Kate Harris

Welcome to the EAL/D conversations podcast. My name is Kate Harris and I'm the EAL/D Education Advisor for K-6 with the NSW Department of Education. Today I'm joined by Doctor Kathy Rushton and Kathy is a researcher and honorary lecturer at the University of Sydney. She has worked as a literacy consultant English as a second language and classroom teacher with the Department of Education and in other educational institutions. Kathy is interested in supporting students from culturally and linguistically diverse communities to develop agency in their use of translanguaging. She's also interested in the impact of teacher professional learning on the development of language and literacy, especially for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Today Kathy and I will be discussing the EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and how teachers and school leaders can effectively use them so welcome Kathy and thanks for joining me.

Kathy Rushton

Well thank you so much for inviting me Kate and it's really a privilege to be able to talk to like-minded people about something that affects us so much and our work as the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. When they first um emerged across Australia, I was really pleased to see that they actually noted that there was support needed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and that there was mention of students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. So we have it in print that we should be talking about these issues and that they should be something that we're aiming to meet the needs of students from a wide range of backgrounds.

Kate Harris

As you mentioned Kathy, the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers do mention a wide variety of learner groups including EAL/D learners but how can teachers access the EAL/D Elaborations as often they find it quite tricky to locate these and what can they be used for?

Kathy Rushton

I'll tell you the first problem. If you put ACTA, ACTA which is the Australian Council of TESOL Associations into your local friendly search engine what you'll end up with is probably the Australian Clay Target Association and I think people give up then and think ohh well I don't know where they really are. So where the elaborations are is on the website of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations, so there's the tip. If you type ACTA, ACTA and then write the word TESOL (teachers of English to speakers of other languages) you will be sent to that website. Now luckily I think Kate's going to put a link to the elaborations somewhere near this podcast so you'll be able to find them more easily. But there's the first step finding the elaborations and why were they developed? What are they? Well the Australian Council of TESOL associations is actually the national body that is supported by all the member states, so you might be a member of hopefully you are ATESOL NSW and ATESOL NSW is a member of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations. So really when we say ACTA developed them, what we mean is teachers EAL/D teachers and educators from across Australia got together when the Australian professional standards were developed and developed elaborations of them.

Kate Harris

And Kathy as you mentioned I will place a link to them in the show notes for today as well so that people can easily access them to have a look. So when we're thinking about these EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, what is the real purpose of this resource?

Kathy Rushton

Well it's actually not a resource Kate, it's elaborations of the standards. So we already know what they're for every time you use Australian professional standards for teachers, so that's if you're a pre service teacher you've gotta meet graduate to be able to become an accredited teacher. If you're looking for promotion, you've got to look for highly accomplished or lead of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. If you are a graduate and you managed to get yourself a wonderful job in this school, you have to make proficient. So wherever you use the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers you can use the elaborations. They're not separate they're elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and I'll go into that in a little bit more but I'd like to say first, what the problem is. There's always a problem. So the main problem is you can't find them but that's solved now because Kate's giving you a link but here's the other problem. In the elaboration, in the Australian Professional Standards for teachers, there are three domains: Professional knowledge - that's got the standards 1 and 2, Professional practice that has the standards 3, 4 and 5, and Professional engagement which has the standards 6 and 7 but very sadly only two focus areas 1.3 and 1.4 in professional knowledge mention Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students with diverse cultural linguistic social socioeconomic backgrounds. So there's not a lot of information there. And what I wanted to talk to you about today is how useful the elaborations can be for you and what they can do for you. So when the standards were developed, ACTA already had nine standards that described the work of TESOL teachers, so you. It wasn't EAL/D then, we didn't use that term when this was developed, but every teacher in Australia now I think is referred to as EAL/D in that particular role. The D being dialect and the dialect, referring to Aboriginal Englishes, so even if you're in a school where there are no Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, or if you were in one with nothing but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students these elaborations are going to be useful for you.

Kate Harris

And Kathy as you mentioned in the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers there's only a couple there that mention directly EAL/D and Aboriginal students and it's important to note that within NSW public schools we've got over 25% of our students are from EAL/D backgrounds, so for most teachers there will be some students in their classrooms and in some areas it might be all of the students in their classroom who are EAL/D learners. So these elaborations will be particularly useful for them when thinking about their practice.

