Brian's Blog

The second day of the Google Champion Sydney Symposium was an enriching journey through diverse perspectives, strategies, and inspiring stories centred around transformative education. The sessions offered a deep dive into various facets of educational leadership, innovative practices, fostering resilience, and leveraging technology to create impactful learning environments. How Cool is Our School Tamara Templeton's presentation gave us a insightful understanding into leveraging data to gauge the sustainability of school environments and translating this information into real-world immersive experiences. She showed by utilising data analytics, schools can delve into the intricacies of their sustainability practices, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of their environmental impact, temperature hot spots, resource consumption, and overall an ecological footprint. Integrating this data into student-led projects, such as mapping exercises, empowers learners to actively engage w...

This week's post builds on the article I wrote last week on Impactful Instruction. In this, I shared the perennial debate in the field of education and how this is often characterised as a binary choice between knowledge-rich content delivery and inquiry-based discovery learning. This dichotomous view of education has led to an oversimplified understanding of the complex processes involved in effective teaching and learning. While there are merits to both approaches, it is essential to recognise that the educational landscape is not as black-and-white as this debate often suggests. Regrettably, without a balanced understanding of how to use both direct Instruction and inquiry learning, the learning we can offer as teachers can prove to be somewhat limiting.  This article seeks to extend the discussion I presented and is influenced by two educational articles I read this week by Eric Sheninger (2023) and John Hattie (2023a). My hope is to navigate a path beyond the binary position, ...

  As an academic practitioner and educational leader, my journey has been marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Over the time that I have been teaching, the research that I have done has taken me down paths that have enhanced my passion for the profession and the students I serve. I recently encountered a question regarding the primary domains of educational research to which I have devoted my attention. Addressing this inquiry presented a degree of complexity, as my dedication to the broad spectrum of educational improvement and exploration does not lend itself to a short succinct answer or categorisation. In this blog post, I endeavour to disseminate critical insights and key takeaways derived from my learning experiences and research. It is my intent to elucidate the significant influence these insights wield upon the field of education and the desired outcomes for our graduates. As a result, the reference list is very extensive as it draws on many artic...