The linking of La Trobe University and grass-roots professional organisation Think Forward Educators will see increased opportunities for collaborative research for School of Education researchers and Think Forward Educators’ national network.

As part of the partnership, La Trobe School of Education staff will take part in webinars coordinated by Think Forward Educators for its member network and the university will also provide funding of $150,000 to Think Forward Educators over the next five years.

Founded in 2019 by Dr Nathaniel Swain, Think Forward Educators fosters teachers’ understanding of the science of learning, to improve excellence and equity. 

The registered charity provides quality professional learning, guidance, and networking for teachers and educators across Australia.

Kicking off with just 20 like-minded educators, Think Forward Educators now has more than 23,000 members nationally.

In the past year alone, it has hosted more than 5000 members for live webinars, with 12,000 registrations for all of its events, and 9100 views on its professional learning materials. 

Professor Joanna Barbousas, Dean of the La Trobe School of Education, says the university’s ITE courses program last year underwent a substantial redesign and reaccreditation.

“And the focus of the program is to really bring to the foreground, an evidence-informed approach to developing teachers for the future, which means that what’s really upfront in our teaching degrees is not only the know ‘what’, the kind of theoretical ideas about teaching and teachers and schooling, but it is about the know ‘how’, so the explicit approach to designing learning,” she says.

Barbousas explains that there’s a surprising lack of understanding in the sector of what constitutes explicit instruction.

“People say, 'oh, yeah, explicit teaching, we all do that', but it's actually a particular way of crafting your practice,” she says.

“So it’s things like really embedding in a teaching degree, ‘what does it mean?’ And ‘how do you make sense of and design quality demonstration?’, ‘How do you position modelling?’

“It's not 'a sage on the stage', it's actually developing learning opportunities for young people from all ages and optimising the learning through checking for understanding, positioning a kind of chunking approach to learning, and this is about developing practice in a teaching degree, not only when they go into placements, but actually when they're engaging in units and content at universities.

“It’s practising these approaches, having a go, and then examining and evaluating those practices in relation to current research around explicit teaching.”

The partnership came about due in no small part to generous funding from the Bertalli Family Foundation, who were looking closely at the work La Trobe University’s School of Education was doing in its SOLAR (science of language and reading) Lab and the changes the institution was making in its teaching degrees.

La Trobe University’s Professor Joanna Barbousas says the focus of the School of Education’s ITE courses is to really bring to the foreground an evidence-informed approach to developing teachers for the future.

“In discussions, particularly with Neville and Di Bertalli, we essentially put together a proposal to look at targeted longitudinal research projects that will impact schools and teachers through a science of learning approach,” Barbousas says.

Fortuitously, that corresponded with Swain’s move into his current role in the School of Education, and Think Forward Education will play a significant role in the network reach for influencing change through research funding on the science of learning.

“It's an ongoing collaboration, we're very excited about it,” Barbousas says.

“And it will have both opportunities for research, opportunities for short course development, and, in some ways be really linking a more national approach through the work that we're doing.”

With the Canberra, Goulburn, Tasmania, and Melbourne dioceses all having declared themselves to be following the explicit instruction path, and Secretary of the NSW Department of Education Murat Dizdar pursuing it with vigour in that state’s public schools, it seems change is afoot in education.

But should we be proceeding with caution and not looking to change too quickly?

“That's an interesting question because my initial answer would be ‘no’,” Barbousas says.

“And the reason for that is, if you if you look at short courses in the science of reading, we have now brought 11,000 people through our short courses.”

These are current as well as pre-service teachers from other universities, Barbousas explains, and the reason they are flocking, is because of the need, that they see, in upskilling their practice.

“So do we have to go slow? I think there's a responsibility for all stakeholders here to make sure that we're providing the best quality education for young people right now.

“I mean, what would waiting do? The PISA results are very clear in terms of the decreases in literacy, numeracy, science capabilities, academic capabilities.”

The big driver for any changes to education performance, is the influence of teachers and the crucial role that teachers play, the academic says.

“And as a teacher education provider, it is our responsibility to optimise our graduates to be as effective as they possibly can to impact student performance, particularly in relation to low socioeconomic status students.”