Student Mobility:

Staff Professional Development Resource Pack

A resource from the Let’s Stay Put Project

Program• Module 1

– Understanding mobility

• Module 2– Responding to mobility: A whole school approach

• Module 3– Classroom responses to mobility

Module 1

Understanding mobility

Some background

An overview of Module 1: Understanding mobility

• Mobility – a global issue • Mobility in Australia• A focus on the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander students• Defining student mobility• Previous research

– Impact of mobility– International measures and responses to mobility

• Reasons for mobility

Mobility is a global issue…

• E.g. Europe – Mobikid project

Mobility is a global issue

• UK – Pupil Mobility project – Local authority responses

• Chester County Council• Islington Schools

• USA - campaigns through many local school authorities and humanitarian agencies– National Centre for Homeless Education– Columbus Education

The picture in Australia

• Over 7 million adults moved house at least once in the five years between the 2001 and 2006 Australian census. Representing 40% of those that responded. (ABS, 2006)

A focus on the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students…

• Overdue– Very little research has examined the nature of Indigenous temporary

mobility in and through urban environments (Prout & Yap, 2010, p.i)

• Underestimated and until now invisible– ‘Census snapshots’ do not capture frequency or duration of

movements– Movement across education sectors and systems has not been well

captured– Inconsistent notions of student mobility– Inconsistent measures of mobility. Lack of comparability across

schools, systems and jurisdictions (Prout, 2008)

A focus on the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students

• Requires innovative responses– It is […] unproductive to generate prescriptive and generic

policy responses. – These responses may range from simple administrative

adjustments — such as improving intra-departmental communication and record transferring systems — to radical restructuring of the style and methods of service delivery (Prout, 2008, p.23)

Defining Student Mobility

• Mobility is “students making non-promotional school change” (Rumberger, 2003)

• Movement of students “into and out of schools at times other than the usual ones for joining and leaving” (McAndrew & Power, 2003)

• Students who have made more than two school moves in a three year period (DEST & DoD, 2002).

• After day 8

Previous Research:Impact of Mobility on Students

• More than 3 schools combined with other risk factors – such as low socio-economic status – increases likelihood of school failure.

• Mobility within the school year is most disruptive to learning – particularly in the early years.

Impact of mobility

• “Different mobile groups will place different demands on the school, but the impact is not entirely negative as new arrivals may increase the diversity of the community, enhance the commitment to learning, and possibly raise levels of achievement.”

(DfES, 2003)

International Benchmarking:Student Mobility

Britain– Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances– Pupil Mobility Project: 2003-present

Mobility Index:Entries post census date (Joiners) + Exits post census date (Leavers)

Census date enrolmentx100

Assessing the extent of mobility:Mobility Index

Britain– Index of 20 - High mobility– Index of 35 - Very high mobility

Policy response:Schools resourced to support student mobility when

index is greater than 20• Additional staff – “Mobility Induction Workers”• Additional funding

Understanding Reasons for Mobility

Understanding the reasons for mobility

• Well understood motivations– ‘Strategic’– ‘Rational’– ‘Upward’ mobility– Highly planned– Not frequent

• Less well understood motivations– ‘Reactive’– Varying frequency– ‘Spontaneous’– ‘Chaotic’

Reasons for mobility

Top SIX reasons1. Family circumstances2. Housing3. Employment4. Seeking services5. Choice6. Confrontation

• Some motivations well understood: ‘makes it easier to talk about’

• Some motivations less visible/masked: ‘not so easy to talk about’

• Some motivations more positively perceived than others

Your turn• Who is highly mobile?• Why?• What characteristics & needs exist?

Who? Factors? Characteristics / Needs?

“Let our schools and our classrooms be that one place

in a child’s life that is positive…Just one place where

somebody believes they can be something great and

where we can get them to see that something truly

great resides in them. Let’s give them one place that is

positive, and let’s believe in them to the extent that…in

spite of the challenges and complexities of their home

context…they start to believe in themselves.”

Dr Chris Sarra, 2007

Module 2

Responding to mobility: A whole school approach

The Let’s Stay Put project

An overview of Module 2Responding to mobility: A whole

school approach• Responding to mobility through the Let’s Stay Put

project• The impact of mobility• Responding to mobility through an additional

resource• Responding to mobility through whole school and

community awareness• Supporting literacy and numeracy learning

How has the LSP project addressed issues of student mobility?

• Develop a whole school approach – this is critical• Support the development of a deep understanding

about mobility in the school – particularly mobility amongst Indigenous students

• Trial a resource: ‘MST’ in the school• Develop ‘explicit’ approaches to teaching and

learning of mobile students, particularly literacy and numeracy teaching.

