Building the Evidence Base for Improved STEM Learning
Brookman Primary School
An independent public school located 12km from Perth in the southern suburb
of Langford. With 328 students, Brookman
has a diverse cultural mix, including one-third
of students having English as an additional
language. Over 30 nationalities create a multi-cultural blend within the school community.
-
2018
WA Primary School of the Year -
2018 - 2019 - 2020
"Leadership Excellence Award" in the Governor's School STEM Awards -
Other Acknowledgements
Teacher Development School (TDS) in STE+AM -
WA Science Hall of Fame
Brookman Primary School has been involved in STEM for the last five years and gained acknowledgement for its leadership in STE+AM across the metropolitan area by being named 2018 WA Primary School of the Year (WA Department of Education, 2018) and winner of the 2018, 2019 and 2020 “Leadership Excellence Award” in the Governor’s School STEM Awards. Brookman has now been inducted into the STEM ‘Hall of Fame’!
Brookman PS is one of six primary schools in the state education system to become a Teacher Development School (TDS) in STE+AM in the primary sector (Brookman PS, 2021). Information Communication Technologies are of a high standard throughout the school, with all classrooms having interactive whiteboards, access to iPads, and a comprehensive computer laboratory.
A clear indication of the school’s ethos and why STEM is central to their being can be found on the school’s website, where it states:
"In future-proofing student skills in discovery and innovation, all classes from Kindergarten to Year 6 have project-based STE+AM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics) activities embedded into their teaching programs. These projects foster skill development in creativity, independent thinking, critical analysis, problem-solving, teamwork and communication; skills required in high-performing countries around the world."
What is distinctive about the school in relation to pedagogy, assessment, curriculum and equity?
PEDAGOGY
Current practice and planned changes
The school’s staff have developed a broad understanding around the expectation of STEM. There is an expectation that staff engage in a minimum of one STEM project every term with their class and provide feedback to others at a sharing session towards the end of each term. Designated time is set aside at each of these staff meetings as a sharing session for STEM; the idea being that teachers learn from teachers, and regardless of what the activity is, it can sometimes be adapted to match the context of another class. This is a strategy endorsed by the staff for its efficacy, as is noted by Teacher 1:
“Every teacher in the school brings in a STEM project that they have been doing throughout the term; we share, and we communicate, and collaborate ... such a great idea.”
This was initiated by the principal, Hans Geers, following research that asserts that professional sharing raises standards. Sharing is also seen as an accountability mechanism for staff and ensures they stay true to the school’s STEM objectives, further supported by Teacher 3:
“... We have a sharing session at the end of each term at our staff meeting: Sharing what we’ve done in STEM each term, showing ideas, showing the final project, talking about the highs and the lows. One, it keeps us accountable. Two, it’s so inspiring to see what other teachers are doing. We’ve actually got to the point now where even our specialist teachers are joining in. This means Music, Science, and Visual Arts are all combining in the planning. They all work together with their planning so that they’re doing STEM projects within their areas as well. We have a massive range of ideas that have been shared at the end of each term to inspire us for the next term. It’s really enriching.“
Teacher 3 made mention of the way that adopting a STEM-based approach opened pedagogical opportunities for her and collaborative opportunities for her students:
“I use project-based learning. I had been exposed to that previously, but when I came here, I really saw how rich this program could be and how successful STEM or STEAM can be for the students if implemented properly ... We started doing two or three projects each term.
I also did a full term-based project that we did with my colleague. We adapted from just being within our own classroom and having our own pair of students. Everyone knew each other; everyone was really comfortable. We then swapped it out and put my students with students from next door, out of their comfort zone. It opened up whole new opportunities.”
ASSESSMENT AND REPORTING
Current practice and planned changes
The initial focus for STEM at the school has not been around assessment. The Leadership team felt that if it became too assessment-focused, the creativity in the STEM projects would be stifled. As the staff have become more comfortable with STEM and STEAM projects, they have been able to clearly identify assessment points across those learning areas subsumed into STEM, which arise from the projects.
This positioning of assessment at the school is categorically backed by Hans. His belief is that schools, in general, need to be cautious not to become too assessment-focused. He believes that, for primary school STEM, the focus needs to be clearly on creativity, independent thinking, critical analysis, problem-solving, teamwork and communication; that those skill sets are relevant to any workforce, anywhere, any time.
