From the Director of the Institute

How do you spot a research mindset?  What kinds of conversations take you into the zone where research happens?

Like me, you may be someone to whom colleagues and students turn to ‘run something past’, to ‘share a wild idea’, to ‘see if something is possible’. You may be working on projects yourself which will remain unfinished as the year comes to a close and, like me, be determined to push them a little further by working with what is possible, rather than waiting for the perfect time and perfect set of circumstances to arrive. Researchers know there is never a perfect time, but there is a time to be real about what we know, what we want to know and how we can generate data to explore what it is we need to know.

We have now wrapped up our Sokratis research program for our Secondary School student researchers and are looking forward to showcase the research of Year 4, 5 and 6 girls over the next few weeks. These young students have been diving deep into issues relating to sustainable living and the environment and building their research skills through creating 3D displays. The Pymble Institute team is developing a research plan to understand the impacts and benefits of the College’s decision to give a social media-free ‘Wise Phone’ to whole cohorts of students (read more about this initiative in this newsletter). We are also at an exciting time of year where staff look for fresh opportunities for learning and study and ask to drop in and talk about their plans. I find such joy in this liminal space, where endings and beginnings are simultaneously in sight. It is in this space that research mindsets are easier to spot.

Liminal spaces, like the ones formed in conversations about research, are rich in potential, but they are also unsettling. I try to keep the student and staff researchers at Pymble Ladies’ College in that space just a little longer so they can stay open to perspectives, possibilities and questions they may not have considered.

I love this comment by Emelia, a Year 10 student and dedicated future researcher, as she reflected on her year-long Sokratis research project completed in October (you can see the full clip in the video below):

“I chose to look at mining ice on the moon and the political implications of that. I do philosophy as an elective so I have studied ethics before, and it’s something that I’m quite interested in, which is probably why it came out in my project. I was originally going to look at what it means for the future of space travel but I ended up looking at politics and ethics instead.”

“I was originally going to look at … but I ended up looking at …” – this shift in focus is a wonderful example of the research mindset that we love seeing. What does a research mindset look like to you?

We wish our readers a very happy time as 2024 comes to a close, and hope the new ideas percolating around you find their place in the year ahead.

New Pymble Institute website launch!

You may have noticed that we’ve been working on our new website and are pleased to share the finished product with you. The launch was held as part of the annual Sokratis research showcase in October with a tray of inquiry-themed cupcakes and bookmarks for everyone there.

The new site includes elements which will help you search efficiently through the Pymble Institute’s range of material, including the Illuminate: Research and Innovation journal, research bites and published papers. 

We hope you find the following areas helpful to connect with the Pymble Institute:

• Search our publications via keyword, categories, author, year of publication.
• Sign up for events.
• Gain insights into our research programs.
• View past newsletters to see what the Pymble Institute has been involved in over the years.
• Read about student initiatives in research areas.

Researching the Wise Phone at Pymble

An important change in our mobile phone usage policy for students is opening the door to a new research project.

The Pymble Wise Phone initiative will provide students (Years 4 to 8) with mobile phones that have no access to the internet or social media, if parents wish their daughters to have a phone at all. The College will fund the phone and parents will fund the SIM and plan. A key feature is that the College will identify and manage apps and features students can access on their phones as they arrive at different age brackets.

This initiative is generating much interest and support as students and parents begin discussing their plans to purchase phones over Christmas and consider the benefits of switching to the College-selected phone, if and when the purchase would be made.

The changes we are implementing have been made with the guidance of Emeritus Professor Donna Cross, alongside our Student Wellbeing team. Professor Cross is a global expert in interventions that support the prevention of bullying, cyberbullying and associated mental health harms among young people and sits on our Healthcare Advisory Panel.

The Pymble Institute conducted a literature review to support the College’s communications with parents, and we are now designing research into the intersection of older childhood, adolescence and mobile phone and social media use. Our areas of inquiry include what parents and students see as the benefits and disadvantages of this approach in sub-areas of friendships, non-tech recreation, face-to-face communication, time usage and online safety.

Our research methods will embrace our commitment to student voice. We will be using a mixed-methods approach, including the qualitative methodologies offered by social labs and youth participatory action research. Exploratory meetings with student researchers who have already completed school projects and Sokratis research in the area of children, adolescents and technology usage are now underway to collaboratively generate research questions.

We look forward to sharing our work in this important area as it evolves.

Researcher Spotlight: Alex and Stephen Campbell

How do educators at Pymble bridge the gap between pedagogical research and classroom practice? The Pymble Institute supports teachers using evidence to support the decisions they make about teaching and learning within their classrooms. We also recognise that there is value in having such a diverse staff body, as our teaching staff bring research experience from both Australia and from other international contexts, in turn enriching the educational experience of our students.

In the next profile in this series, meet Alex and Stephen who, whilst working in the UK, started considering how to use research to guide whole-school decisions around pedagogy and school culture, which were embedded over time.