Addressing mobility: Its impact

• School administration: time factor• Non-mobile students: achievement factor

(significantly lower test scores in schools with high mobility rates)

• School budgets: fiscal factor (Rumberger, 2003)

• Classrooms: ‘chaos’ factor

The ‘chaos’ factor: What teachers told us

What happens now...Before arrival in class• Rarely get any notice of arrival• At best – very short notice• Appears at class door with Deputy Principal/

Principal/Teacher Aide• May get some basic information on first day – more

likely in the first few weeks

Addressing mobility through an additional resource

Mobility Support Teacher• Teacher• Position description loosely based on UK

Mobility Induction Worker• Employed as 0.5 or fulltime • Must have flexibility in timetable

Addressing mobility: Role of the MST• Support for schools and students and their families.• Focus on improved transitions for mobile students

– Building belonging for new students– Building school and teacher capacity

• Orderly process for enrolment• Support the timely assessment of learning needs• Support classroom teachers work with mobile students

– Foster community partnerships: particularly with Indigenous communities

• Focus on spreading the message of ‘staying put’ for one year to improve learning outcomes

• Support mobile students – especially those at risk (multiple movers)

Addressing mobility:Evidence the MST role works

School 1• “Amazing impact - it’s no big

deal now to get new kids”• Admin can deal with/attend to

strategic planning • “High impact” • “Much less tense”• Process of testing benefits

everyone• Transitions seem to be more

successful and quicker• Overwhelmingly positive

School 2• Students appear less stressed when

entering classroom• Timely dissemination of data• Class placement are more considered• Encouraged people to talk about

mobility• Improved quality of information to

teachers• We can do something to meet the

needs of mobile students rather than it is out of our control

• “A godsend”• Structured procedures

Addressing mobility through whole school community awareness…

School Leadership• Lead a culture of ‘high expectations’ for mobile

Indigenous students• Instigate standardised enrolment procedure(s)• Build a culture of belonging• Promote deprivatisation of teacher practice – enable

work of the Mobility Support Teacher

Addressing mobility through whole school community awareness

Community Engagement• Ensure community leaders engagement with project• Develop partnerships/ dialogue with key feeder

schools• Inter-agency collaboration – housing/family/child

safety – to promote stability message• Target the development of relationships with mobile

Indigenous families

Addressing mobility: whole school community awareness

Teacher Professional Development• Ensure ‘high expectations’ for mobile Indigenous

students• Engage with ‘explicit pedagogies’ for planning• Develop curriculum planning that considers potential

new arrivals/gaps in learning• Engage with family: ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors• Encourage sense of belonging: build relationships

Whole School Literacy and Numeracy for Mobility

• Teachers (and/or other staff) need to enact strategies for

quickly and effectively diagnosing, for gathering knowledge of,

the literate/numerate repertoires that students bring with them

when they enter our classrooms

– educators need diagnostic and assessment tools to do so

• It will give teachers a ‘baseline’, knowledge of the

individual and her/his literacy/numeracy repertoire and

future learning needs, from which to work

Diagnostic Assessment

• 1st step - consider purpose of assessment:– reporting & monitoring– school /system or child/parent– inform classroom practice - if so, how?

Diagnostic Assessment:Psycholinguistic Paradigm

Reading AssessmentChecking:• Phonic knowledge and

skills• Phonological subskills• Sight vocabulary• Comprehension• Fluency

Writing AssessmentChecking:• Handwriting• Spelling skills and

strategies• Writing strategies

Diagnostic Assessment Socio-Cultural Paradigm

• Does the assessment account for the array of literate/numerate practices acquired by the student from family and community life? For example, cultural and linguistic diversity. That is, does it ‘capture’ what they do bring by way of resources?

• Does the assessment account for the linguistic/numeric resources of the student – both those valued by school and those not typically valued by school? That is, does it ‘catch’ them being successful literate/numerate subjects?(see Comber et al., 2001)

• Is the choice of knowledge and skills selected for assessment tasks such that it ensures equity for all students? That is, that assessment does not privilege one group to the exclusion of others.

• Teachers should consider the following:• The cultural specificity of how the

assessment task is framed• The linguistic codes and conventions

of the assessment• The cultural specificity of content

knowledge (Luke et al., 2002, pp. 12-13; Klenowski, 2009)

Oral Language Assessment

• Conduct a staff audit – who has undertaken the Indigenous Bandscales Training in the school? How can these staff be utilised to develop strategies/a plan around the oral language assessment of mobile students / of mobile Indigenous students?

• Schools can access and make use of experts e.g., ISSU staff.

