Jimmy Kilpatrick Editor, EducationNews.org
Presenattion before The 2007 Senate Enquiry into the Quality of School Education (Australia)
Inquiry into the Academic Standards of School Education
I am former teacher and educational psychologist within the Victorian state school system (20 years), who has been, for the past 15 years, training educational psychologists at RMIT University - with a particular emphasis on literacy development, instruction, and remediation. I am committed to promoting educational research as an under-used, but valuable, informant of educational policy, and am attuned to the findings of the literacy research around the world through assiduous reading. I also consult in the RMIT Clinic with individuals with literacy problems, and this work along with my previous experience, has confirmed for me a number of disquieting conclusions about the education system.
We have an unnecessarily high proportion of students who cannot achieve their potential because of their low literacy skills. Literacy is pivotal to every aspect of our life, yet we have made little inroad into providing an effective educational environment that alters the trajectory of the unacceptably high number of students failed by that system. This has occurred despite the well-intentioned attempts to redress educational disadvantage. The failure of the system to draw inspiration from empirical research is puzzling, given its positive impact on other professions such as medicine, psychology, technology, and agriculture.
There are a number of reasons why this has occurred, among them a science-aversive culture endemic among education policymakers and teacher education faculties. Education has a history of regularly adopting new ideas, but it has done so without the wide-scale assessment and scientific research that is necessary to distinguish effective from ineffective reforms. This absence of a scientific perspective has precluded systematic improvement in the education system, and it has impeded growth in the teaching profession for a long time.
As an example, consider these practices
We have an unnecessarily high proportion of students who cannot achieve their potential because of their low literacy skills. Literacy is pivotal to every aspect of our life, yet we have made little inroad into providing an effective educational environment that alters the trajectory of the unacceptably high number of students failed by that system. This has occurred despite the well-intentioned attempts to redress educational disadvantage. The failure of the system to draw inspiration from empirical research is puzzling, given its positive impact on other professions such as medicine, psychology, technology, and agriculture.
There are a number of reasons why this has occurred, among them a science-aversive culture endemic among education policymakers and teacher education faculties. Education has a history of regularly adopting new ideas, but it has done so without the wide-scale assessment and scientific research that is necessary to distinguish effective from ineffective reforms. This absence of a scientific perspective has precluded systematic improvement in the education system, and it has impeded growth in the teaching profession for a long time.
As an example, consider these practices