A fair go for students in poverty: Australia

Getting a fair go' is a saying many Australians recognize. It is commonly understood as a call for a just treatment and a value that speaks of equality for all, regardless of social and cultural background. 'Fair go' is also an equity and social principle underpinning the New South Wales Department of Education's Priority Schools Programs. As a principle, it means students from all backgrounds and circumstances have opportunities for educational success, and this success is strengthened by the pedagogies of their teachers. This chapter tells the pedagogical stories of five teachers who epitomize this principle. They teach in low socio-ecomonic status (SES) communities and have been identified for the ways they engage students in their learning and, consequently, open up critical possibilities that their classrooms will work towards more equitable student outcomes. The teachers work in different contexts, with different groups of students and across the early, middle and later years of schooling. Their classroom stories are part of a wider picture about student engagement undertaken in the Teachers for a Fair Go research project. This project is the latest phase of the Fair Go Project (FGP) and involved intensive case study research into the classroom pedagogies of 30 'exemplary' engaging teachers of students in poverty, exploring the causal impact of their work on the outcomes of their students. Case studies used a co-researching methodology, inviting and sanctioning teachers as equal key players in the collection and analysis of data about their classrooms. What follows is a description of the theoretical framing around student engagement that has been developed in the FGP, and deployed as a methodological and analytical tool for the case studies of the exemplary teachers. From this framing and analysis, a number of pedagogical themes that characterize these teachers' classrooms are emerging. These are then presented and illustrated through the five teachers' pedagogical stories.