JANET CLINTON
Professor Janet Clinton is the Director of the Centre for Program Evaluation and Director of the Teacher and Teaching Effectiveness Research Hub, at the University of Melbourne. She has wide national and international experience as an evaluator and educator, and has an extensive publication record. She teaches a number of post-graduate subjects and supervises a number of PhD students in the discipline of evaluation.
Janet has worked in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, and has been a principal investigator on many large complex evaluations and research projects. Overall, she has led over 100 national and international projects across multiple disciplines, in particular health and education. Her major interest in evaluation is the development of evaluation theory and methodologies. Her current evaluation work focuses on development of evaluation frameworks, measurement and implementation as well as using evaluation as a vehicle for change management and building capacity.
Influencing student voice through teacher talk: highlights from the Visible Classroom.
Learners who have agency and voice will be able to communicate with others, work collaboratively and adapt to different contexts in a changing society, importantly they will demonstrate flexibility in learning. This paper focuses on the influence of teacher talk on learner agency. Using the extensive Visible Classroom data base of over 1500 lesson transcripts it will be suggested that ‘what we say and how we say it’ impacts student learning.
The Visible Classroom seeks to collect real-time, objective evidence of classroom practice that can be fed back to teachers for reflection and development. Developed by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and Access Innovation Media (Ai-Media) the Visible Classroom uses mobile phone technology to record teacher practice and capture objective data on teacher talk. Feedback reports are used to provide opportunities for teacher reflection and practice development.
This presentation will provide an overview of the Visible Classroom, it’s key implementation components, applicability to the promotion of learner agency, and evidence of its success in shifting specific teacher practices. A high level summary of findings of factors that influence learner agency will be presented.
It is suggested that variability of language across teachers and classrooms may have a differential effect on learners. It is also hypothesized that language-aware teachers will have a greater influence learning.