Academic outcomes – particularly those in fundamental literacy and numeracy – will always be the core of what students are taught and assessed on. But what if we could also better understand, measure and teach the life skills they are developing?
In a bid to address this, leading Adelaide private girls' school Seymour College has partnered with Melbourne University as part of the Melbourne Assessment Community (MAC) – an initiative that is set to transform the way schools across Australia assess, develop and actively teach core student capabilities.
As one of only a few South Australian schools in the MAC program, Seymour College is at the forefront of this work and has access to a research-based framework to shape the assessment of key life competencies.
The initiative aims to empower Australian teachers to more accurately track, develop, report on and teach skills such as community engagement, agency, communication, collaboration, thinking skills and ethical decision making.
Below, The Educator speaks to Natalie Paelchen, Deputy Principal, Academics and Professional Practice at Seymour College, about the new partnership with Melbourne University, the school’s unique Learning Framework, and the importance of teachers contributing to ideas on education reform.
TE: Congratulations on the new partnership with the University of Melbourne! Can you tell us about the genesis of the partnership and what you hope it will ultimately achieve for the school’s teaching and learning community?
The University of Melbourne has provided consultation to the SACE Board in anticipation of the launch of their new strategic plan, SACE Board SA ‘Passport to Thrive, A qualification for a changing world’ 2024-2027. What has emerged in this new strategic plan is the importance and value of capabilities, students’ active role in their own learning and how students can showcase what they know and what they can do.
This approach is perfectly aligned to Seymour’s established frameworks and our motivation for partnering with The University of Melbourne. We are keen to learn more about their metrics platform and Melbourne Assessment Community to ensure that, in time, we can further the value of our Learning Framework, developing a tangible, metrics-based tool.
The partnership will provide Seymour with evidenced based research to further drive our classroom practice with a future focused lens. In 2023, Seymour introduced an innovative addition to the Middle Years curriculum, a new subject Student Agency, which focuses on capabilities assessment to work alongside traditional modes of assessment and feedback for our students. We have been seeking a metric based tool to support this innovative subject.
Ultimately, this exciting partnership will allow the College to innovate around what traditional academic reporting looks like for our students and families and the types of learning that we give feedback on. While we absolutely value academic knowledge and depth of understanding, it’s also about how we teach young people capabilities to be connected, critical, reflective, active and innovative. As such a wide range of leaders from all aspects of our College are engaged in this work.
Academic outcomes, particularly those in fundamental literacy and numeracy – will always be the core of what students are taught and assessed on. But what if we could also better understand, measure and teach the life skills they are developing by providing targeted feedback about progress and growth against a specific capability?
As one of just a handful of South Australian schools in the MAC program Melbourne Assessment Community, Seymour is at the forefront of this work, providing access to a research-based framework to shape the assessment of key life competencies.
TE: Why do you believe school-university partnerships are so important in 2024?
Partnerships build a community of educators which break down the silos between secondary and tertiary education for our young people while also providing access to a network of progressive experts, collaborating and learning from each other.
The University of Melbourne is highly regarded as a leader in progressive educational thinking and research. We want to be a part of the movement that heralds a new educational landscape which can really break free from traditional and at times outdated pedagogical practices that aren’t necessarily providing the educational environment that our learners need in an information and technology rich modern society.
The past five years has seen such a huge shift in technology and, consequently, the world of education. It is crucial that we adapt to it. Partnerships allow us to work with like-minded schools and institutions and provide the ability to contribute to the necessary shift in this modern age of education.
Teachers are busy and we can only carve so much time out of our daily routines to engage in professional readings and development. Schools need support from institutions, like universities, to do some of the heavy lifting around resourcing quality evidence-based research to help inform our work to deliver best practice approaches in curriculum and teaching methodology.
TE: Seymour College’s Learning Framework has been described as unique. In your view, what makes it so unique, and what aspects of it do you consider to be most groundbreaking?
The College’s Learning and GIRLbeing Frameworks have been developed and refined by our staff over the past 6 years and reflect our belief in capabilities. They are a result of broad consultation with staff, drawing from leading education research and best practice and most of all, they reflect the College’s focus on the holistic development of girls – which we refer to as complete achievement.
Complete achievement at Seymour acknowledges that student success is measured through academic excellence as well as the breadth of our girls’ engagement through serving and interacting with others in our community, capturing the broader essence of their capabilities to function as active citizens beyond school.
Our frameworks live and breathe in the classroom, ultimately instilling in our students, the capabilities they need to excel at school and in life beyond our gates. We recognise the impact that co-curricular, career development and service-learning activities can have on a young person’s capability development, and we want to be able to honour this learning and provide feedback through some sort of metric.
Our Learning Framework is not diluted for the younger years. We believe at Seymour that we can teach younger students what concepts like metacognition or self-regulation look like and we upskill our teachers on how to create learning environments that teach and encourage these concepts.
Our frameworks are strongly embedded in curriculum and serve as a tool, providing the ability to describe learning and provide feedback outside of the classroom context.
TE: Looking ahead, what are you most excited and optimistic about when it comes how partnerships like these will address some of the most pressing challenges teachers and students are facing?
In recent years there has been an intensification of calls for educational reform with a significant focus on capabilities-based Learner Profiles as tools or mechanisms to reconsider what success looks like for students.
I am optimistic that in time, education will continue to move further away from having to obtain the ATAR at all costs, toward a focus on how students have developed as a person. Students and educators will have a better snapshot of an individual’s personal growth and there will be more options for students looking for alternate pathways.
This partnership allows us (Seymour, and schools more broadly) to be engaged in the future of what young people need. I am excited to know that teachers will be contributing to ideas on education reform.