Kathy Rushton

Do you know what Kate, you're so right and if you add LBOTE to that language background other than English, where something in the high 30% of students in our in our classrooms. So I think the elaborations are going to be good for everybody. Why do we need them though? And here's the real crux of it. The general training of teachers for preservice teachers is general. It's meant to be general. It needs to be general because when teachers are becoming teachers, we don't know where they're going to end up working they could be in southwest Sydney with 50 languages, knowing no native English speakers in the class or they could be on in a elite private school, where everyone speaking English or more than one language. We don't know so it's a general education. But for EAL/D teachers or, here's the crux, teachers who are not specially trained to teach EAL/D students, but have a whole school and a whole class of EAL/D students, the elaborations are here to the rescue. Why? I'll tell you why. Students who are classed as EAL/D are not only learning English, they're learning through English and they're learning about English. Whereas the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers are not defining those students in all the other areas that they discuss. So they're talking about meeting general standards and the standards that were mapped by ACTA originally for TESOL teachers talked about what teachers needed to know and do to meet the needs of the EAL/D students. So what's happened with the elaborations is we've now mapped those nine standards onto the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. So if you're using the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in any context you can go to the elaborations and see a much more widely descriptive examination of that particular area.

Where could you use this? I'll give you a good example. Are you mentoring a preservice teacher? Great example, so the preservice teacher is coming to you let's say they're looking at the first standard that mentions our students and that would be 1.3. And what does it say for a graduate teacher for 1.3? It says students with diverse linguistic cultural religious and socioeconomic backgrounds demonstrate knowledge of teaching strategies that are responsive to the learning strengths and needs of students from diverse linguistic.. ohh well OK, good, thanks, I know what that means I've gotta demonstrate strategies, but hey, what, what does that mean? What are the strategies I, I don't really know. Well if you have a look in the elaborations of 1.3 it says demonstrate knowledge of inclusive teaching strategies. Ohh now we're getting a bit more of information, and learning about the community as well as the curriculum content that EAL/D learners are trying to do that, that their teaching strategies and teaching resources are available, they're responsive to learner characteristics. Identifying EAL/D learning learners as needing support so sometimes people haven't even identified that a student needs support because their oral language their basic interca- intercommunication level is quite acceptable so they don't realise that they’re EAL/D students needing help. Umm it also suggests in the elaborations that you could draw on the descriptors for other standards to explain what that means. So the elaborations are not a separate resource, they're an elaboration of what's already there.

Kate Harris

So I guess in a way Kathy you could think of it as a layer to sit on top. So it's digging deeper into well what does this mean when we when we're teaching EAL/D learners.

Kathy Rushton

That's exactly right and I think, why would you need it personally as a teacher? Are you going for promotion? Are you trying to fill in your AP and D for the year? Is that what it's called Kate AP&D?

Kate Harris

Our PDPs

Kathy Rushton

PDPs. See I’m giving you the name of what we use at uni AP&D. PDP it’s all the same we’re all doing the same thing. It’s an assessment that you have to hand in every year to show that you are meeting the strategic plan for the school, correct?

Kate Harris

So it will have some goals that you're trying to meet and some of them are school based ones.

Kathy Rushton

And some of them are personal.

Kate Harris

Correct.

Kathy Rushton

So what if yours, and just say you're a this is graduate standard, but what if yours was standard 1.4 taking account of the local context and building on students learning strengths, implement practices informed by all graduate indicators in the EAL/D elaborations and refer to the capability framework as relevant. It's got demonstrate knowledge of inclusive teaching practices that respond to students learning needs and to principles of multilingualism, reconciliation and antiracism. Whereas in the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, I know I'm just reading ne thing from 1.4 in the graduate it just says demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of the impact of culture, cultural identity and linguistic background on the education of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. Well, that's very narrow, but in the elaborations it's got things like recognise the role of the home language for classroom learning and in social and cognitive development. Oh seek support from bilingual intercultural offices. Um develop respectful professional relations with intercultural officers. So this is the kind of information that a graduate would really find valuable because it's explaining what it looks like to meet that standard and that's all the elaborate elaborations are for is to help TESOL teachers know how to write up these pieces of paper that we're all doing all the time. So here's one for a principal - The strategic plan for the school. If you've got a school that's completely full or nearly full of EAL/D learners this is going to make your strategic plan much easier to write don't you agree Kate.

Kate Harris

I do agree.

