home educating families are used to seeing the learning happening in everyday activities, and doing so can help parents feel less stressed about what their child is missing out on.

If you’re struggling with working out how to do this, there’s support in home education social media groups, where experienced home educators are providing support to parents (and teachers).

Keep in mind, much of this situation is new to home educators too. They’re not used to being at home so much either – much of their learning is normally in the community.

But organisations and groups are doing what they can to link families to the outside world. People are providing online storytime, and zoos, wildlife parks, museums and galleries are freely available online.

Rebecca English, Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology and Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kids shouldn’t have to repeat a year of school because of coronavirus. There are much better options

Posted on April 1, 2020 by particularkev

Julie Sonnemann, Grattan Institute

Australian schools and teachers are preparing to shift classes online – some independent schools already have. Remote learning is likely to be the norm in the second term and possibly longer.

Even if done well, there are still likely to be learning losses.

Rigorous US studies of online charter schools show students learn less than similar peers in traditional face-to-face schools.

This makes sense, because learning is a social activity. The evidence shows positive effects are stronger where technology is a supplement for teaching, rather than a significant replacement – the situation we face now.

Our disadvantaged students will be hardest hit. Children from poorer households do worse at online learning for a host of reasons; they have less internet access, fewer technological devices, poorer home learning environments and less help from their parents when they get stuck.

Students who are struggling academically are at risk too. Asking students to independently work through large parts of the curriculum online can create extra stresses as it requires them to regulate their own learning pace. Many struggle with this, especially students who are already behind.

To be clear, this is not an argument against online learning. Digital learning offers much potential for schools and students. Several online programs, including digital games, simulations, and computer-aided tutoring show positive results when used to support to learning.

But the success of online initiatives relies on preparation and good implementation. A rapid-fire response to shift teaching online to large populations during a pandemic is unlikely to produce above-average results.

So what should the government do post-COVID-19 when school re-opens to help students bounce back?

Catch-up programs

Many students are likely to be behind, and some will be very far behind. If schools are closed for all of term two, and possibly term three, many students will have a lot to catch up on to move up a grade in 2021. What lies ahead is a difficult and unprecedented situation for our educators.

Governments and schools have several options. Getting struggling students to repeat a year shouldn’t be one of them, unless school closures go much longer than expected. Evidence shows repeating a year is one of the few educational interventions that harms a student academically. Those who repeat a year can become unmotivated, have less self-esteem, miss school and complete homework less often.

A better option is for educators to conduct intensive tuition for small groups, before or after the normal school day. These sessions could be targeted at the most disadvantaged and struggling students in groups of two to five students.

Evidence generally shows the smaller the tuition group, the bigger the effects. One-on-one tutoring has the largest effects in most cases, but given it is more expensive, small group tuition could be tried as a first step.

Another option is intensive face-to-face academic programs delivered over a few weeks. These could be similar to what Americans call “summer school” programs, but with a stronger academic focus and targeted at struggling students.

In Australia, these could be run in the week prior to schools re-opening, or over the term three or term four holidays. US evidence shows students who attend summer school programs can gain two months of extra learning progress compared to similar students who do not.

The impacts of summer programs are larger when academically focused and delivered intensively with small group tuition by experienced teachers.

Of course, teachers can also do more during regular face-to-face school lessons to help kids catch up, and the current crises may create extra focus on what teaching practices and programs work best. But given the likely size of the challenge, additional catch-up measures will still be needed.

The costs would flow back into economy

The costs of these sorts of catch-up programs are significant, but affordable. For example, we calculate providing small-group tuition for half of the students across Australia would cost about A$900 million. This is based on groups of three students receiving 30 minutes of tuition, five times a week, for two full terms, at a cost of $460 per student.

Conducting a three-week intensive summer school for say 800,000 disadvantaged students across Australia would cost about $800 million, assuming a cost of $1,000 per student based on US and UK experiences.

These are not big sums in the scheme of the economic stimulus and rescue package spending for COVID-19. If new catch-up programs cost, let’s say, between $2-4 billion, that is only 3-6% of the federal government’s stimulus measures announced to date.

And the money for summer schools and small group tuition would flow to extra salaries for teachers, providing financial stimulus at a time when the economy really needs it.

No doubt schools and teachers will do their best to continue student learning while schools are closed. And through this process we will also learn a lot about how to do online learning for large populations, and improve along the way.

But despite best efforts, we should prepare for learning losses and plan for catch-up programs.

Julie Sonnemann, Fellow, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sharing my thoughts with the world from a Particular Baptist perspective

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What we learnt in 2020

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Who invented unschooling?

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Schools are safe, or are they?

How governments should respond

It’s getting better but we need action

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1. Organise a learning space and dress for learning

2. Organise your learning time

3. Manage distractions

4. Take notes

5. Adopt a growth mindset

6. Ask questions and collaborate

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What is home education?

What are the legal requirements of home educators?

Are we all homeschoolers now?

What new homeschoolers can learn from the old

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Catch-up programs

The costs would flow back into economy

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