Reimagining Australian Schools, with Prof Yong Zhao

Professor Yong Zhao challenges us to rethink the purpose of schooling. He explores why traditional measures of success are no longer enough, and how creativity, adaptability, and student agency should guide future outcomes. Expect a lively discussion about personalised learning, entrepreneurship in education, and redefining what counts as success.

 Guest: Prof Yong Zhao
 Produced by: The MacKillop Institute

Chapter Markers
00:00 Why reimagine schools now
04:45 Beyond test scores, broader outcomes that matter
10:30 Agency and entrepreneurship in learning
16:20 Personalisation without fragmentation
22:05 Creativity and adaptability, designing for the future
27:10 What leaders can change this year
30:00 Resources and further reading

If themes in this episode affect you, support is available in Australia, Griefline 1300 845 745, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, Lifeline 13 11 14.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

That's TMI, the Meaningful Insights Podcast, delving into the heart of human-centered professions.

SPEAKER_01: 0:08

That's TMI, it's recorded on the lands of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to all the traditional custodians of the lands on which you are joining from today.

SPEAKER_03: 0:19

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Very excited to have Professor Jong Zhao with us. We're having a really insightful conversation with Jong about how we can reimagine the Australian school system so that it actually supports everyone. We hear a lot of talk at the moment about supporting our students and our young people, and also about maybe some of the crisis that we're hearing about in education. But can we actually reimagine the system for the success of everyone? And really looking forward to hearing Professor Jung Zhao's thoughts on this topic, who maybe don't know so much about McKillop. And just a very briefly to mention that Justin and I are from this wonderful organization, the McKillop Institute, which is part of a bigger organization called McKillop Family Services that works with children, young people, and families all across Australia, out with anyone that also works with children and young people. And we want to do that to make sure that knowledge and insights get out there and to also share and partner up with wonderful people such as Professor Jung Zhao, who we're talking to this afternoon. And hopefully, together we can start some conversations. So today with me, we've got Justin Roberts, my wonderful colleague, who is the national program director of Relate, which is a whole school model that supports teachers and students, and that we support multiple schools across Australia with here at McKillop. Justin is a lifelong educator and learner, one who is very passionate about inclusion, equity, and access. And Justin was the former principal of our schools, the McKillop Education Schools, which are special assistant schools working with some of the most vulnerable and at-risk young people. He now, as I mentioned, runs a program called Relate, where we work with schools all across Australia. And so he's now having much bigger impact by working with thousands of educators and students across the country. And as a result of that, this year he was nominated as one of the most influential educators by the educator magazine. So, Justin, you're going to be mostly taking the lead for this conversation with Jong. And I'm going to maybe slip into the back for a little bit and do some of the supporting. But Justin, thanks for being here and thanks for helping with the conversation. Without further ado, uh, let me please uh take the honor of introducing Professor Jong Zhao. I've had the privilege of talking to Jong a number of times now, and I always find it both enlightening and insightful as well as humorous and funny. I think Jong is an amazing storyteller as well as such an exceptional academic researcher and author. If you haven't come across any of Professor Jong Zhao's work yet, I highly recommend that you do. There's over 30 books that you can choose from, as well as hundreds of publications and journal articles. Jong is a very distinguished author, academic, and researcher, as I mentioned, who is also a professor at the University of Canvas and at the University of Melbourne in educational leadership. The last I think we spoke about this, Jung spends half his time in the US and half his time in Australia lecturing between the two universities. And his main areas of research very much are on rethinking traditional education systems and especially how we can do them to foster competencies like creativity, entrepreneurship, and what we often term global competencies. He is definitely an advocate for educational systems that empower students and all people to become active participants in their own learning. And he is a very influential thinker in the education space. Jung, thank you so much for joining us. And I am going to hand over to you and Justin to have a bit of a conversation. And hopefully, we can find out where you are in the world. Maybe that's the first question, Justin, before I actually hand it over to you. Jung, where are you?