Building Belonging

• “Research has shown that students who report high levels of school connectedness also report lower levels of emotional distress, violence, suicide attempts, and drug use.” (Blum & Libbey, 2004, p 231)

• “Student welfare and appropriate support was rated by teachers as the most important issue impacting on learning outcomes for students experiencing high levels of mobility.” (DEST & DoD, 2002, p 38)

Module 3

Classroom responses to mobility

A resource from the Let’s Stay Put project

An overview of Module 3: Classroom response to mobility

• Supporting mobile students – ‘What would you do? Scenarios’ (additional resource located on the Let’s Stay Put website)

• Learning achievement and mobile students• What works: Research findings from the Let’s

Stay Put project

What would you do?

• Read the scenario• Consider possible needs for this student and

ways you would accommodate him/her in your classroom.

• On the bottom of the sheet note your thoughts.

Mobility, attendance, engagement, learning achievement

• There exists a critical nexus – that of the interrelationship between mobility, attendance, engagement and learning achievement.

What Do We Know About Achievement for Mobile Students

• Student mobility has often been linked with student achievement in research literature (see Offenberg, 2004; Osher , Morrison& Bailey, 2003; Strand, 2002; Alexander et al, 1996)

• Some research suggests that mobile students have a net effect on the continuity of the educational teaching program that impacts all in the classroom (see Simons et al, 2007)

What Do We Know About Achievement for Mobile Students?

• DEST & DoD (2002) research reported that:– high levels of mobility compound other

factors (such as social and emotional concerns or an existing learning difficulty) that have a negative impact on learning outcomes

– student learning has an inverse relationship with mobility

– the higher the mobility the less likely that learning at age appropriate levels is expected to occur

What works: Research findings from the Let’s Stay Put project

• Data collected have identified what works in highly mobile contexts.

• Data sources– Interviews with teachers– Interviews with principals– Profiles of mobile students– Profiles of non-mobile students– Surveys of students

What works: Building belonging

• “Research has shown that students who report high levels of school connectedness also report lower levels of emotional distress, violence, suicide attempts, and drug use.” (Blum & Libbey, 2004, p 231)

What works: Teacher knowledge of mobility

Ask yourself…• What do I know about the schooling history of

each student?

• What strategies can I utilise to gather this data?

What works: Planning for mobility

• How is my knowledge (of students’ schooling histories) reflected in my planning?

• How will this be visible in the first week of the school year?

• In what ways will my long term planning reflect this context

What works: Overcoming deficit assumptions

“For mobile students, considerable learning has been in the context of ‘somewhere else’, and not in the community or school in which they are currently located. Although it would be very easy for ‘gaps’ in knowledge to be seen as deficits or deficiencies, it is more productive for teachers to recognise that mobile students may have different prior knowledges and different perspectives to the classroom…this diversity can be used as a resource for extending the knowledge of other children about different perspectives and experiences.” (Henderson, 2008, p198)

Addressing high mobility: ‘explicit’ approaches

• The ACTIVELY EXPLICIT classroom– Classroom organisation VISIBLE and consistent

across school– Immediate accommodation for range of learner

levels

Explicit teaching and learning for mobile communities

• Teachers need to specifically articulate what has to be learnt and what has been learnt. (Comber et al, 2001)

• Implicit approaches are problematic in that they often leave the children to ‘guess’ or ‘catch on to by chance’ what aspects of literacy are the focus of the lesson. (see Bull & Anstey, 2003; Comber et al, 2001; Edward-Groves, 1998; Freebody, Luke & Gunn, 1995)

What works: Team teaching

• Team teaching provides opportunities for

– Spending time with arriving students and families– Timely assessment of learning needs

What works: Prepare in advance

• Learning packets– Essential resources ie pencil, notebook etc– Homework sheet

• A buddy system• Welcome pack:

– Orientating activities (social and academic)– Important information for parent/child– Invitation to family participate in class activities

What works: Facilitate arrival

• Assign a buddy• Add student to classroom charts eg birthday,

class duties• Activities to introduce student in non-

confronting ways• Take time to talk with the student in their first

days 1:1

What works: Monitor and track

• Review placement in groups• Obtain academic / health / behaviour support

if needed• Carefully monitor settling in• Consult with child and family• Keep open lines of communication

What works: Prepare for exits

• Class letters

• Good-bye book

• Published work samples

• Letter to new school

What works: Sharing examples of best practice

• Create a school resource detailing best practice.• Contribute an example of what is currently being done to ensure

students are included and engaged.– In paper or electronic form– Should be added to over time– e.g. Keep a class learning journal so that new students can read

through and know what has happened prior to their arrival. Teacher and student can discuss the work and develop a plan to ensure the new arrival has a firm understanding of the work expected. This also benefits students with attendance gaps. (From interview with teacher at Kelso SS)

Return to scenarios

• Read your original response• Consider any additions or changes you would

make to your response

• Discuss these with your group

“The most important place in our whole education department, regardless of how important the principal, the district and central office people might think they are; the most important place is where the teacher stares the child in the face. In that place, if the teacher believes the child will learn….then the child will learn!”

