Program outline (subject to change)

Announced headline speakers:

Day One (20 August)

Opening Keynote - Sr Nathalie Becquart xmcj
Undersecretary for the General Secretariat of the Synod, Vatican
(Synopsis to come)

Day Two (21 August)

Keynote - Prof Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the UCL Institute of Education, London
Topic: Everyone counts: Responsive, Engaging Education for All

In this keynote, Dylan Wiliam will argue that creating an equitable approach to educational improvement involves looking not just at what our reforms do to average levels of achievement but also needs to focus on reducing the range of student achievement. This will require first creating time for teachers to improve by de-implementing less effective practices, and then implementing four key shifts in our approach to education: in our educational goals, a shift from a focus on performance to one on learning; in our view of aptitude, a shift from how much students learn to how much time is needed to reach mastery; in our view of teaching from a linear process to a contingent one; and in our view of pedagogy, from one that works for some to one that works for all.

Masterclass - Prof Dylan Wiliam
Topic: Why improving scores on accountability measures is hard, and how we can do better

The way that school accountability measures are designed means that they don’t really measure the quality of education that students receive, and as a result, effective interventions are overlooked. In this masterclass, Dylan Wiliam will explain why school accountability measures don’t tell us much, outline the kinds of things that have been tried to improve student achievement, and how we can do better.

Masterclass - Prof Dylan Wiliam
Topic: Developing teacher mastery by getting out of the way!

Over the last 20 or so years, there has been increasing acceptance that there is a “knowing-doing” gap in education. Most teachers do not lack information about the kinds of changes to classroom practice that would improve their teaching. Rather they lack support in implementing the things they want to develop. In many schools this is compounded by top-down approaches to school improvement that do not recognise that changes that may work for some teachers, and for some subjects, will not work for others. In this masterclass, participants will learn how a balance of top-down and bottom-up approaches to teacher professional development can create a coherent whole-school approach to professional development that nevertheless honours the important differences between phases, and subjects. By giving teachers choice about which aspects of their practice to develop, by encouraging flexibility in the way that changes are implemented, and by encouraging teachers to take small steps in changing their classroom practice, it is likely that most teachers will see these changes as appropriate and manageable. Furthermore, by creating a framework of supportive accountability, where teachers are held accountable for making changes in their practice, but also provide, and receive, support from colleagues, we can maximise the likelihood that these changes are effective and sustainable.

Masterclass - Dr Simon Breakspear, Educational expert and founder of Strategic Schools
Mastering The Pruning Principle: How strategic subtraction can unlock surprising progress.

Educators, leaders, schools and systems are overloaded and exhausted. We seem collectively stuck in a relentless ‘additive cycle’ of expanding the number of commitments, programs and initiatives. In this practical session, Simon will outline the case for strategic subtraction and show you how to do it in your context. 

In this workshop, you will:

• Unravel the misguided tendency to keep adding more

• Explore how to apply The Pruning Principle across roles and contexts

• Apply simple strategies and practical tools to your school improvement work

• Engage in collaborative decision-making with colleagues and make commitments to small, manageable changes. 

• Consider why pruning will require courage and creativity.

Day Three (22 August)

Masterclass - Dr Simon Breakspear
Topic: Enabling Sustainable Teacher Practice Change: How the Teaching Sprints approach can help overload educators to enhance their craft

How can we make the most of the limited collaborative time we already have available to enhance practice? How can we reduce resistance and improve positive momentum in our professional learning approaches? Teaching Sprints is a simple professional development process that supports overloaded educators in enhancing one specific evidence-informed technique each term. During this practice workshop, you will:

• Examine the challenge of shifting ingrained habits of practice

• Unpack three guiding principles of sustainable evidence-informed practice improvement

• Explore the three-phase Teaching Sprints process that educator teams can use

• Consider how to adapt the approach to work within the collaboration time you already have available

Closing Keynote - Sr Simon Breakspear, Educational expert and founder of Strategic Schools
(Synopsis to come)

Full Day Workshop (8.30am-3.30pm) - Prof Dylan Wiliam
Topic: Assessment of, for and as learning

Please note this workshop is limited to 200 participants and can be booked as a Conference Add-on ($200) or as a standalone workshop ($499) - please book through the registration portal or if you have already registered please email ConferenceNational to update your booking.

This workshop will equip teachers with essential knowledge and practical strategies to improve their assessment practices through a focus on assessment literacy, defined as understanding both what assessments mean, and what they do, especially in terms of supporting teachers’ decision making, and student motivation. The workshop will be organised around the idea of validity as the central issue in assessment. Defining validity as a property of the inferences that assessment outcomes support (rather than a property of the assessments themselves) allows issues such as reliability, and formative and summative assessment, to be discussed in an integrated way, and highlights the importance of designing assessments backwards from the conclusions we want to draw—in other words evidence-centered design (ECD). In addition, participants will understand how a focus on validity highlights the limitations of high-stakes accountability testing, growth measures, diagnostic scoring, and a number of other current policy initiatives.

The workshop will then explore different ways that formative assessment has been defined, and present a framework for effective use of formative assessment that identifies the most effective formative assessment strategies, and will provide participants with a number of classroom-ready practical formative assessment techniques. The workshop will conclude by discussing the role of leaders in supporting the development of classroom formative assessment, and will explore ways in which leaders can monitor the development of formative assessment practices across the school.