What was it really like? Inside the ‘new’ VCE of 1990-1993

This essay is a follow-up to my blog post about the contentious period of introduction of the changed VCE mathematics studies in the late 1980s (www.rossturner.me/blog/a-contest-of-ideas). I have approached individuals who were directly involved as students, teachers or parents during those years. They tell an interesting story.

The contest

I’ll start by reviewing what I see as the most contentious aspects of the VCE, and the mathematics component of the VCE, as it was developed and introduced around 1990.

Satisfactory completion, and grades

First and most significant was the separation of decisions about pass/fail (ie, the award of the VCE) from decisions about levels of achievement (the grades students could use subsequently to show how well they had done). Credit for each VCE unit of study, and thus for the award of the Certificate, was based on satisfactory completion of the work requirements. That decision was made by the teacher, in accordance with the requirements as set out in each Study Design.

Investigative projects, and challenging problems

The most contentious elements of the decision about satisfactory completion of VCE mathematics units were that in every unit of mathematics, students had to undertake a mathematical investigation, and a problem-solving task. This typically required students to take greater initiative in identifying and defining key components of their work, they had to plan and implement – sometimes in cooperation with others, and often involving sourcing their own resources – and they had to develop skills in writing and presentation in order to complete these work requirements. For teachers, a major new element was that assessment criteria were established for each of the two task-types, and teachers had to learn to interpret these criteria and apply them consistently to assess student work.

Dealing with change

Some people thrive on new things, on the challenges of change, others not so much. The new VCE represented a very substantial change from what had preceded it, and everyone was caught up in one way or another in that change – students, teachers, schools, parents, the tertiary and higher education sector, employers and employer representative bodies, the textbook publishing industry.

These elements of VCE mathematics presented challenges for everyone involved:

• Students had to work in a different way, with the focus on engagement in classwork, and with an eye to documented requirements; and had to develop writing and presentation skills that were not previously as central;

• Teachers had to work in a different way, with added focus on monitoring and guiding on top of their normal teaching role, understanding and applying assessment criteria, and with the need to keep records, potentially helped by stronger whole-school approaches and collaboration among colleagues to deal with challenges; with the expectation that all students would/could be productively engaged;

• Schools had to work in a different way, to develop and promulgate consistent approaches across different classes and different subjects; to source the new resources required; and to promote and grapple with the notion that productive outcomes were available for all students whatever their abilities or disabilities or their previous school experiences;

• Parents had to learn to work with different subject names, different school expectations, and to support their daughters and sons to productively engage with the new expectations and challenges from their schooling;

• The tertiary and higher education sector had to consider their selection procedures in light of the already increasing numbers of students staying on to Year 12 and potentially seeking entry to higher and tertiary education and courses, and to deal with the increased variety in the backgrounds of those students;

• Employers had to come to grips with the challenges and opportunities presented by higher numbers of students coming out of Year 12 courses with a diverse range of skills; their representative bodies were charged with liaising between their members and the curriculum authority to ensure work-place needs were properly considered as the VCE design process progressed;

• Textbook publishers had to come to grips with the new curriculum and assessment arrangements and produce new student and teacher resources as quickly as possible.

The changes created opportunities for various political players to weigh in, use the uncertainty for political purposes, resulting in a community dialogue that was often tense and sometimes vitriolic, around issues such as educational standards, the potential for cheating, and the adequacy of resourcing for schools, teachers and students.

Some stories

While it is not usually scientific to argue from particular cases, anecdotes often hold great power to expose realities on the ground that can easily be missed when focussing only on the headlines and on the pronouncements of the most vociferous protagonists. Here are some stories about some of what was going on in classrooms, in staffrooms, and in the homes of the people directly involved in schooling at the time the VCE was developed and introduced.

