This document defines middle years education as grades 6-9 and focuses on junior secondary grades 7-10. It discusses that middle years education aims to meet the unique developmental needs of early adolescents through intentional teaching practices. While students have various characteristics and challenges during this time, the document emphasizes that teacher quality has the greatest influence on student outcomes and engagement. It provides an overview of research findings regarding productive pedagogies and practices that can better support middle years learners.

1. Defining Middle Years

2. Middle Years and Junior Secondary
 This course is a little bit anomalous – a course about
middle years in a Graduate Diploma of Secondary
Education program
 I have taught in a dedicated Middle Years program at
UQ, but will focus on the Junior Secondary grades (7-10)
in this course
 Middle Years is more typically defined as Years 6-9

3. Characteristics of Learners and
Teachers
 One thing to remember throughout this course:
 „…middle schooling effectiveness is most influenced by
teacher quality and instructional effectiveness, and to a
much lesser degree by student compositional
characteristics (such as learning difficulties and disruptive
behaviours) and structural arrangements (such as
dedicated middle schools).‟ (Pendergast and Bahr, pp.
14-15)
 While we will spend some time looking at students,
teachers are the key – that‟s you!

4. Nothing New Under The Sun
 Ecclesiastes 1:9 King James Version (KJV)
 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be done: and there
is no new thing under the sun.
 Ecclesiastes 1:9 New International Version (NIV)
 What has been will be again, what has been done will be
done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
 King Solomon, around 950 BC

5. Something New Under The Sun
Education in the past Education now and in the
 Industrial age future
 Primarily knowledge workers
 Prepared students for
in service-based economies
industrial age
 Simple repetitive tasks
employment
automated (robots)
 Ability to synthesize
 Punctuality information, solve
 Obedience problems, think
laterally, innovate
 Rote tasks  Technology
convergence, globalisation,
environment

6. Middle Years
 Middle Years education is “an intentional approach to
teaching and learning in the middle years that meets the
unique developmental and educational imperatives of
middle years students within the context of
contemporary society” (MYSA, 2010)

7. The Research Base (in part)
 Australian research is based (in part) on the American
experience (e.g., Carnegie Council on Adolescent
Development) (Jackson & Davis, 2000)
 Major Australian Studies:
 From Alienation to Engagement (1996)
 Shaping Middle Schooling in Australia (1998)
 Middle Schooling in the Middle Years (2001)
 Beyond the Middle (2002)
 Lifelong learners in the Middle Years (2005)

8. Key Findings
 Many middle years students are not engaged in their
learning because too often the tasks they are given lack
challenge and intellectual demand
 There is a need to shift teachers‟ focus to higher order
thinking and higher levels of expectation, while
maintaining nurturing and supportive classrooms
 We will discuss the „productive pedagogies‟ framework
later in the course, which tries to operationalise these
themes

9. Adolescence
 „Adolescent‟ is sometimes used as a negative
term, meaning „immature‟ – but it is appropriate for
children and young people to be still in the process of
becoming mature!
 Goal is to provide environments that help and support
them as they become more mature and capable of
independent living
 Moving from making choices for the students to helping
them develop the ability to make good choices for
themselves

10. Adolescence
 Phase one (1900s-1970s): Grand models such as G. Stanley
Hall‟s (1904) phylogenetic view of adolescence as a
developmental stage paralleling humanity‟s evolution from
savage to civilised. Essentially a deficit model
 Phase two (1980s-1990s): Focus on adolescent growth and
development linked to a focus on social influences and
social problems (e.g. teenage pregnancy, drug-
taking, anti-social behaviour). Recognises that not all
aspects of adolescence can or should be framed in terms of
deficit.
 Phase three (contemporary): Renewed focus on the middle
years; linking scientific study of adolescence with policy
development and practitioner and community concerns.

11. Needs of Adolescent Learners
 Identity
 Relationships
 Purpose
 Empowerment
 Success
 Rigour
 Safety

12. Matching Middle Schooling Practices
 Learner-centred
 Collaboratively organised
 Outcomes-based
 Flexibly constructed
 Ethnically aware
 Community-oriented
 Adequately resourced
 Strategically linked

13. QSRLS
 Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study:
 Classrooms provide supportive environments, but this is only
one aspect of productive pedagogy
 Intellectual quality, connectedness, and recognition of
difference are all rarer than desirable
 The best pedagogy was observed in trans-disciplinary
classes where teachers‟ lacked disciplinary models of
pedagogy
 School environment was a contributing factor, but
pedagogy was the primary contributor to student
performance

14. Some Characteristics and Challenges
 Highly peer oriented, closely linked to
 Heightened sensitivities family
 Rapid and erratic physical  Egocentric
change
 Increasing critical  Years 5/6-8/9 learning often
reasoning and application stops, slows down and sometimes goes
of abstract thought backwards (QSRLS)
processes
 Developing metacognition  Highest incidence of student
alienation, disengagement, disruptive
 Need support, guidance behaviour, boredom
and independence
 High (?) incidence of clinical
 Questioning identity and depression, eating
beliefs
disorders, delinquency

15. Where To From Here?
 This has been a very brief overview, and we will unpack
these issues in more detail in the coming weeks
 In case I haven‟t already hammered it enough, the key
message to take away is this:
Whatever the challenges, quality
teachers make all the difference