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Spotlight on improving educational outcomes: an interview with Stuart McNaughton

Sarah Boyd
Abstract: 

A series in which we ask a leading researcher to distil three key ideas from their work over the years.

Journal issue: 

Spotlight on improving educational outcomes:

an interview with Stuart McNaughton

Sarah Boyd

Stuart McNaughton concedes he was probably an annoying student.

“I got to the end of my primary teacher training and thought, ‘We must know more than we’ve been taught.’ It seemed as if people were just flying by the seat of their pants. I thought there had to be more precision, more technical understanding that we could apply to what we were doing.”

An emphasis then was on being empathetic towards students. It didn’t seem nearly enough. So, already armed with a psychology degree, he veered away from the classroom and into research, pursuing a Masters in education and then a PhD in developmental psychology and behavioural analysis.

He has gone on to forge a career in educational research which has taken him back into the classroom, where the quest continues to answer the questions that bothered him as a young teacher trainee. Those questions are all to do with understanding what teachers do and how they can do it better.

Stuart McNaughton is now Professor of Education and Director of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at the University of Auckland. Since 1998 he has been deeply involved with schools in south Auckland, working with teachers and the community to improve educational outcomes. The success of the venture increased the demand for it, and he now works with West Coast schools as well.

His defining approach is one of optimism—so much so that it will be the subject of his next book.

“The theoretical tradition I work in almost requires me to be an optimist. You can’t be a developmental psychologist and not be an optimist. I have ongoing arguments with those of my colleagues who are sociologists and who see the structural inequalities and the little you can do to change that because it is part of the fabric of society. Whereas I believe in some deeply theoretically held way that if you can discover the way to do things, you can make a difference to children and their communities.”

The optimistic approach underscores one of the key messages of his research: the need to recognise that families are resourceful—full of resources that teachers and schools can tap.

That view was formed through extensive research he has carried out on family literacy practices in different communities—”trying to understand the relationship between what happens in those families and the literacy that is required in practice in the classroom”.

He bristles if he hears teachers say that some children start school without language.

“They are patently wrong and if you believe that, you don’t look at what the kids actually have. All you can see is the absence of something.”

Turn that on its head, and teachers can capitalise on the resources that families do have. And it means if teachers are trying to change practices in the home, they can do it in a way that is respectful of what is there already.

His work in this area has been influential in New Zealand and he thinks teachers have got better at valuing the resources available in families and communities. He does not underestimate the hard task for teachers confronted with children from a wide range of different backgrounds.

“But if, generically, you know that kids will be coming to school with rich family backgrounds and experiences, it helps to avoid reaching for stereotypes that label these kids as deficient.”

He is keen to move beyond the easy catch-cry that teachers make a difference, to the hard fact that it is possible for teachers and schools to be more effective than they are. It’s another key message from his work.

“We know what some of the components are that make well functioning schools,” he says, ticking off on his fingers examples such as teachers having a deep knowledge of content areas, and of coherence between assessment and instructional practice. It means teachers need ongoing professional development as a core part of the job.

The tension now is that schools can end up taking on too much. “Schools have to make some harder decisions about what they will prioritise.”

The third important element for him is the match between educational research and practice, and finding a model for research that will solve the real issues in schools.

“It’s about coming out of the lab and into the schools and into families. That means you forsake a huge degree of the usual forms of scientific control for an environment that is essentially messy.”

The work his centre has done in south Auckland has seen reading comprehension rates accelerated by about half a year per year, to the point where the students perform much closer to the national average than previously.

“But it is really complex and it is really hard for the teachers. It is not a panacea. It is resource-intensive in the sense of the commitment of professional time and analysis.”

He believes educational research is seriously underfunded in New Zealand, and its difficulties underestimated. But—that optimistic bent again—he believes it holds the key to improving outcomes for students. It goes back to those questions the young teacher trainee asked—how to understand and map what teachers do.

“I think we need to have a model of the way we do research in schools—a research and development model that requires ongoing collaboration between teachers and researchers. We have to be able to say to the education community, and to the scientific community, that you can demonstrate something, that you have evidence that is believable. It is very complex.”

Three key messages:

•&&&&Recognise that families are resourceful—full of resources that teachers can capitalise on.

•&&&&We know there are ways for teachers and schools to be more effective in the way they do things.

•&&&&We need a better model for educational research, a science of how schools work and how to improve them.

Sarah Boyd is Communications Manager at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

Email: sarah.boyd@nzcer.org.nz