Teacher professional development

Victoria’s Ministry of Education delivered its services to schools through regional offices, and through a network of School Support Centres attached to regional offices. An army of skilled and experienced teachers and other professionals was employed in those centres to provide consultancy services of various kinds directly to schools. That army of support staff formed the backbone of an extensive program of support to schools to help ready them for VCE introduction. Curriculum consultants worked closely with the curriculum developers at VCAB (the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board, responsible for developing and delivering the new VCE) to implement a state-wide professional development program. Teachers in each region came together to receive briefings on the new arrangements, and the curriculum consultants played a pivotal role in facilitating ongoing professional development of schools in their region. In many cases they liaised closely with professional bodies such as the Mathematical Association of Victoria to run further professional development activities, even establishing new branches of the MAV to extend the support, to promote collaboration among teachers, and to facilitate the development and dissemination of new support resources.

Tremendously useful resources emanated from the School Support Centres, for example advice from the Fawkner School Support Centre on how to implement and adapt the VCE to increase accessibility for students with disability (see ‘Towards Inclusive Curriculum in Maths and Science’, 1987; ‘Flexibility in the VCE’, 1992 – a collection of case studies from schools in the Fawkner School Support Centre area; ‘Working with Work Requirements … a resource for VCE teachers’, 1990, published by the Western Metropolitan Region).

Of course, these resources supplemented those developed by VCAB curriculum teams. The teams responsible for each field of study developed a comprehensive set of ‘Course Development Support Materials’ for each curriculum area that showed teachers how to devise their own specific courses based on the accredited study designs.

The activity around teacher professional development served several ends, including providing the opportunity for large numbers of teachers and curriculum consultants to develop their own professional skills. Perhaps the most significant and powerful professional development activity occurred in the context of VCAB’s assessment moderation program for the school-assessed Common Assessment Tasks (CATs). The VCE provided a centralised vehicle and pretext for mathematics teachers from all schools to meet in small groups under the leadership of expert curriculum consultants, to review and moderate assessments of the formally assessed work of their students. Teachers shared with each other the work of their students, exchanged views on the relative merits of different pieces of work, and negotiated final assessment outcomes for all students. In that way, common standards were applied across all schools, teachers and students, and teachers learned very quickly how to interpret and apply the agreed common assessment criteria.

A typical instance was described by a participant this way:

Cross-school moderation meetings for Units 3&4 mostly went well and professionally, and it was interesting to read samples randomly selected from the pile each school brought along. One exception was a private school where the consensus was that they had been rather generous in their initial grades. The school representative at one point said something like: “What do you mean this is not an A? This student wants to get into medicine, so he must get an A!”

Another teacher made this remark:

There were mixed feelings about the introduction of the VCE among teachers of mathematics in Western Victoria. In particular, the notion of Common Assessment Tasks marked against criteria and moderation were foreign to most. Having to prepare students and manage the Project and Problem-Solving tasks meant that a wider set of teaching skills was required. While some teachers embraced these changes others were quite daunted and threatened. Fortunately, the local branch of the MAV was able to hold professional learning activities to help teachers get their head around the new courses and assessment requirements. The resources and regional professional learning events provided by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board were exceptionally good. Country teachers were hungry for PD and willing to drive 1 to 2 hours to attend. Being part of a state-wide professional learning ‘movement’ was exciting and refreshing.

Impetus to develop and learn new skills

All participants in the VCE (students, teachers, schools, parents) had to develop new skills. Students had to learn new rules, and new behaviours. In mathematics, they needed to engage in problem-solving activities, and to undertake mathematical investigations, and in both cases, some form of presentation was needed, in many cases involving the production of written reports of their work. Writing? In mathematics classes? Unheard of. Their reporting efforts were based on a form of mathematical work that had previously been limited in scope and frequency but was now central to their studies. One teacher of the time recalls this:

The emphasis on applying the mathematics they were learning to solve real world problems was valued by the students, but some did not enjoy the amount of writing the reports required of them. As a teacher I personally valued student collaboration, and inappropriate collaboration became a major issue for some teachers to manage. Getting students to add appropriate acknowledgements was an ongoing additional requirement. The only time a Year 12 student has ever run into my classroom excited about an overnight breakthrough was during the VCE.

Of course, new skills were needed by teachers as well. The teacher continued:

One of the biggest challenges was learning how to apply the assessment criteria consistently and fairly. Most teachers had little experience with the formal assessment of projects or problem-solving reports. Effective time management became critical for teachers and students alike.