SPEAKER_00: 4:56

Thanks, Chris Burger. I am actually in Shanghai, China. I just landed uh from Chongqing. I was supposed to be the early, but also of all things that could delay airplanes. Today I had my first encounter with a conveyor belt that carriage a bag and it was broke. Never had before it's by 1001 reasons airplanes got delayed, but that's one. Thank you. Good to see you, Chris, and good to see you, Justin.

SPEAKER_02: 5:26

Yeah, you're looking far too happy and calm for someone who's just got off a delay phone.

SPEAKER_00: 5:32

So this is Shanghai. You want to see the road here? Okay. I've never been to Shanghai. We have a real conversation.

SPEAKER_03: 5:41

I love just before we jump into it, young. I love that you often talk about global competence and global competencies for our children and our young people, but talk about that right now as we're talking to you and you're in a cab in Shanghai, just flowing in from another part of China. I'm in one part of Australia, Justin's in another. Absolutely love that we can do this. This is just so good.

SPEAKER_00: 6:08

I hope people are listening.

SPEAKER_02: 6:09

I might get started with the first question actually. As part of our work, we travel across Australia and work with schools, and not only from feedback from those schools, but also we hear a lot in the media these days about the pressures on schools, workloads of teachers, stress teachers leaving the profession profession, as well as increased student mental health and well-being challenges in schools. I'm just really interested to hear from you on what you think are some of the drivers or the reasons behind the current challenges that we're hearing about.

SPEAKER_00: 6:43

Well, Justin, I think there are many reasons. You have COVID, you have uh significant depression, anxiety, the split society, climate change, the election of Trump, and the division of politics, but also a lot of times, I think the emergence of artificial intelligence, the disappearance of jobs. I think there are many reasons. This is a bad time, but human history has seen bad times. There could be worse times. But I think you can also feel the social media like criticism, we're connected. Yes, indeed, we're connected, but that also may pass on a new kind of uh uh an unmanufactured word for people. I think when technology was not so advanced, messages don't spread as fast. I would say a problem like in China, yes, for this election, there are more Chinese people engaged in this election than maybe Americans, but there are more Chinese people in China anyway. So I think there are many reasons, but I love you put up as the title the reimagine. I I really want to invite the courageous people to reimagine. We have so many opportunities. Why do we keep focusing on the crisis?

SPEAKER_02: 7:58

Yeah, that's a good point, and that's one of the things that can get you down. I'm a teacher myself, is being told constantly that the work's too hard. And I think sometimes we lose the connection to teaching is a vocation, it's got this real deep purpose in itself, and that's you know, we get well-being from that as well. I'm just wondering, in your opinion, do you think that we've lost a little bit of the purpose of a teacher in the world today? Do we are we clear on that as a profession, but also a society?

SPEAKER_00: 8:30

I think that's a very challenging question. I I would say perhaps the teacher education always thinks it has uh a purpose, but how clear the purpose was, we don't know. For example, we used to teach citizenship, we used to teach morality and ethics, and now we are really focused on literacy and numerous, which I think Australia is horrible in doing focus on that. When machines can create music, create a video, can do everything for you, we're still focusing on the most based reading literacy. I think teachers right now in the new age should be focusing a lot more on uh on reimagine humanity in the age of smart machines. I don't think teachers really shouldn't have a collective purpose other than what its schools of education have been trying to teach them.

SPEAKER_02: 9:22

Yeah, absolutely. I'm interested to hear if we think about what teachers should be doing now. How do you believe that we can create environments that are more flexible, more supportive, but also more innovative in this space? What should education be moving towards now?

