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Graduate Australian Professional

Standards for Teachers in
Mathematics Teaching
Part A
In order to achieve the standard 2.3.1, the teacher should first know the outcome of
each topic that required by the syllabus of a curriculum well. The content of syllabus
in the Board of Studies Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES) also suggests
what teachers should deliver in lessons in order to assist student in achieving the
required outcome. Also, teachers should assess whether the students have achieved
the outcome after delivering the content to ensure the content is delivered properly.
Furthermore, it is better for teachers to understand the rationale of the content in
achieving the outcome, so that they can plan for the order and time properly to
deliver each component of the content.

The standard 2.6.1 requires teachers to apply Information Communication

Technology (ICT) to cater students learning. First of all, teachers should know some
software or applications that are easy and convenient for secondary school students
to learn and use, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and YouTube. Then
teachers can consult the syllabus to determine which content can be explained more
clear using ICT in order to make the use of ICT effective. Teachers should also
consider the diverse students learning needs and the school resource to seek
opportunities for using ICT. For example, a teacher can play a video of a gravity
experiment from YouTube instead of actually implementing it in front of the class if
the school does not have adequate experiment material.

The application of standard 3.1.1 requires teachers to take in account the syllabus,
previous assessment data and diverse student learning needs. First, the syllabus
provides a guide for teachers about what students will learn from this lesson, so that
the challenge activity can be achievable using the knowledge that students will have
after the regular teaching activities. Second, previous assessment data can suggest
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what students strengths are, then teachers can design the challenging activities
based on students strengths. Third, the challenges set by the teachers should
motivate gifted students but not stress other students. Thus, teachers can make the
challenges optional, so that gifted students can have a sense of success after
achieving the challenge, while students who do not take the challenge can still
satisfy the outcome required by the syllabus.

In order to satisfy the standard 4.1.1, students should have opportunities to

communicate with the teacher as well as their peers in the class. For teacher and
students communication, the teacher can ask students to answer some questions, or
rove to assist students that need help when they are doing there classwork. For the
communication between students, the teacher can arrange some group work for
students to communicate with each other, or ask students to take presentations so
that students can learn from each other. Also, the teacher can apply the jigsaw
grouping strategy, which means the students are divided into groups, each group
focus on an area of studies, then the teacher organises the outcome of every group
to make a completed content for every students to learn.
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Part B

Section 1
The application of Australian Professional Standards for Teacher can cater diverse
students learning needs in every curriculum. This report will take the examples of
the standards 2.3.1, 2.6.1, 3.1.1 and 4.1.1 to explain how the Professional Standards
can cater diverse student learning needs.

According to standard 2.3.1, teachers should design and plan for the learning
sequences based on the Australian Curriculum. The Australian Curriculum is an
integral element of the Education Revolution announced by the Rudd Labour
government in 2007 (Clarke and Pittaway, 2014), which provides a unified learning
outcome and contents for each subject nationwide. The Australian Curriculum,
Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) prescribed the national curriculum and
assessment procedure within Australia, which can also provide students a guideline
about what they are expected to learn, so that students will have an explicit aim in
their learning activities. Also, as the curriculum, assessment and reporting are
unified nationwide, it can deal with the issue of discrepancy in learning content
between schools or states (Fensham, 2011). For instance, if a student changes
his/her school to another state, he/she can link up in the school learning thoroughly.
Thus, the students learning need can be catered if the teachers satisfy the standard
2.3.1 to apply the curriculum, assessment and reporting requirements.

The standard 2.6.1 requires teachers to apply ICT in the classroom to assist students
learning. As the development of technology, ICT is broadly used in university studies
as well as the working place, knowing how to apply ICT will provide lots of benefits
for students further development. Another benefit of using ICT is that the ICT make
some of the teaching activities more convenient for students to participate in. For
example, ask students to post their work on a blog can make them share their ideas
with others in a more efficient way than just rove from table to table in the class.
Furthermore, ICT expand the learning resources that are available for students to
access through the internet. As the resources are limited in some regional schools
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and libraries, students learning opportunities could be restricted. But with ICT,
students can access the learning resources from worldwide through internet,
software and applications, such as reading e-books from the websites of other
countries, or watching a video of a science experiment in the YouTube. So the use of
ICT in teaching activities can cater the students learning needs, especially for the
students in regional schools with limited learning materials.

