A Three-Level Intervention Pedagogy to Enhance the Academic Achievement of Indigenous Students: Evidence from QuickSmart

Abstract

Indigenous students in the middle-school years experiencing difficulties in basic mathematics are a particularly vulnerable group. During these years gaps in performance between educationally disadvantaged students and their peers widen, potentially leading to ongoing economic and social disadvantage. This chapter reports on a teaching intervention referred to as QuickSmart, which has been particularly successful with Indigenous students who perform in the bottom 30 % of the achievement spectrum in Australia-wide tests. QuickSmart has been used in Australian schools since 2001. The pedagogical approach that underpins this numeracy program can be considered at three levels. The first is as an instructional program that withdraws pairs of students from their classroom instruction for three 30-min periods each week for a 30-week period. The second level constitutes pedagogical themes that are important within QuickSmart lessons. For example, the instruction offered in QuickSmart lessons builds on the pre-existing knowledge and understandings of students in order to encourage their self-belief through successful learning experiences and by focusing on what are considered foundational skills in mathematics. This approach is very suited to enhancing the learning of many Indigenous students. The third level of pedagogical emphasis relates to the benefits that flow from recruiting Indigenous teacher assistants as instructors and examining their involvement in the associated professional learning program. This chapter concludes with evidence drawn from the learning progress of Indigenous middle-school students who completed the QuickSmart numeracy program. These data show, based on effect-size statistics, cognitive growth for students of up to 2 years over the course of a 30-week program.