SPEAKER_00: 9:41

I think I I've been doing a lecture tour recently in China and also in Kazakhstan. I I don't know how many I've been to Kazakhstan, and and I know as far north as Australia as far south. So it's everybody is rethinking about this. I think it's time to think about how do we serve every student. Schools shouldn't fail in that. You have, I've always said in Australia, you have your Napplan scores, you have this and that. And I think about your ATA scores. That's really ranking people. When we talk about equity, we never think about equity based on individual talents, individual interests, individual families, individual locations. We try to put people like yours, you know, in forest streets, the same as your born in some suburbs, suburban postgrades, as well as in other insides. I think we have to give every student truly the opportunity for them to thrive in their own way. And with artificial intelligence, that's possible. But traditionally, you have to go to Melbourne, you have to go to NU, you have to go someplace to beat others. The traditional society was created based on a selfish model. Somebody can beat others because there are fewer jobs that will give luxury. Most jobs were physical labor, but today we truly have arrived at the time that every talent can be valuable, and every talent can create value for others. I think that's the first thing. Can we, school of education, deliver schools deliver education that serves every child, makes this child great in his or her or their own way? I think the second thing we need to change is education needs to teach people, help young people to translate their unique talents and interest into solutions to other people's problems. That is to create value for others. This is what makes people happy. When you can create value for others using your own signature talent and interest to help others, if we can do those two things, I think we have hope. But those two things are very difficult to do because government systems always control students' time by mandating the same curriculum for everybody, and we also force teachers to be like instructional machines in the classroom to teach, not to let people learn.

SPEAKER_02: 12:19

Yeah, it's so interesting. It sounds, and please correct me on if I'm off track a little bit, but it sounds like what you're talking about is that as systems, we start with knowing the knowledge outcomes we want, and you're proposing that actually we need to flip that, we need to know the students.

SPEAKER_00: 12:35

Like, well, not only know the student, but let the student teach you in a sense how much right now we're still trying to fight with the sports. We we spend so much money connecting computers, internet to sports. Now we're spending much money to ban students' cell phones. Isn't that ironic? And we also tell people if we don't know what children are doing, we try to ban it. You cannot play it the game, you cannot get an AI. When Victoria, I think when the generative AI, you can't ban it. So I think it's not only true for us to understand child, it's to respect them as human beings and to respect them as changing forces of society, respect them as the maker of our future.

SPEAKER_02: 13:21

And I love how you picked up too on that helping them to see their gifts, but also think about how they can add value for others with those gifts. And I imagine by us truly respecting students, we do half the work already to get them there. So how can my gifts value others? Yes, yeah, beautiful. So one of the things we hear about a lot in it's particularly in Australia, and you and you have a much better idea internationally whether this is a theme, but we quite often hear teaching and learning and well-being spoken about as separate things. Um, but it sounds like when you're talking, you're almost talking about they're intrinsically linked, they're they're a part of each other, that well sense of well-being as well as learning.

SPEAKER_00: 14:09

They are intrinsic and uh connecting. I'm quite uh unhappy that right now we're trying to teach social and emotional learning, we separate them. Human beings, your cognitive, physical, your psychology, your emotion or deeply connected. But the real connection rests in one thing. Are you doing something purposeful? Are you doing something meaningful? Are you serving the purpose? And that, of course, comes from the foundation means do you have uh agency? Do you have the opportunity to exercise your self-determination? Human beings have been seeking liberty for a long time. Why? Because we want to be able to self-determine, we want to have uh a chance to make our own decisions, and we make that decision, hopefully, it is to do something meaningful to you and also helpful to others. When you have uh liberty to do anything you want, you have also enjoyed the consequence, but it is much better to do something for others in our schools. We don't teach that.

SPEAKER_02: 15:19

Yeah, absolutely. And we also believe when it comes to our relate education model, which is different to a lot of other models, that we almost start with the teachers because we believe it takes uh a well and engaged teacher to do the same with the students. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00: 15:37

Yeah, I mean I I think it and uh fascinating to me when it's shot around. I think when we use this one term, teacher. The teacher is a teacher. I think we have so many different kinds of teachers. A teacher is a profession, but in that profession, you have all sorts of teachers. That's the thing when we're talking about students, school stuff. When I get old, I'm very nervous about the overgeneralization now. So I really think it's very crucial that in a new age with big data, with generative AI, with large language followers, we should be able to understand individuals much better than before. We should enable a lot more individuality. So, yes, definitely I agree with you, but at the same time, a teacher in Gippsland is different from a teacher in Melbourne or Sydney or in Brisbane. If you're born in Darwin, your life might be very different from Perth. So just think about that, the diversity of that.