Another VCE Coordinator of the time provides this comment about the changes of practice they needed:

Initially we took the 'S or N' recording of satisfactory completion very tightly - my mark book grew from about 20-30 columns for the year (assignments and tests grades etc) to about 170+ columns where each textbook exercise or worksheet had a column and we scrutinised students' work to ensure that every single set question had been completed. Later we moved to one column per chapter and a global scan of workbooks.

The new challenges demanded adjustment, adaptation, and the emergence of new practices.

Student engagement

There is evidence that the opportunity for students to look for and explore connections between the maths they were learning in school, and the practical applications of those ideas and skills, led to remarkable instances of engagement and even excitement about what they were learning.

One teacher provided these remarks:

… But we did get some remarkable work, and I have a nephew and a niece who totally thrived on the opportunity to go deep in their investigations - and they are now a partner in a city accounting firm and a CEO of a defence sector company specialising in drone technology, respectively.

Early in Term 1 we were 'doing parabolas' and we posed a short task where they had to explain a context where an 'inverted U' might be an expected graphical pattern for some context. One of the boys chose basketball, with the x-axis being distance from the basket when taking a shot and the y-axis was percent success in scoring; he justified the decline from short distances as being due to extra pressure from defenders under the basket. One of the girls had the x-axis as the amount of make-up a person applies to their face and the y-axis as perceived attractiveness to observers(!)

Another view of the student perspective was expressed in this way:

My image of maths students is usually largely as ‘victims’ – always following someone else’s instructions – creativity and initiative squashed rather than valued and promoted. This era was different – I witnessed students ‘grow’ in ways I had not previously seen. One important aspect was that of student choice – given five problems, students considered all five before settling on one. This choice enhanced commitment and ownership and students often operated more out of intrinsic interest in the challenges rather than merely following instructions. Another aspect was their willingness and desire to seek assistance to acquire new understandings to apply to their chosen task. One personal anecdote and strong memory is of a neighbourhood student living nearby who became ‘hooked’ by both the project and the challenging problems. He became a regular visitor to my house and showed initiative and genuine interest in ways I had not observed previously.

Yet another perspective that combines views of parent, teacher and student was provided by a maths educator who was able to observe his two children undertake senior mathematics studies, one under the revised VCE mathematics study, and one a few years later:

As a parent who happened to also be a maths/numeracy educator who had only taught HSC mathematics in my early career and not experienced VCE, it was interesting to observe the move from the use of end-of-year exams as the key measure of a student’s performance to the use of projects and investigations in VCE maths. The oldest, Lee, was part of this innovation that Ross is describing and reflecting on, whereas the other, who studied a maths subject at Year 12, went through the next version of the iteration of VCE assessment.

As a maths educator parent, I observed how much Lee was engaging with and being challenged by this more problem-solving approach of projects and investigations. He was much more motivated and positive about doing his maths work and studies, and as a result he tried harder to understand the maths that underpinned the projects at hand. Previously he was OK about maths but did not have a lot of self-confidence or belief that he could or would do well in maths. He played the “game” of how maths is taught in school and was relatively successful – and was quite independent and happy to only seek my advice and support when confronted with something he did not understand and was really struggling with.

I was certainly impressed with the new project-based VCE assessments and was able to observe firsthand the benefits of allowing students to see maths differently from what they had been predominantly experiencing throughout secondary school. Through solving problems based on real-world scenarios Lee saw that there was a purpose and usefulness to learning mathematics. He also learnt that solving real-world problems required a different set of skills and knowledge – especially about problem-solving and writing about mathematics. It was in the latter aspects of Lee’s studies and his VCE maths work that I was able to provide the most support – not in the maths content or knowledge again as he needed to work on that with his teachers along with my further questioning. It was about how to tackle the problem, what to look for, how to frame it and think about what maths might be appropriate, how to write it all up (sensibly) and how to be economical and efficient in his writing.