(Sarra, 2007)

Summary: Addressing mobility• Develop clear understanding of reasons: approach mobility

positively• Develop a whole school approach in responding to mobility• New approaches to mobile students

– MST– More formalised enrolment– Early advice for teachers

• Developing explicit classrooms– Organisation– Teaching program– Articulated to parents and wider school community

Addressing mobility: The challenge “The challenge is to be able to provide learning experiences for residentially-stable students who have been in the classroom since the beginning of the school year, yet to cater simultaneously for those who are newly arrived … In equity terms, it would no longer seem appropriate to expect [mobile] students will simply ‘fit in’ to the curriculum already on offer. Curriculum and pedagogy have to be designed with all students in mind.” (see Henderson, 2006)

ReferencesAlexander, K. L., Entwisle, D., & Dauber, S. L. (1996). Children in Motion: School Transfers and Elementary

School Performance. The Journal of Educational Research, 90, 3-12.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006). Basic Community Profile 2006. Retrieved from http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au.

Blum, R., & Libbey, H., (2004). Executive summary.(school connectedness). Journal of School Health 74. (7), 231-232.

Bull, G., & Anstey, M. (2003) The literacy lexicon (2nd ed.) New South Wales: Pearson Education Australia.

Comber, B., Badger, L., Barnett, J., Nixon, H., Prince, S., & Pitt, J. (2001). Socio-economically disadvantaged students and the development of literacies in school. Adelaide, Australia: University of South Australia.

Department of Defence, & Department of Education, Science and Training. (2002). Changing schools: Its impact on student learning. Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia.

Department for Education and Skills (2003). Managing pupil mobility: Guidance. Retrieved from http://www.education.gov.ui/publications/standard/publicationdetail/page1/DfES%200780%20200

Dobson, J., Henthorne, K., &Lynas, Z. (2000). Pupil Mobility in Schools: Final Report: Migration Research Unit, University College.

References continued…Edwards-Groves, C.J. (1998). The Reconceptualisation of Classroom Events as Structured Lessons:

Documenting Changing the Teaching of Literacy in the Primary School. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Griffith University

Freebody, P., Ludwig, C., & Gunn, S. (1995). Everyday literacy practices in and out of schools in low socio-economic urban communities. Brisbane: Centre for Literacy Education Research.

Henderson, R. (2006). Student mobility: issues and pedagogical implications for literacy educators. In: 2006 AATE/ALEA National Conference: Voices, Vibes, Visions, 8-11 July 2006, Darwin, Australia.

Henderson, R. (2008). Mobilising multiliteracies: Pedagogy for mobile students. In A. Healy (Ed). Multiliteracies and diversity in education. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp 168-201

Klenowski, Valentina (2009) Australian Indigenous students: addressing equity issues in assessment. Teaching Education, 20 (1), 77-93.

Luke, A., Land, R., Christie, P., & Kolatsis, A. (2002). Standard Australian English and language Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Students. Brisbane: Indigenous Education Consultative Board.

McAndrew, E., & Power, C. (2003). The role of the induction mentor: An evaluation. London: Department for Education and Skills.

References continuedOffenberg, R. M. (2004). Inferring Adequate Yearly Progress of Schools from Student Achievement in

Highly Mobile Communities. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 9(4), 337-355.

Osher, D., Morrison, G., & Bailey, W. (2003). Exploring the Relationship Between Student Mobility and Dropout Among Students with Emotional and Behavioural Disorders. Journal of Negro Education, 72(1),79-96.

Prout, S. (2008). On the move? Indigenous temporary mobility practices in Australia. CAEPR Working Paper No. 48. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra. Available from: http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/working.php.

Rumberger, R. (2003). The causes and consequences of student mobility. Journal of Negro Education, 72(1), 6-21.

Sarra, C. (2007). The role of schools in shaping behaviour. Paper presented at the Cape York Leadership Institute Conference, Cairns 26th June, 2007.

Simons, R., Bampton, M., Findlay, A. & Dempster, A. (2007). Student Mobility, Attendance, and Student Achievement: The Power of Implementing a Unique Student Identifier (USI). Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference.

Strand, S. (2002). Pupil Mobility, Attainment and Progress During Key Stage 1: A Study in Cautious Interpretation. British Education Research Journal, 28(1), 63-78.