If schools can build these skills into every primary school student before they enter high school, they will be prepared to deepen their use of higher order thinking skills and allow them to enter into areas such as science, maths and technology.
Hans stated that a major objective for Brookman Primary School is giving the students the understanding that it’s okay to fail, building resilience and reflective practices so that they can look at a task, break it down, and improve it in the future.
To find out more about the school's assessment and reporting practices, download the complete case study report here.
CURRICULUM
Current practice and planned changes
The school’s science teacher collaborates with staff and produces notes each term describing what is happening in each year group, plus some ideas that teachers might use in STEM including pedagogical tips. The notes are called Science in a Nutshell.
The science teacher, visual arts and performing arts teachers also meet. Records of their meetings note how science and STEM principles can be used across Visual Arts, Performing Arts and Science, focusing on STEAM, rather than just STEM. One of the pedagogical decisions made is to provide teachers with the ‘permission’ to not always be a teacher, but to adopt the role of a facilitator. They are encouraged to adopt an inquiry-based approach to the learning, without abrogating the central need for explicit instruction when required. Teacher 4 explained:
“... Being a facilitator in the classroom rather than a director. Rather than saying this is how you can do it, and this is the outcome that you will get, pose questions to children. Changing the way that we work with children and facilitate that discussion, posing the questions and guiding them to perhaps find solutions, but not necessarily always telling them the solution. I think there is still a bit of misconception out there: that we don’t have to tell them everything doesn’t mean that we don’t still explicitly teach Maths or English or HASS, it just means we also provide them with opportunities for open-ended tasks.”
EQUITY
Current practice and planned changes
Hans commented that, years ago, when he began at the school, it was a challenging environment with poor student engagement, poor student achievement, and some teaching and learning was ‘dumbed down’ to the lowest common denominator.
Since then, evidence-based practices in literacy and numeracy have been instituted to change the culture. Change management processes were used to alter existing processes and the school community was accepting of the challenge. Since then, the school has initiated extension programs in Mathematics, extension programs in STEM called the Genius Hour, and a more recent extension program happening in Years 4 and 5 called Techno Geniuses, a program where the students are trained to be able to support others with technology.
A significant number of the school’s students struggled in literacy and numeracy, which can be partially attributed to having a clientele from over 30 different cultural backgrounds, including Indigenous students, who make up 26% of the school population (ACARA, 2021, March 18). Although attendance remains an issue, on days when students know that STEM Projects are happening, the school has very high attendance level. Teachers offer a differentiated curriculum, whereby each teacher differentiates their curriculum in literacy and numeracy based on need.
What role has leadership played in the school's STEM journey?
The leadership team has played a vital role in the school’s STEM journey. From the outset, STEM was viewed as a way in which to provide a cohesive, positive way forward and was introduced as a shared experience.
The impetus started with the principal, supported by the leadership team; all staff members were deliberately given appropriate and adequate PL to adopt STEM into their repertoire. Hans is cognisant of the staff in general leading the STEM agenda; therefore, he attempts to create an environment that encourages them to do so.
One element of Hans’s leadership is his belief the principal should be a conspicuous leader of a school agenda and giving credibility and gravitas to any worthwhile PL by being absolutely invested in it and attending it himself. He talked fulsomely about the perils of principals not being involved:
“However, all too often I’m finding principals and deputies are not attending professional development. They’re sending a teacher, or teachers, and hoping they’ll pick up the mantle. What they fail to realise is that leaders need to lead, and leaders hold the purse strings to resources. So when you hold the purse strings, that slows down professional development or monitors [hinders] the rate of professional development that’s required. It also enhances, or takes, or detracts from the resources available to staff and the speed with which it can be implemented.
Quite often they’ll expect something to be implemented, but do not resource it either financially or in other resources such as human resources, and so on. When I talk about teachers getting back to their schools and grabbing a couple of teacher relief days to in-service their own staff they go “Oh, we don’t have the money for that”. There is a dichotomy and a disconnect between Admin and what is really required at times.”
SYSTEMIC LEADERSHIP
Hans is an extremely entrepreneurial principal and has leveraged the reputation he garnered for the school’s work to attract funding. He further parlays this reputation in being able to loan his own, and the expertise of his staff, to other schools. This has the advantage of further refining the skills of the teachers in his school, while also recognising their expertise and commitment to the program. This recognition of the teachers can only serve to enhance their resolve to quality outputs in STEM.
