Rural teachers share successes in maths and science

May 11, 2007

A Commonwealth-funded project based at the University of New England is enabling secondary science and mathematics teachers in the New England region to share their stories and experiences after identifying and addressing issues that were limiting their students' achievements.

The project, titled "Collaborative innovations in rural and regional secondary schools: enhancing student learning in science and mathematics", involves 12 schools in Armidale, Barraba, Glen Innes, Guyra, Inverell, Manilla, Quirindi, Tamworth, Uralla, Walcha and Warialda.

The 18-month project is funded by a $72,000 Australian School Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics grant to the National Centre of Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia (SiMERR), based at UNE. It is based on a professional development model for teachers that was developed by UNE researchers. "It's particularly important to have schools identifying their own issues, and then working with the support of other schools, researchers, and curriculum advisers from the NSW Department of Education and Training to address those issues," said the co-leader of the project, Professor John Pegg, the Director of SiMERR. "This allows teachers to have ownership of the issues identified and the solutions implemented. UNE has been championing this model since 1990, and we are excited to have this external funding to support the initiative."

Professor Pegg said the project was central to the mission of SiMERR, which was to address the fact that science and mathematics students in rural and regional schools do not, on average, achieve as highly as their peers in metropolitan schools.

Dr Debra Panizzon, Deputy Director of SiMERR and co-leader of the project, said its strength lay in its ability to "improve students' learning outcomes while enhancing the informal professional development of teachers within their own schools".

Dr Panizzon (pictured here) said that teachers had developed a range of projects within their own schools to address the issues they had identified. These included developing a homework policy, preparing integrated units of work in science that maintained links between content, skills and teaching strategies, a survey of students to gain a clearer understanding of difficulties they were experiencing in mathematics and science, and the development of a battery of basic mathematics tests to help identify particular learning difficulties.

Reports on some of the schools' completed projects, prepared in the form of podcasts, were 'unveiled' during a recent workshop at UNE. These podcasts are available at
http://www.simerr.une.edu.au/ASISTM/Welcome.html, enabling teachers anywhere in
Australia to access the perspectives and experiences of the teachers involved.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Dr Debra Panizzon displayed here expands to include two teachers from Warialda High School - Agbe Attipoe and Susan Leamon - who were among those attending the recent workshop at UNE.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at May 11, 2007 12:51 PM