SPEAKER_02: 16:40

Yeah, absolutely. And at the risk of generalizing again, my my next question probably comes to I've I've spent the last 10 years working with children and young people who are disengaged from mainstream education. Education in where they live can't currently meet their needs. And I'm just wondering, as as you talk about this, kind of acknowledging that students have a whole range of barriers, right? But what do you imagine schools should be doing to ensure that particularly vulnerable kids and students are well supported?

SPEAKER_00: 17:17

Justin, I I think we need to understand this schools only serve a portion of students. If you are great, what schools want you to do? There are great people who are great with that, but by and large, schools disengage students, and I would say probably schools are designed to disengage students because you only serve those who are great with school subjects. If you look at uh Australia, reading and math, literacy and math, right? You can't look at that, you know, students. So schools are designed to do that. What I'm right now trying to work on is to encourage schools to diversify their offerings so they can serve more people. You know that right now when Australia and the US and many countries when they're trying to stress the idea of equity, they just think some people are slower, some people are lower, they want to put a step up so they can say something, cartoons, remember that's stupid. You can't do that because you are different. That's just oh, I'll give you more steps, two steps, and you'll go better. That just isn't working that way. Schools have to diversify offerings. Those people who favor sports, favorite music, doing dancing, and they can create value in different ways. But schools don't. Schools discriminate people based on cognitive styles, school discriminate against people based on their interests, school discriminate against based on their birthplace. We need to add value to people with what they have. When you work with disengaged students, don't make them become a traditional good student, make them better what they do and use their purpose, use their strength to help others engage young people. Disengagement is very valuable if you give them another chance. There's a school actually that's great. All since college in Perth, we've been working on different things, so that there's different models of change. Anyway, I know you worked with disengaged students for a long time, but I'm just quite passionate about how to diversify schools' offerings.

SPEAKER_02: 19:47

Yeah, that means it actually excites me. It excites me thinking about what we could do differently. And I've heard you speak about this before, but I would often hear this in schools where we get caught up in thinking we know what the future looks like and what kids need. I just want your response to that.

SPEAKER_00: 20:05

That's a very silly idea. It's like we talk about prepare students for the future, get students ready for the future, as if a future has been manufactured just with there for you. It doesn't go that way. Students are the makers of the future. Whatever you think, whatever help them to become, they will create a future. Their future is your retirement. You gotta be careful. You want to be careful, you want the so you want to have you are creating future makers, not visitors to the future. You can't say like society, oh we we want to make sure you meet the needs of the society. Who is in the society? You are a member of the society, you cannot be. So that that is I think schools always think we need to get scripted for the future. Of course, who doesn't want that? Well, that's a fake statement. It doesn't work that way. Your future, you are in the making of the future, so you do not walk into a future made by Dylan Musk. You can go against Dylan Baos if you want. I think schools have not done a good job to enable to inspire our children to think they are confident, to think they can do big things. A lot of people complain about politicians. Why do we have bad politicians? Remember, bad politicians come out of your schools. Well, they were in school someday, and all the voters, how did the bad politicians turn out to be on top? Because we had the voters. What do you call do you call them bad voters? No, they were educated in that way, they thought that way. They, of course, have the right to make decisions.

SPEAKER_02: 21:51

Yeah, I love this too because I feel like EGNC is coming back to a really relational approach to education, and I think that's refreshing as well. I think as educators, we get great joy from that work.