Further, Hans trades this expertise into other schools in order to benefit from the expertise residing in that school; for example, using another school’s capacity with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to ameliorate Brookman’s perceived need to make this more of a focus. The school is increasingly engaging with external agencies to improve opportunities for students in activities that link to capabilities and STEM.
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
There is no doubt that the staff understands Hans’s commitment to the STEM agenda developed at the school. However, it seems that it is not just an understanding of it but that, on the whole, they share that vision with him.
He is an enthusiastic voice for STEM education, not only in that it has become a unifying principle in the school, but also acknowledging the need for STEM thinking, or 21st century skills, for the students to be able to be participants and contributors in the future.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
It is recognised at the school that some parents in the school community do not see the importance of education. To encourage parental and community engagement, the school has instituted opportunities for parent engagement, such as school barbecues and other social events.
In terms of forging an understanding of STEM between the school and the parents, the school makes STEM learning core to events in their parents’ evenings. At the parents’ evening, each classroom has to showcase a STEM activity that the children will lead their parents through on the night. The school newsletter is also used to try to break the conception in the community, often fuelled by what is portrayed by the media, that STEM is all about robotics. The school is attempting to relay the message that in fact, STEM is about the cultivation of skills and dispositions. This is further supported by a section on the school website which is titled “Exploring STEM at home” and the school’s Instagram page.
The school also tries to create stronger links between itself and the local high school using STEM.
VISIONARY AND SUPPORTIVE LEADERSHIP
As noted, the principal saw STEM as a powerful vehicle for bringing some cohesion to the school community, by giving it a common focus and provided a way to address many of the pressing issues in the school.
Since its inception, the whole tone of the school, and how it is seen in the local community, has changed. It has been recognised both state- and Australia-wide as being innovative and progressive. Much of this can be attributed to the principal adopting a pragmatic approach to the context of the school, and not accepting that context to be a limitation, rather viewing it as a challenge. He expects that the members of his staff will also embrace the project-based nature of STEM and contribute towards the growing culture of an expectation of achievement and engagement
DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP
Brookman is a school with a principal and two deputy principals and has, for the past twelve years, run a Curriculum Leadership Team. This team sets the agenda and runs all of the staff meetings, in addition to the teacher development days. Initially, this was activated by invitation to individuals, but now is open to anyone who wishes to be involved.
The Principal acknowledges that he is not in the classroom, and therefore needs to gain the views of staff to keep abreast of what is happening at the classroom level. To give the staff the opportunity to talk about more specific areas with teachers in their year groups, they meet in their phases of learning groups. Again, the principal does not lead these discussions. One of the deputies runs the middle and upper school cohort meetings, and the other runs the early childhood cohort meeting.
" We've always tried to future proof here; we rarely send one person to a development session ... We will send a team of two, or three, or four."
MANAGEMENT
There is an acknowledgment by teachers of the efficacy of the style of management adopted in the school. Anecdotal comments and the general perception gained by researchers involved in this case study indicate that the teachers felt comfortable with the structures and freedoms afforded by the administration team in facilitating the STEM agenda. Teacher 3 stated:
“We are incredibly lucky that we have an admin team who are constantly reflecting on the needs of our students and working out the best way to achieve that. For this reason, our school has been through a lot of change. They’ve had a lot of different approaches. They’ve been part of a lot of different innovation units and they’ve been through that build-up; have an idea, implement it, small, feed it through the whole school ... And now we’re at the stage with STEM where we are super confident: we’re a STEM Teacher Development School and we’re sharing it with other schools. They are amazing in recognising what’s coming up, what changes will be needed to be made, and encouraging the team to develop.”
Want to learn more about this school's STEM journey?
Download the complete case study report to read the full story.
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© 2021 Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment, unless otherwise indicated.
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Licensed third-party content (images):
- All images © 2020 Brookman Primary School. CC BY-NC 4.0
Licensed third-party content (text):
- Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2021). My School: Brookman Primary School. © 2021, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
- Department of Education, Western Australia. (2017). Exploring STEM at home: Science, technology, engineering and mathematics. © 2017 Department of Education, Western Australia. CC BY 4.0
- Government of Western Australia, Department of Education. (2018). WA Primary School of the Year: Brookman Primary School. © 2018 State of Western Australia, Department of Education. CC BY 4.0
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