In chatting to Lee recently about his recollections of this period, he clearly remembered the fact that the VCE projects did engage him and encourage him to work harder and to see the value, usefulness, and relevance of learning mathematics. He certainly thought it was the better way to assess student’s skills and knowledge (he ended up training as a primary school teacher), compared with exams. The key challenges from his perspective were about how to decide what to do and how to use and apply the relevant maths – and then how to write it all up – basically, the problem-solving cycle. Lee remembered the long hours it took him to get to a point where he was happy with his results and his written reports. He also specifically commented that it was way too late in his school career to suddenly be thrown into this way of approaching the teaching, learning and assessment of mathematics. He felt he would have been much less stressed by the assessments if he had been taught that way of learning maths from a much earlier stage in his school journey.

A relevant point here too, is that Lee attended a local government secondary college, that did not have a good standing or reputation. He had adequate mathematics teaching throughout his secondary schooling, after starting his schooling in the Montessori system. As an aside, but certainly not irrelevant to the discussions, the youngest of our children who happens to be the most maths proficient of the gang of four, avoided maths entirely in Year 12 (to his school’s dismay/disgust) as he had much more interest and fun in studying music, media studies, psych and more. I believe if maths had been taught using this real-world problem-solving way throughout secondary school, he may well have decided differently.

Enriched engagement of teachers

Most teachers have been successful learners themselves, and value learning highly in others. Learning is their passion. The VCE provided so many opportunities for teachers to develop new skills, new knowledge, and to express their own love of learning.

Here’s a comment from one teacher of the time:

Already a user of the Reality in Maths Education (RIME) materials, the Mathematics and Curriculum Teaching Program (MCTP), Mathematics 300, Mathematics Task Centre Materials, The Australian Mathematics Competition materials, the Mathematics Trust Mathematics Challenge and the MAV’s Mathematics Talent Quest at Years 7-10, I was perhaps more accepting and better prepared than many for the introduction of projects and problem-solving to Years 11 and 12.

Despite that background, the VCE had a major effect on my appreciation of applying the senior mathematics content to solve problems. It was wonderful to have time in the curriculum to work on this with students and to have applications and problem-solving raised in status.

Another teacher reflecting on the period provided these comments:

My memory is that as teachers we loved the move into Problem solving and Project work. “This is maths as it should be” – interesting, challenging, working much as real mathematicians. It changed our behaviour from relentless delivery of boring rehearsed skill practice to being challenged and involved as ‘learners ourselves’ which brought a significant sense of enjoyment and satisfaction.

Effects lower down the school

There’s nothing like an assessment requirement at Year 12 level to motivate long-term preparation of students lower down the school. In the brief period of operation of the first iteration of the new VCE mathematics courses, teachers recognised the gaps in knowledge of students at that level, and the importance of intervening at a much earlier stage to prepare students with the knowledge and skills they would need to successfully engage in problem-solving, modelling, and mathematical investigations. New resources and textbooks were prepared for years 7-10 students, giving a much greater emphasis to these aspects of mathematics learning.

As one teacher remarked:

The status of project work and problem-solving was raised accordingly in the school’s 7-10 mathematics curriculum.

Independent evaluation of VCE implementation

In October 1989 VCAB initiated a proposal for an independent evaluation of the introduction of the VCE. Professor Jeff Northfield, from the Education Faculty of Monash University, accepted the invitation to lead the evaluation. An evaluation team was formed from staff of Monash University and Chisholm Institute, and during November 1989 the team undertook interviews of participants in the first year of the VCE Pilot Program. The team conducted interviews with staff and students from a selection of 15 of the 49 schools piloting the introduction of the Unit 1 and 2 components of the new VCE studies of English, Australian Studies, and Mathematics.  

The team produced its report of the first year of the VCE Pilot Program in November 1989 (Responding to the challenge: An Evaluation of the VCE Pilot Program, Northfield et al, November 1989). As full implementation of the VCE was rolled out over the following three years, the team continued its evaluation with financial support from Monash University. It produced a second report in January 1991 following the second year (1990) of VCAB’s pilot program (Meeting the Challenge: An Evaluation of the VCE Pilot Program After Two Years, Northfield et al, January 1991). Two further reports were generated as the evaluation team continued its work over the following two years again with the financial support of Monash University (Understanding the Challenge: An Evaluation of the VCE Implementation After Three Years, Northfield et al, February 1992; and The Challenge Continues: An Evaluation of the VCE Implementation After Four Years, Northfield et al, February 1993).

