Independent Schools Queensland · Professional learning

Professional learning for teachers, about teaching.

A sixty-minute course on differentiating the educational program for students in Years 7 to 10. The audience are practising secondary teachers, which sets a high bar: anything that reads as theory they already know loses them immediately.

Client: Independent Schools Queensland
Sector: Education
Role: Learning design and development
Duration: 60 minutes
Audience: Secondary teachers, Years 7 to 10

The course title screen: Differentiating the educational program for students in Years 7 to 10, with a sixty-minute duration indicator, a start control, and a photograph of secondary students working at laptops in a classroom.

In 60 seconds

The problem: Differentiation is a concept most secondary teachers can define and fewer have a repeatable method for.
My role: Learning design and development. Editorial placeholder: Confirm role boundaries and subject-matter collaborators
Scope: Instructional design, scenario writing, interaction design and course build.
Where it got to: A sixty-minute self-paced course for teachers in ISQ member schools. Editorial placeholder: Add measurable outcome
Built with: Articulate Storyline

The situation

The learners here are practising teachers, and the subject is their own practice. That is the hardest audience configuration in professional learning, because the participant can tell within thirty seconds whether the designer has been in a classroom.

The recovered sequence shows the course dealing with that directly: it establishes the problem in the language of the classroom, gives one model, and then spends most of its length inside a single worked example.

What was actually wrong

A course about differentiation could reasonably be organised around the tiers of intervention, because that is how the literature is organised. The recovered sequence does not do that. It introduces the tiers once, then switches to a named teacher making a decision about a named student.

That is the substantive design decision. A model tells a teacher what category a student is in. A worked example shows what the teacher does on Monday, which is the actual gap.

What it looked like, and why

An introduction screen over a photograph of a chess game, with body text explaining that Australian classrooms are diverse and that teachers need to tailor instruction to a range of backgrounds, experiences and dispositions. — The premise, stated in one screen and not returned to. Professional audiences do not need the case for the topic made at length; they need the topic to start.

A screen explaining Tier 2 of a three-tier intervention model, with a pyramid diagram highlighting the middle tier and a note that approximately fifteen per cent of any cohort falls into it. — The three-tier model, with the proportion of a cohort named. Quantifying the tier is what makes it usable: a teacher can look at their class of twenty-eight and estimate the number, which a diagram alone does not let them do.

A screen showing a four-part circular diagram labelled Assess, Teach, Track and Adapt around the phrase student learning, beside a numbered instruction to assess what students already know, attributed to the Grattan Institute, 2015. — One cycle, sourced on the screen. Attributing the model where it appears rather than in a reference list matters for this audience, because a teacher deciding whether to trust an approach wants to know where it came from before they read the steps.

A scenario screen headed 'Which did Marta do?', describing a teacher's decision to include a student in a targeted reading program, beside Marta's four-point targeted teaching checklist for that student. — The worked example the course is actually built on. A named teacher, a named student, and a four-line checklist that is specific enough to copy. This is where the abstraction becomes something a participant can use on Monday.Shown small on purpose. Enlarge to read it.

Key design decisions

Spend the length on one worked example
The choice
The tier model is introduced once; the majority of the sequence follows a single teacher and student.
Why
Practising teachers can already categorise students. What they lack is a repeatable next action, and a worked example carries that better than a framework does.
Quantify the model
The choice
The tier explanation names the proportion of a cohort it applies to.
Why
A percentage lets a teacher map the model onto the class in front of them. A diagram alone does not.
Source the framework on screen
The choice
The assess, teach, track and adapt cycle carries its citation in the frame.
Why
This audience evaluates the provenance of an approach before they evaluate the approach.