How can students and staff connect with the Pymble Institute?

Pymble Institute (PI) helps curious staff answer questions ~ through research

With the establishment of the Pymble Institute in 2021, staff of the College are more aware of the services available to support research and the possibilities that can come from our services. Using our experience as teachers and researchers, we can help teachers with action research to improve their teaching practices, or connect them to research or researchers in their field of inquiry. The PI also works closely with the library and professional learning teams to offer support to staff undertaking postgraduate qualifications.

Pymble Institute links academics to teachers and students

The College receives many requests to join national and city-wide research projects involving children and teachers. The PI acts as a gateway to filter research projects which will be relevant and valuable to our community through the lens of our Strategic Pillars: Social Intelligence, Digital Intelligence, Academic Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence. How is this achieved? It is important to weigh up the benefits of participation against undesirable ‘participation fatigue’, and our student and teacher Ethics Committee plays an important role. Some of the recent projects assessed by the Ethics Committee include research into children’s screen time; social media use by girls; learning dance moves and patterns in primary Maths and eye-tracking of online learning tasks. Professors Kun Yun and Nick Hopwood from the University of Technology Sydney recently visited the committee to be interviewed on their proposed research project which was a different way of ‘going through ethics’.

Pymble Institute gives teachers a channel to present and publish their work

With the publication of Illuminate: Research and Innovation, staff have a medium through which to reflect on their work and initiatives. By giving them an outlet and framing their work in research, it helps staff reflect on the “why” of their practice, further deepening their own thinking and understanding. 

Anna To and Hamsa Venkataraman are two English as a Second Language/Dialect Teachers supporting students across Years K-12 at the College. They were invited to prepare a staff workshop on “Working with Multi-Lingual Learners K-12” as part of the Professional Learning Staff Day: Social Intelligence Pillar held at the commencement of Term 4. Although both teachers had more than 40 years of teaching experience between them, explaining the theories behind second language acquisition and trans-languaging strategies for the classroom saw both practitioners bring research to staff in an accessible way. Their intense collaboration of ideas and research culminated in a fascinating workshop for teachers who went away with greater knowledge of their multi-lingual students and ways to include children’s first language in the classroom. Preparing to turn their workshop notes into an article for the publication, Illuminate: Research and Innovation, further consolidates educators’ understanding of the research underpinning their teaching and also speaks to a broader audience of the College and beyond.