Community Connections
Students in Lightning Ridge lit a spark in this teacher, now he‘s helping change rural education for all
Professor Philip Roberts keeps a picture from his former Lightning Ridge Central School students on his desk. They signed it before he left teaching to move into research, so that he could begin to shape on a broader level the way rural education is perceived, delivered and communicated about.
And no matter where alluring research grants or offers try to take him, it’s the students at Lightning Ridge, Walgett and beyond that keep his purpose steady.
“I'm still trying to answer the questions that students used to ask me when I started my teaching career: what has this got to do with me? And how is this going to help me? I never had a good answer, and I've been trying to work on one ever since,” Phil says.
Starting his career as a teacher, Phil worked in schools across Northwestern New South Wales for 13 years. He loved the work but found that he kept running up against the same problems.
“From very early on I thought…something here doesn’t make sense. Staff were constantly coming and going and the curriculum didn’t account for rural kids,” Phil says.
Teaching led him to advocacy, which in turn, led him to research. Before long he began advocating with the NSW Teachers Federation, before moving to the º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ in 2009 to work on research fulltime.
“The politics of advocacy wasn't for me, but the evidence that the politics was based on was,” Phil says.
Now, over a 25-year research career, Phil has completed over 90 reports, papers and consultations on rural and regional education, working with schools and governments across NSW, Victoria and South Australia. As well as collaborating with international partners in New Zealand, China and Sweden.
Regularly published in The Sydney Morning Herald, and , his papers include: rural education disadvantage isn’t inherent, we create it through inequitable structures and rural kids are let down by standardised education, designed for urban schools.
At its core, his research centres two key focus areas – students and teachers. Understanding the meaning of “rural” beyond geographical location, is where both begin.
“The culture, the lifestyle, the knowledge, the way people dress, how they speak, what they value, how they live their lives – are all unique to the community,” Phil says.
In Australia, around 40 percent of schools are considered rural or regional, but many teachers originate from metro areas.
“We need to prepare teachers to recognise what exists in place. There are strategies they can use to develop a sense of belonging and build relationships within the community, so that they don’t feel like outsiders in a new culture,” Phil says.
Then, there’s the students and their central question – what does this mean for me?
“When we use a standardised curriculum to teach rural kids, they disconnect,” Phil says.
“When you start with the curriculum and try to give it to the kids, it becomes a sort of game of trying to motivate and control that doesn't actually work. If you start with the kids, the local knowledge, and what they come with, and connect that with the curriculum, that’s what works.”
While literacy and numeracy and key concepts in subjects like science are universal and each are crucial for students to thrive in a modern, connected world, application and contextualisation is where learning lies.
National standardised testing and curriculum that is designed for the urban majority can be unrelatable, and at its worst, inequitable. Try interpreting a train timetable if you’ve never seen a train or describing a day at the beach when you’ve never been to one. If you’re using a flashcard to teach letters, but the child doesn’t know the picture on the flashcard, will this resource serve them?
“Connecting rural knowledge to curriculum isn’t unscientific. Like any profession, context is the important mitigating factor for any professional work,” Phil says.
“Consider how we view health. I hope that my doctor is providing evidence-based practices and procedures, but a doctor is also going to recognise contextual variables in each individual and factors like access to healthcare and cultural variables in relationship building, to get you the health information you need.
“Science is pretty universal, right? But when you’re teaching scientific principles, you do so using application. In a rural area, that application can be relevant to the local context, which in some places, could be agriculture, in others, mining, environmental sciences, even fishing.”
And these principles are brought to life at º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ. Phil is proud to contribute to teaching and learning in initiatives that put his 25 years of research into practice – with incredible feedback from teachers, school-leaders and policymakers alike.
º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ is also the only university to offer a dedicated unit in the Master of Teaching courses with a focus on rural and regional education and a dedicated microcredential – Professional Certificates for teachers which can be stacked to earn a masters degree.
Phil consulted on the design and now delivers, the Professional Certificate in Rural and Regional Education, alongside his º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ colleagues Matthew Brown and Amy Smith who run the microcredential course. The project not only has the support of the NSW Department of Education, but involved them in its design. The department also covers the gap fees, so their teachers can upskill at no cost.
“The feedback has been fantastic. A lot of our students might be working with their principal or their assistant principal for the assessments, so it's been building that that expertise across the system,” Phil says.
It’s this work, and the fact that he’s supported over 20 PhD students and early career researchers, that Phil was recently recognised at the National Rural and Regional Education Conference (NRREC), winning an individual award in recognition of “significant contribution to the Australian RRR education discourse”. The microcredential also received an award on the night in acknowledgement of its impact for the sector.
“To receive this recognition from my peers is very humbling,” Phil says.
“The strength of our relationships with state and federal governments, the way the teachers have been responding to our research, and the chance to make positive changes have been a highlight.”