Sharing Successful Practice

The Fogarty Foundation is committed to trialling innovative professional learning models that best support school leaders in implementing and embedding evidence-based instruction. Effective instruction is not always easy for schools to access; however, these high impact instructional strategies demonstrate significant improvement in student outcomes.

Fogarty EDvance is the flagship school-level professional learning program for the Fogarty Foundation, which focuses on developing executive school leadership teams to implement whole-school improvement process. This includes significant efforts in supporting teachers to make evidence-based changes to their teaching practice, that demonstrate improvements in student outcomes. To find out more about the EDvance School Improvement program, click here.

Sharing Successful Practice Conference

The Fogarty Foundation is delighted to host support materials from the Sharing Successful Practice conference, held at Como Secondary College, 9 October 2020. The Conference brought together academics, administrators and classroom teachers who demonstrate highly effective, evidence-based practice. 

2020 Keynote Speakers included: Emeritus Professor Stephen Dinham, Ollie Lovell, Jessica Colleau Terradas, Dr Catherine Scott and Dr Jennifer Buckingham. These speakers have kindly shared their presentations below.

Excellence and Equity in Australia: Mind the Gaps

Speaker: Emeritus Professor Stephen Dinham, University of Melbourne

Excellence and Equity in Australia: Mind the Gaps from Fogarty Foundation on Vimeo.

Cognitive Load Theory in Action

Speaker: Ollie Lovell
Following Dylan William’s 2017 tweet announcing that, ‘I’ve come to the conclusion Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory is the single most important thing for teachers to know,’ and CESE’s recent report Cognitive Load Theory: Research that teachers really need to understand, this session will provide a broad overview of John Sweller’s theory of Cognitive Load, translate its main points into easily understandable terms, and provide practical advice about implications for classroom practice.

Cognitive Load Theory in Action from Fogarty Foundation on Vimeo.

Connecting Maths Concepts – Developing numeracy & mathematical literacy in at-risk students (Secondary)

Speaker: Jessica Colleau Terradas, Como Secondary College
Como Secondary College is committed to supporting all students, including those with disabilities and numeracy based learning difficulties and disabilities. Hear from Jess about the Direct Instruction program she uses to support struggling readers in Years 7 and 8.

Connecting Maths: Developing numeracy & mathematical literacy in at-risk students (secondary) from Fogarty Foundation on Vimeo.

How to Teach Problem Solving

Speaker: Dr Catherine Scott
The expectation is that schools will teach valued skills such as creativity and problem solving but the evidence is that these must be acquired in the context of learning content knowledge. However, work by US theorist Arthur Whimbey revealed that there are commonalities between good problems solvers that support successful task completion in any domain. Similarly, poor problem-solvers share a set of ineffective strategies including ‘one-shot thinking’. Dr Scott will explain why teaching reading via whole word methods, including balanced literacy, including balanced literacy, instils habits of poor problem solvers.

How to Teach Problem Solving from Fogarty Foundation on Vimeo.

Fluency: The misunderstood middle child in the big 5 of reading instruction

Speaker: Dr Jennifer Buckingham, Director, Strategy and Senior Research Fellow MultiLit
Fluency is the poor relation to other components of reading, but no less important. Hear from Jennifer about why this is the case.

Fluency: The misunderstood middle child in the big 5 of reading instruction from Fogarty Foundation on Vimeo.

For more information about the Fogarty Edvance School Improvement Program, please visit the Fogarty EDvance website.

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