SPEAKER_00: 22:06

Oh, yeah, definitely. If every educator, every school leader, policymaker surely cares about students as human beings, like you were talking about relationship. If we truly believe other people as equal human beings who wants to do good, I think we it's a very exciting job. That's why I like to work with teachers, work with students, because human world believes they're human beings, and human beings are precious, and shares this precious life and hopefully turn them into someone who can positively continue with other people's lives. And I think that's the feature comment. We create value for each other.

SPEAKER_02: 22:49

That's wonderful, you know. I mean, and just want to say how grateful I am to hear you speak. And it's challenging, but it's exciting to think about the way that we can reimagine education.

SPEAKER_00: 23:02

Exciting. Thank you, Justin.

SPEAKER_03: 23:04

I have a million questions for you. And probably one that a lot of people will be thinking about here is we we've talked about policymakers and trying to change the system and the way that the systems are, but where do you start with something like that?

SPEAKER_00: 23:19

That's wonderful. I've been doing a lot of research. I've been running a lot of experiments in different countries with the sport, including Australia, Perth, Victoria, New South Wales, and uh South Australia, Admiral. I've done experiments. I've done experiments in China. I was just in living there for the past six years about education reform. First thing we think should do some wonderful things, which doesn't happen. No system does wonderful things. No system is able to innovate the system respond to the innovations. The Australian education system, the Victorian South Wales system, they serve too many people. They have to serve. So don't you second thing, every system has done innovations, but they're not true innovations. They are what I call changes that don't make a difference. They make a lot of changes with the Melbourne Declaration, the curriculum reformation, the dental testing, the teacher retraining. You've done all of those. Over the last 50 years, has education basically improved. No, you look a lot of data. They should stop doing that and they just maintain the testing. And then, third, when you talk about reform, I'm sure you guys have right. We always talk about reform at scale. We reform the entire school, entire system, everybody has legs. No, that's the big mistake. You know why technology advances? We have a new technology, you don't require everybody to buy it. But it's there by some early adopters. Then it has a chance to survive to try it. But in education, we don't. We use one system, replace another system. We think that's bad. So education, the pendulum stream, and bets when in a few years, direct instruction is good. In another few years, project-based learning is good because we try to replace everybody. So the new approach is what I call school within a school. You maintain whatever you're doing, but you open new possibilities, you create a new market of the new idea. I bet no matter where you are, every school will have a few students, a few teachers, a few parents who want something new. That's what I call diversify. Diversify this. So if you go to Austin's College, it's a great traditional school, doing very well, it's an independent school, and this is the first. But they opened a new school called the studio school in a Fremantle market. Another, I think opening another one because that serves a different kind of student, a different kind of education. In China, we've been many. I think it's impossible to change China's schools. We've been doing it for six years. We've been expanding. We start with two classes. Now we got I don't know how many students are involved in this new idea. So we talk about personalization, finding solving problems of the basic idea, and then connect it with others, but then you don't do it with every student. You start with small. Give the new idea a chance to try without losing your traditional approaches. It's very successful if anyone is interested. Contact me. We're going to do a little conference in December. How it's going. It's possible to change, but don't start with a system response to changes.

SPEAKER_03: 27:03

And just to pick up on what you said there about December and that conference, is that gonna be in Perth?

SPEAKER_00: 27:10

December, I will be in Chongqing, China.

SPEAKER_03: 27:12

Okay. Next April there will be some conferences. Beautiful. And so you're back out in Australia around about the kind of April, May time next year?

SPEAKER_00: 27:21

Yeah, I will be definitely back in April. I'll be back in May in Counter Valley to work with the Catholic school system.

SPEAKER_03: 27:29

Oh, beautiful. And if anyone here was interested in connecting with you and finding out more about your your work while you're here, how could they do that?

SPEAKER_00: 27:38

They can find on my website zaolearning.com, zaollearning.com, or they can follow me on X now. I don't use it off, but you can find it up. They can also connect me on my LinkedIn, they can find me at Yungzhao. Or if they have any connection, just send me an email. That's quick, youngzaoeducation at gmail.com. Thanks, Chris. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_03: 28:02

Thanks, Jung. And another one, just you how does all of this fit within the ATAR scores, year 12 exams, university access, the curriculum? Is that still the same lines as we've got to innovate and not expect the system to change around us? Or what about when so many of us are working towards all those structures?

