Geoff Masters

How can we unlock every child’s potential? What would it take for every student to learn successfully at school and be well prepared for their future? How does schooling itself leave some students behind? Internationally recognised education adviser Geoff Masters AO challenges what most of us take for granted about learning at school and lifts the lid on vast differences in students’ performances and needs within each grade. Readers are invited to consider an alternative way of organising learning – one that is focused on meeting individual learners where they are, and that is built on an understanding of learning as long-term growth. Masters makes a case for reforming school learning systems to better target individuals’ differing needs, to give all students the time they require to learn, and to build every student’s confidence in their capacity for success. A must read for teachers, parents and anybody interested in how schooling needs to change.

How can we unlock every child’s potential? What would it take for every student to learn successfully at school and be well prepared for their future? How does schooling itself leave some students behind? Internationally recognised education adviser Geoff Masters AO challenges what most of us take for granted about learning at school and lifts the lid on vast differences in students’ performances and needs within each grade. Readers are invited to consider an alternative way of organising learning – one that is focused on meeting individual learners where they are, and that is built on an understanding of learning as long-term growth. Masters makes a case for reforming school learning systems to better target individuals’ differing needs, to give all students the time they require to learn, and to build every student’s confidence in their capacity for success. A must read for teachers, parents and anybody interested in how schooling needs to change.

A Commitment to Growth: Essays on Education is an edited collection of materials that Geoff Masters has published over the last seven years, including the ground-breaking Reforming Educational Assessment (Australian Education Review; No. 57). This collection is mostly comprised of shorter pieces such as the influential Five challenges in Australian school education and other essays and posts relating to themes of: effective use of assessment; focus on growth and progress; and school and system improvement. The four sections of the book are: Part 1: 'Big Five' Challenges in School Education. Part 2: Is School Reform Working? Part 3: Reconceptualising Educational Assessment. Part 4: Schools as Learning Organisations. The editors have drawn on this body of writing by Professor Masters in an attempt to tell the story of these past seven years. If the beginning of this story was the publication of Reforming Educational Assessment: Imperatives, principles and challenges (AER 57), the release of the report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, might be seen as the end of the beginning. With a greater understanding and emerging consensus of the challenges, implications and needed approaches, the next chapter in the story must focus on what Masters has called 'the hard work of improvement'.

A Commitment to Growth: Essays on Education is an edited collection of materials that Geoff Masters has published over the last seven years, including the ground-breaking Australian Education Review 57 Reforming Educational Assessment. It is mostly comprised of shorter pieces such as the influential Five challenges in Australian school education and other essays and posts relating to themes of effective use of assessment, focus on growth and progress and school and system improvement. The four sections of the book are:Part 1: ‘Big Five’ Challenges in School EducationPart 2: Is School Reform Working? Part 3: Reconceptualising Educational AssessmentPart 4: Schools as Learning OrganisationsThe editors have drawn on this body of writing by Professor Masters in an attempt to tell the story of these past seven years. If the beginning of this story was the publication of Reforming Educational Assessment: Imperatives, principles and challenges (AER 57), the release of the report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, might be seen as the end of the beginning. With a greater understanding and emerging consensus of the challenges, implications and needed approaches, the next chapter in the story must focus on what Masters has called ‘the hard work of improvement’.