When the evaluation was extended beyond its first phase, the team aimed to follow up the schools initially involved, as far as possible with the same team members visiting the same schools, as well as seeking to broaden the research base by expanding the number of schools, and the range of persons interviewed. The reports[1] make very interesting reading, even after 30 years have passed. A few of the reported findings are summarised here:

-          Teachers typically found the first year of the pilot study very challenging, as participants learned new rules and procedures, and as resources slowly became available.

-          The first report had a substantial impact – not least through informing VCAB regarding ways of streamlining its procedures – and participants were universally far more confident and successful in the second year and increasingly in subsequent years of VCE implementation. Words like ‘familiar’ and ‘routine’ were regularly used to describe the experience of the second year.

-          Substantial changes to teaching and learning practices in Years 7-10 were repeatedly reported, with the objective of preparing students more effectively for the learning styles to be employed later in the VCE.

-          State budget cuts in the government’s education portfolio had a major negative effect on the reality and perception in schools of system support for the implementation of the new VCE. Both staffing levels and support services were affected.

-          It was widely reported in the second report “that students were displaying far greater initiative and accepting responsibility for their own learning” and that “students reported gaining greater satisfaction from their endeavours”. There was evidence from the evaluation that the quality of learning had increased for many students.

-          Anxieties were frequently expressed regarding the interaction between VCE requirements, and tertiary entry requirements. These matters took some time to be clarified, with resolution only partially achieved after significant community disquiet.

-          The issue of authentication of student work was frequently raised, and in general teachers were able to successfully carry out the requirements and regarded the benefits coming from a wider variety of forms of assessment positively.

-          Teachers generally regarded the requirements related to verification (establishing common assessment standards across all submitted work) as challenging and very time-consuming, but of the utmost value from a professional development perspective.

-          The third and fourth reports made some very useful observations about the facile public debate about ‘cheating’ in the VCE, indicating clearly that the scale of such problems was miniscule, that students, teachers and schools had thought deeply about the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate forms of assistance and that teachers had developed mechanisms to effectively monitor the authenticity of student work.

A concluding remark about the ‘demise’ of the VCE mathematics initiatives

The initiatives underpinning the VCE mathematics study as initially introduced in the period 1988- 1993 represented very substantial change that was celebrated by many mathematics educators in Australia and around the world. Even today, more than 30 years later, I have periodically been asked about these initiatives as I have undertaken my various international roles in mathematics education. The changes introduced after 1993 were seen by many as a significant loss. One contributor to this essay described it as a ‘demise’ in these terms:

These memories are of ‘sadness tinged with anger’ of how good education became a ‘political football’ and the features of the challenging problem and project relentlessly attacked for party political advantage. I recall one so called news item when cameras went to the Ladies regular Wednesday Tennis Games to find the courts empty – the promoted reason being the mothers were all at home assisting their children’s project work due the following week. The explicit intention was to promote more than a whiff of cheating rather than the learning advantages and benefits of family cooperation. As teachers we had to professionally ‘tick a box’ verifying we had witnessed student work as largely their own – and to witness distrust in teachers and the loss of effective learning left a sad ‘sour taste’ which still lingers today.

I look forward to a time when mathematics education in Australia recognises and once again finds a way to incorporate the best of those original VCE Mathematics initiatives.

Acknowledgement

The stories and anecdotes presented in this essay came from a variety of people involved in different ways in Victoria’s education system in the late 1980s and early 1990s in delivery of the VCE, for example as teachers, parents, curriculum consultants. They include Charles Lovitt, Russell Crellin, Dave Tout, and two others who prefer not to be named. I extend my deepest thanks and appreciation to all five contributors for their input.

[1] ACER’s Cunningham Library still holds copies of the reports.