SPEAKER_00: 28:23

Well, I think it's it's irrelevant. Right now, even at data stories, once you move down below 70%, it's really meaningless. And but then there are so many universities taking students like below like third percentile and 40%, you shouldn't even use it because you are attracting different kinds of students. Why would you I think schools called in the top 10%, then basically let the rest go to waste. You don't have to do it. I'm not against any system if you want to use it. You know, I'm sure that always people want to use it. I'm really encouraging people who cannot succeed in the traditional way to seek new ways instead of trying to band their heads against the word I will beat you, I will be the number one. You can't be number one, there's only one number one. But I think people need to accept that. I think school leaders, Justin, you might have teachers, school leaders have this fanciful vision that we can help improve our school so we can do that. It's in a competition model. Why would you do that? Mathematically, it's impossible because we're talking about everybody is above average. Is that possible? It is possible only when you have many bell curves. If you have many bell curves, it's possible. You can be above the average in height, I can be above average in weight, I can be above average in terms of number of hair. I think it's different ways to rethink. But unless you accept different bell curves, you are always trying to bang your head against somebody else. So that's why I think we solve the equity problem. We cannot. Use the same standard. We should measure opportunities for others.

SPEAKER_03: 30:05

I like that. And how are we measuring those opportunities for others? Maybe that's a question we need to be asking more in education rather than measuring grades. Measure opportunities.

SPEAKER_00: 30:16

Chris, no, that's so powerful. You should tell people a lot. Schools keep using reading and mapping source to measure. They don't measure how we have served students. We are forcing teachers, school leaders, to treat schools like emergency rooms to fix children with reading and lit and literacy. As in everything like this, you cannot, because it's impossible. There is a limitation in that. I know we gotta measure the opportunities. We do not measure the outcomes. People have different outcomes. How do you compare your beautiful actors? They are great in what they do. When you take another mathematician, a biologist, a technician, somebody who makes read croissant in a restaurant. That's equally good. We should not set up fancy, impossible, unreasonable, illogical goals for everybody. Do the same.

SPEAKER_03: 31:16

Yeah, absolutely. Although I think Australia definitely punches above its weight in the Hollywood actors. We seem to have a fair few Australians in Hollywood movies. I think we must have some good actors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:28

I just want to end with one thing. It's it's possible to change. We should hit the hole. So I think change is possible. Let's do that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 31:38

Yongs, thank you so much for giving us your time this afternoon. I also fully appreciate that you've been doing it in transit uh after significant delays and and breakdowns at airports. And so really appreciate that you've still fought through to be here with us and give us some time. I know you're probably looking forward to just getting checked into your hotel. Thank you from Justin. Thank you from everybody listening. We really appreciate you giving us a bit of your thoughts this afternoon. Thank you so much. Exactly as Jong said, we can make change and change that will create a difference. And that's what we're trying to do with some of these series. So please follow us. Please keep in touch with us. Thank you for a bit of your time this afternoon. And Justin, any final parting words or thoughts from you?

SPEAKER_02: 32:25

No, other than to all the educators, thank you for your work. We know there's amazing things happening in schools across Australia. And I would say, as much as we spoke a lot about systems and maybe systems ineffectiveness today, we know that the people on the ground with students are the conscience of any system. And I want to thank you for that work you do each and every day.

SPEAKER_03: 32:47

And this has actually helped provide some language to something that people have been trying to say about schools for years. And so I'm so glad that even if one person in the audience was able to find some words and some language to describe how they feel and to describe their purpose and hope and the opportunities and some of those things that we've talked about, then I'm really pleased that we had this. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a wonderful evening, stay safe, stay well, and hope you also have a lovely, restful weekend when it comes. Thanks, everyone.