Alex Campbell is an English teacher at Pymble Ladies College, joining our staff in 2024. She is an experienced educational leader who believes that a culture of deliberate practice, reflection and collaboration in schools ensures that students achieve the very best outcomes. She seeks to build resilience in her pupils, along with their ability to think both independently and collaboratively.

Stephen Campbell is the College’s Chief Strategy Officer. He joined us in 2024, coming from England and a career in state, independent and international education. Stephen is a member of the Senior Executive team. He believes in the power of education as a mechanism for making the world a better place.

As part of their research, they identified that the development of oracy, the process of learning to talk and learning through talk, would be a high-impact intervention that would support both the academic progress and the wellbeing of students. Additionally, they also found that effective oracy interventions have a disproportionately high impact on students whose voices might otherwise be minoritised, a significant point to consider in the context of girls’ education.

Between 2020 and 2023, Alex and Stephen led a change management process that sought to embed a culture of oracy within classrooms. Their intention was to create dialogic spaces in which all student voices were heard, and in which understanding was developed and consolidated through structured discussion.

In order to facilitate such whole-school change, they turned to academic research to help inform their decisions. Working alongside academics from Cambridge University who had 30 years of research experience in this area, they built a compelling case for the implementation of oracy, seeking to convince teachers that this was a mechanism that was worth investing in, and something that could change their teacher beliefs.

Having created a strong belief in the power of oracy, the next phase of implementation saw a structured, coherent building of knowledge across the teaching staff, such that all teachers understood, and could implement, highly effective classroom practice that developed the voices of learners in their classrooms.

Finally, Alex and Stephen leveraged the power of action-research methods to structure the intentional practice of oracy techniques across the teaching staff. They invited teachers to work in groups of three to undertake collaborative projects to explore the power of oracy in the classroom. This mechanism empowered teachers to form their own enquiry questions and develop their own approaches to deploying the oracy techniques that they had been learning about.

Alex and Stephen shared their research and their process of strategic change at the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand, and at the AISNSW Evidence Institute Conference in Sydney this year.

Interested readers can connect with Alex and Stephen through the Pymble Institute at pymbleinstitute@pymblelc.nsw.edu.au. Readers can also subscribe to the free weekly newsletter that Alex and Stephen publish, in which all things oracy-related are discussed, by clicking here.

Pymble staff at the ICGS Conference in Auckland: Angela Thorne, Stephen Campbell, Alex Campbell, and Meagan Bartlett.

Sokratis Student Research Showcase

Have you ever wondered if ice can be mined on the moon? Or if we can learn about re-growing cells and limbs from axolotls? Or about how language shapes our thoughts?

These are just some of the areas Sokratis students have focused on this year and we would like to celebrate their research achievements. Sokratis students work with passion, curiosity and creativity to bring to life a project in an area of interest.

Sokratis is a research project students complete in their own time, outside of school hours. It runs annually, commencing in February and finishing up in October. Students are free to choose any topic that interests them, making the outputs and journeys as diverse as the students themselves. Students are matched with a mentor from the Pymble staff or senior students in Years 11 and 12 for additional input, support and encouragement.

Students see their learning through from the idea stage, into periods of rigorous investigation which can involve lots of meanderings, ups and downs, and eventually into the production of results, conclusions and ideas which are presented in posters displayed in the Conde Library. Students also have an opportunity to present their work to a wider audience as part of the Three-Minute Sokratis competition during the annual Sokratis Showcase.

Feel free to watch the video below to learn more about the Sokratis Research Program.

The Sokratis team comprises Mx Spencer Toohey, Ms Tessa Zwar, Dr Sarah Loch, Mrs Victoria Adamovich and the Junior School Sokratis team, Mrs Sarah Colquhoun and Mrs Lara Bird. Together, they are responsible for promoting the program, engaging students and teacher mentors, setting up the research framework, holding skills training sessions and collating age-appropriate resources using the Virtual Classroom. The team also support mentors and mentees along the research journey, as cheerleaders, but also at times as research lighthouses. We are proud of the program and seek to improve avenues for student research year after year.

Have a Go! Students promoting research

There are many opportunities for students at Pymble to get involved in research; from writing for and being part of the editorial team of the student research magazine, Perspective, to chairing and managing the Pymble Ethics Committee, to joining the Sokratis program and researching a passion project. However, it can be difficult for students to know how to get involved, what happens in research and how research skills can be part of their co-curricular options.

Pymble holds an annual Have a Go! Expo which is run by students for students – think ‘O’ Week stalls and sign-up booths, free trials, giveaways and bowls of enticing lollies! Students can see what’s available, try new activities and chat with their peers about the activity is really like. This is especially helpful with research which is often not visible and can be seen as something only a small group can do.

At this year’s Expo, students involved in Pymble Institute activities promoted their research involvement through booths which included brochures (a sample is pictured here), slideshows, copies of the Perspective journal and examples of how we edit the papers, as well as sign up sheets for future editors and contributors. This helped to make research tangible and put names to faces as students met others involved in these areas.

With the incoming Year 7 cohort visiting the Expo as part of their transition to secondary school activities, many students had the chance to look at the exciting range of options awaiting them – including research!