Almost half of Australian school students bored or struggling, says Grattan Institute
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Version 0 of 1. An education system overhaul is required to deal with the “hidden issue” of widespread student disengagement in the classroom, according to a new Grattan Institute report. About 40% of Australian school students are regularly unproductive, bored and struggling to keep up with their peers, say the authors of Engaging Students: Creating Classrooms that Improve Learning. These “passively disengaged” students can be one to two years behind their peers in their work. “When a student switches off, there is the risk of a downward spiral,” said Pete Goss, the institute’s school education program director. “If the teacher responds badly, more students can become distracted and the momentum of the class can be lost.” Goss said the main problem was not the aggressive or violent behaviour that attracts headlines but that it was more stressful for teachers to have ongoing minor disruptions such as students talking back or simply switching off and avoiding work. And old-fashioned discipline isn’t working, he said. Drawing on more than a decade of academic research, the report found the most common disruptions were talking out of turn, avoiding work, being late for class, moving around in class, making impertinent remarks and being rowdy. But it’s not just about the noise, says the report – one in five students are “compliant but quietly disengaged”. “Australian classrooms are not out of control” Goss said. “But student disengagement is a hidden issue in schools.” The most prevalent explanations for student disengagement were boredom, finding the work too difficult, finding the work not challenging enough, poor-quality teaching and problems at home. The report found that initial teacher training was not doing enough to help teachers build the skills required to deal with these issues, with only half of new teachers saying their training was helpful. But even experienced teachers were struggling, with the report finding no relationship between years of experience and student engagement and self-regulation in class. Teachers overwhelmingly responded negatively to disruptive student behaviour – for example, by yelling or being sarcastic to or humiliating students – and it made matters worse. It found that 30% of teachers felt very stressed managing student behaviour, a figure that rose to 40% of teachers in low SES schools. The report makes recommendations for creating more engaging classroom environments, including both preventative approaches and responsive approaches. These included teachers having higher expectations for students, stronger teacher-student relationships based on mutual respect and encouraging active learning in students – understanding that “the goal is learning, not silence”. Responsive approaches included encouragement and praise for the students’ behaviour and not responding to disengagement with “old-fashioned discipline”. The report found that schools must actively support their teachers to create effective classrooms with teacher collaboration and feedback: more than 40% of teachers said they have never observed or given feedback to their colleagues. The report recommended better induction programs for teachers, citing the Shanghai example of new teachers having two mentors, one specifically for classroom management, and also recommended that teachers receive feedback about how they respond in the heat of the moment so that issues are not escalated. Ultimately, the report strongly recommended essential policy reform. This included recommendations for overhauling early teacher training, ensuring teachers are trained in dealing with difficult student behaviour. The report also called for more targeted support for struggling schools, saying government support was not as well targeted as it should be. It recommended more research into understanding the reasons behind student disengagement, saying most current data gathered was not nuanced enough to gain insight into social, emotional and cognitive engagement. “We owe it to future generations of Australian students to make these reforms now,” Goss said. “If we get it right, we will help create a virtuous circle in which students are more engaged, teachers are less stressed, classes become more compelling and students learn more.” |