Kathy Rushton

And I think that on all levels from preservice teacher through to school leader this is a very useful document that you can use at any time when you use the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Now I think one of the main things, the benefits besides the form filling help where you can almost word for word copy what's in the elaborations to describe your work. It also allows you to identify your professional learning needs. So if you look at one of those standards, if that's one of your personal goals or one of the these part of the strategic plan for your school or something that you're assessing in a teacher that you're mentoring once you look at the elaborations you can realise perhaps you don't actually understand that standard when it comes to TESOL students. That you you might need more professional support in that area, which is a great thing to be able to recognise your own needs and plan your goals as you just said Kate, um without being told you don't know that it's much better to know ahead of time you don't know. The research I've done on teachers using this a lot of teachers have told me that they didn't know they existed or they could only find clay pigeon shooting and not the elaborations, couldn't find them, or that they were told that they weren't allowed to use them. But it it's not using something that's an alternative to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. You are using the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. The elaborations give you a description of what they mean in the context of EAL/D learners and teachers of EAL/D learners. Now, some of you who are listening to this may be in EAL/D positions and have not received special professional development to undertake that position or very brief, I'm not sure. And if that's you, I think the elaborations can be really helpful to you there guiding you about what you might want to pursue in terms of more information or your own professional learning around a specific area and sorry Kate.

Kate Harris

I was going to say you mentioned there Kathy that the elaborations can be really useful for teachers when thinking about their own needs and their professional learning and to use it as a reflection tool as that layer over the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. And I know quite a few EAL/D specialist teachers have also used them when reflecting on what it is they do on a day-to-day basis when thinking about lead and also highly accomplished and going for those higher levels of accreditation to show that their practice as EAL/D specialist teachers does meet these Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and the elaborations were really useful in being able to really explain how that is too.

Kathy Rushton

And do you know what Kate I couldn't agree with you more and I think you could practically copy word for word what's in the elaborations to say what you do as an EAL/D professional. And it shows exactly the leadership qualities of being an EAL/D professional at proficient level…

Kate Harris

True.

Kathy Rushton

…because it's all about working with your colleagues and leaving them in if you've had that professional specialist training supporting them to work with EAL/D learners.

Kathy Rushton

The last thing I want to say, though, which is close to my heart Kate introduced me, saying that umm what I was interested in developing student agency and translanguaging. It's something that you don't see enough of or much of in classrooms is the valuing of students and you might be one of them. Teachers, linguistic repertoires Australia always was a multilingual multicultural country and now we have many more languages, joining the traditional Indigenous languages here. And we should be celebrating that and letting letting I said cancel myself, supporting students to use their first languages in the classrooms and their dialects and at the same time, supporting them to develop proficiency in English to allow them to choose their careers whatever they want to do in Australian communities. To do that you have to be aware of what the principles of multicultural education are and I think the elaborations give you quick window into that. If you haven't done a degree or a certificate or a whatever, if you look up some of those basic standards and see what it means to be a TESOL teacher and achieve that standard I think it gives you a quick snapshot into what needs to be happening. And for all the hard-working wonderful teachers we have out there, this is a little bit of support. And I personally was one of the people on the team that developed them, just one of the minor typists, but the people who led it spent a lot of their time and their energy doing this. And that was people from all over Australia academics and teachers that were TESOL professionals. So it's from their hearts to yours as well that it's to support you to identify what fantastic work you do in schools and to explain why it's not developing literacy. It's supporting our EAL/D learners to and valuing their cultures and their languages and supporting them to learn English and use that as one of the languages in their linguistic repertoires.

Kate Harris

You bought up lots of interesting points, there, Kathy and I think as well as supporting it also validates the many teachers the work that they're doing within schools as well. And you mentioned throughout this chat that we've had that the EAL/D elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards, they can be used by a wide variety of people in schools from EAL/D teachers who are just starting out in their career to teachers of EAL/D learners, EAL/D specialist teachers who are looking at those higher levels and also by school leadership teams. And having school leadership teams supporting teachers who have EAL/D learners, or who have those EAL/D qualifications, to utilise the elaborations when thinking about how they're practice meets the standards as it really does delve deeper. So it has quite a big broad audience that can use it.

Kathy Rushton

And do you know what? Kate, I can add nothing to that except this if you're listening to this please get the link and give it to somebody else, so that the Australian Clay Target Association stops getting all our TESOL calls and we start sharing this really good resource. Thank you for inviting me on here today, Kate. It's been a pleasure talking to you all.

Kate Harris

No thank you very much Kathy and I'm sure everyone listening got something out of what you had to say to do today and as I mentioned the link to the EAL/D elaborations will be down the bottom in the show notes so they'll be nice and easy to access. So thanks Kathy for joining us and thanks everyone for listening.

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