If you can read this review, thank your teacher! Learning is a complex process, with several ‘best approaches’ mandated within diverse, contextual human systems.
Creating Schools makes often-contested teaching strategies accessible to readers. Australian schools are increasingly using standardised approaches, with direct instruction featuring clear, step-by-step lessons. Clear as mud? Imagine pouring water into an empty glass – knowledge in the teacher’s head is poured into a student’s empty head – or an industrial-era conveyer belt. According to co-authors Michael and Fabio, ‘this often leads to a lack of meaning and a hollow conceptual understanding’ for students. The critique of ‘how to kick a football’ instruction is thought-provoking and humorous.
Another approach: teachers are trusted, respected and given autonomy to make the best decisions for the learning of their students. And students have a 15-minute break every hour.
The conversation gets complicated with diverse perspectives on teachers’ professional roles, standardised curriculums, testing and data collection, competition, school-as-business, students’ emotions, evidence-based research, creativity and in-equitable government funding.
Creating Schools demystifies often complex, multifaceted educational concepts and policies. It feels like a conversation, with a Frequently Asked Questions chapter offering a handy summary of the key ideas. The book provides valuable insights, encouraging an ongoing dialogue between parents, teachers, educational administrators and school leaders. Even students have a voice!
Reviewed by Mark Parry
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Michael Lawrence is a school teacher of more than 30 years experience teaching Music, English, History and more from Grade Prep to Year 12, in both government and non-government schools. His previous book titles have been the definitive music biographies on Cold Chisel and Midnight Oil.
Michael lives in Geelong where, in addition to bringing change to the Australian education system, he enjoys the surf coast and catching his favourite bands as often as possible.
Dr Fabio D’Agostin has been a mathematics, science and physics teacher for over 40 years. He has taught in state, Catholic and independent schools throughout that time, accumulating tens of thousands of classroom teaching hours. His ongoing fascination, challenge and holy grail has been the fostering and harnessing of positive student emotional responses in the pursuit of quality learning. His professional interest was crystallised in the forms of a Masters study followed by a PhD program exploring the genesis and roles of student emotions in mathematics classrooms, an area that has only been thinly researched.
He believes that any handbook of teaching is incomplete without a developed understanding of the associations between student feelings and learning processes.
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