The standard 3.1.1 can catered the diverse students learning needs, especially for
the gifted students. As suggested by the New South Wales Department of Education
and Training (2008), teachers must recognise the individualised students
backgrounds and learning needs. The setting of challenging learning goals for
students with vary learning abilities can help differentiate the classroom (Tomlinson,
1999). By providing challenges to students, they will have opportunities to have a
better understanding of the lesson content or have more knowledge that is beyond
the syllabus, and their learning can be motivated from the sense of success with
completing the challenges. However, the challenges should be set cautiously, as
unreasonable challenges will stress and cause anxiety for students with lower
learning abilities. Thus, the word achievable in this focus area is important in order
to cater diverse student learning needs. Also, as discussed before, the challenge
activity in a lesson can be optional, so that not only the gifted students are
motivated, but also the justice in education is maintained.

The standard 4.1.1 involves both teacher-student communication and

communication between students, so that every student are included in the teaching
activities. The teacher-student communication in the classroom can make students
get direct instruction from teacher, as well the teacher can plays the role as a
supervisor to ensure every student takes part in the classroom activities, which can
facilitate students learning. The communication between students can cater
students learning needs in two ways. First, as suggested by Killen (2009), discussion
in groups can make the teaching effective for controversial or low consensus topics.
Second, the communication between students can make them learn more about
each other. This is crucial for students with diverse background, especially for
diverse linguistic background, the communication with other students can help them
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improve their English literacy as well. This can also increase the cohesion within the
classroom (Green and Preston, 2001), which can motivate the learning for every
student. Thus, inclusive students participation and engagement can not only assist
but also motivate students with diverse background in their learning.

In conclusion, the standards 2.3.1, 2.6.1, 3.1.1 and 4.1.1 can cater diverse students
learning need. These are just four focus areas within the Professional Standards. If
the teacher can demonstrate their knowledge and application of every focus area in
the Standards, the overall quality of school teaching and learning can be maintained.

Section 2
The selected mathematics lesson plan incorporated a range of Professional
Standards, and it indeed catered students learning need. Thus, I decided not to
modify the lesson plan. However, my peers had disagreement with me in choosing
the best four focus area in explaining this lesson plan. From the peer feedback I
received in the tutorial, my peers agreed that the standard 2.3.1, 3.1.1 and 4.1.1
were appropriate in explaining the lesson plan, and these three standards catered
diverse students learning need. The disagreement was in the fourth focus area. My
original fourth standard was 3.4.1, as I believed that modelling how to fill the data
and create a stem-and-leaf plot could demonstrate the teachers knowledge of ICT,
but my peers suggested that it was not explicit and the standard 2.6.1 could explain
this teaching activity better. Thus, I took my peers recommendation to use standard
2.6.1 instead. Also, one of my peer recommended the standard 5.1.1, as the activity
that allow students to make judgement on their own graphs and report back to a
peer/friend/group could also be regarded as an in-class assessment between
students. It made sense to me, but the standards 2.3.1, 2.6.1, 3.1.1 and 4.1.1 were
still ranked as the top four explicit and appropriate standards in explaining the lesson
plan, thus I did not take this advice.
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References

Clarke, M., & Pittaway, S. (2014). The Australian Curriculum. Marsh's becoming a
teacher (6th ed.). Frenchs Forest, Australia: Pearson.
Fensham, P. (2011). Bold adventure or missed opportunity. Curriculum Perspectives,
31(1), 77-9.
Green, A. & Preston, J. (2001) Education and social cohesion: Re-centering the
debate. Peabody Journal of Education. 76(3-4), 247-284.
Killen, R. (2009). Effective teaching strategies (5th ed.). Melbourne, Victoria: Cengage
Learning.
NSW Department of Education and Training (2008). New South Wales government
charter for equity in education and training. Retrieved from
www.dec.nsw.gov.au/detresource/NSW_Government_Charter_for_Equity_U
OgMvAscRp.pdf.
Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). The differentiated classroom. Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD