The Lost Boys - Critical Readings

I'm currently in the midst of teaching Bram Stoker's Dracula for Preliminary HSC Extension English 1 as part of the module Texts, Culture and Value and really enjoying it. At the crux of the course is the idea of exploring a key text (in this case, Dracula) and the subsequent reiterations of its ideas in other media and contexts. For most of Term 1 my class looked at Dracula and a range of critical readings that deal with the vampire myth promulgated by Stoker's text. Finding academic texts related to Dracula wasn't difficult, in fact - the difficult part is sifting through the muck to find those two or three diamonds that fit my educational context and aren't going to just leave my students feeling confused. 

The tricky part is looking at a text that parallels, challenges or offers alternatives to the key text. Vampires are everywhere in our culture, and I settled on the 1987 film The Lost Boys as a different enough take that comes with its own set of values, but then finding some non-fiction writing that explored these values was the harder part.  

Two good ones that present very different interpretations on the film can be found here:

• Boomers, Neglect and 'The Lost Boys' at 25 - this criticism focuses on Lucy's characterisation as a neglectful mother who has been corrupted by the wave of feminism that empowered women in the 1970s and '80s.
• 'The Lost Boys' Subtly Radical Vision of Family - an opposing and more positive viewpoint offered on the same online news source, albeit published five years later.

Here's another piece that discusses the way the film uses vampires to explore the values of its time:

The Lost Boys as Dark Future: The Anxieties of the 1980s Immortalised

The film's prologue plays out like a silent film with its minimal dialogue, broad action conveyed through body language, and self-contained narrative. It also acts as a summary of one of the film's overarching themes; society's increasing fear of wayward youth, exemplified by this sequences's depiction of David's gangs of 'Lost Boys' as violent, animalistic, scruffy, uncontrollable, and (with their long hair, piercings, and midriff-baring tanktops) somewhat gender-fluid.

The anxiety of the older generation had been on the rise ever since teens had emerged in the 1950s with an explosion of motorbikes, leather jackets, rock 'n' roll, and the apathetic retort of "what have you got?" when asked what they were, exactly, rebelling against. In the 1980s this fear hit an all new high with the skyrocketing divorce rates of America's post-feminist landscape provoking increased concern over the demise of the traditional family structure. Suddenly youth culture never seemed more dangerous.

Lucy and her two sons, Michael and Sam, arrive in Santa Carla (the supposed 'murder capital' of the world), in a freshly father-free state. Mention is made of an unpleasant separation and neither boy  seems overly concerned with the absence of their dad, though both seem resentful of having to move in with their Grandpa. The film's theme of disaffected youth becomes amplified during the opening credits as the viewer is treated to a montage of unkempt and nameless teenagers lazily holding up walls while smoking cigarettes and aggressively gazing off into the middle of nowhere. This is quickly followed by some shots of a wall plastered in a multitude of missing posters - a sad but familiar sight to Americans living in the Reagan era with ubiquitous materialistic pressure and rising crime rates.

By night, Santa Carla transforms into a heaving mass of teenage flesh, hundreds of bodies pressing against each other in an insatiable urge to party while a muscular chain-wearing saxophonist gyrates suggestively on a stage. It's a mildly disturbing sight, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but the sexual undertones are made obvious enough to highlight every parent's worst nightmare regarding letting their teenage kids out at night. It's all too much for Michael and he becomes mesmerised by Star, a homeless girl with mysterious connections to the Lost Boys. In the words of his younger brother, he is now at the mercy of his sex glands.

From here, Michael is lured into David's gang of vampires through a series of initiation rites that mimic the bonding rituals of teenage boys. Step by step, David pushes Michael closer to becoming a vampire - testing his resolve in an allegorical fashion that demonstrates the seductive power of peer pressure. Michael is unable to resist and he becomes a vampire. He gets his ear pierced and, much to the annoyance of his mother, begins wearing sunglasses inside. (This is where divorce will lead you! Your kid will become a vampire!) The relationship between mother and son becomes strained, and the distance between them grows as Michael becomes closer with David and Star.

Nearly every element in The Lost Boys can be seen as reflective of the breakdown of the nuclear family. The Lost Boys are the metaphorical forgotten boys of parents no longer able to able to provide guidance or responsible supervision; a twisted take on the Peter Pan narrative that sees David and his crew taking great delight in flying from victim in exchange for staying young forever. When local video store owner Max comes on the scene as a potential suitor for Lucy, her younger son Sam becomes obsessed with trying to prove that the man is a vampire, an allegory for the resent felt by children for adults who seek to replace their absent parents. The idea of the blended family - a unit made up of two single parents and their own sets of kids - is revealed as the ultimate horror in the film's final scenes. And the role of Grandpa in saving the day at the very end of the film also demonstrates the shifting nature of the family unit, with those in extended family roles now playing a bigger part in the lives of their children - helping to care for their grandchildren while single parents work to make ends meet.

As far as new takes on the vampire myth go, The Lost Boys provides a new perspective that represents the concerns of its time. David both adheres to an subverts the conventions associated with the vampire, providing the gender-fluid mesmerism of Count Dracula whilst subverting the stoic nature of such a character. These 1980s vampires are immortalised in teenage form, and so it makes perfect sense for the Lost Boys to seek nothing more than to party every night and revel in being forever young. The seductive nature of this lifestyle is understandable and makes it easy for the audience to buy into Michael's quick transformation. 

What's less palatable, however, is the idea that a single parent automatically seals the fate of their children as doomed figures. The fact that Michael's redemption at the film's end primarily comes thanks to the intervention of his younger brother and grandfather speaks volumes about the filmmakers' lack of faith in the ability of teenagers to advocate for themselves in this bold landscape of crumbling morality. Lucy's resignation to becoming undead when faced with the threat of vampirism is also similarly problematic.

The above reading is provided here as a PDF. Students can read this as a 'primer' before watching the film so that they might actively look out for particular values and ideas while they watch.

Island by the City: Manly Quarantine Station and the North Head

Over the last few days I've been at the Quarantine Station at Sydney Harbour's North Head, writing and workshopping poetry as part of a writer's retreat run by the indefatigable Kerri-Jane Burke. The station (styled as 'Q-Station' by the organisations that maintain and staff the area) occupies a unique position in Australia's landscape as a heritage-listed historical site situated within the confines of Sydney Harbour National Park. The Quarantine Station itself operated for 150 years until 1984 and is now known as a hotspot for ghost tours and historical preservation, and provides the perfect backdrop for creative observation.

What struck me most about this location was the extreme contrast between the surrounding harbour, with all its buildings and skyscrapers and landmarks crowded along the coastline, and this little three-point-odd square kilometre pocket of history and nature. Between the colonial huts, unmarked one-way roads, and general hilliness and isolation, the Q Station feels like a self-sufficient island. There's something incredible and mildly shocking about standing on an incline, staring out across the water at the city lights with that distinctive Centrepoint skyline, and being surrounded by dense foliage that shelters a Ringtail Possum with a joey on its back just a few centimetres from my arm. 

Here are some pics and observations from the last few days:

The Boiler Room

In the background you can see a big smoke stack chimney; this is 'the Boiler Room', the upmarket restaurant situated within the Quarantine Station. Businesses such as this help to supplement the funding of the heritage site (which goes beyond the remit of National Parks NSW). Many of the buildings in this area date from the 1830s, and the Boiler Room is situated near the wharf where ships would unload their passengers for quarantine purposes. Across it's 150 years some 500+ people died here, which actually isn't that much when you consider that the site serviced 13 000 arrivals in its time of operation.

Engravings

The rocks near the wharf are covered in hastily-made engravings representing the years of arrivals at the Quarantine Station, and indicate the vast array of ships and cultures that passed through here. The RMS Lusitania mentioned above isn't the same one from WWI, it's an earlier ship that the later one was named after. Note also the flag scratched in by some early Japanese arrivals. The rocks also feature inscriptions from Arabic and Chinese passengers who alighted here in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and are a wonderful insight into the early beginnings of Australia's multiculturalism.

Shower Block

Pictured above are the First Class shower blocks (you can tell that they're first class because the dividers go all the way up rather than to waist height). Upon arrival the passengers would be told to remove all items and clothes, wash themselves in carbolic acid whilst being watched by quarantine staff, and then come back to clothes that had been blasted-free of assumed diseases. Prior to this shower system (implemented circa the late 19th century) the arrivals would watch all their possessions get put to the flame on the beach. 

Sterilisation

By most accounts, the process of sterilisation at the Quarantine Station was imprecise in the early 19th century due to the pervading belief in the miasma theory. Later in its history, in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, there were these huge lockable vaults where everything was railroaded in and exposed to extreme steaming. Clothes would survive but imagine the effect on cardboard-lined suitcases and books...

Hospital

What you see above are the actual beds used in the early 1900s, which have been preserved in the Quarantine Station Hospital at North Head. Circa 1918, these beds were home to many returned WWI soldiers suffering from Spanish Influenza.  Other common diseases of the time were Scarlet Fever, Typhus, and Smallpox.

Graveyard

There are three graveyards at the Quarantine Station, only one of which still retains its headstones. The above image shows the location of the one of the cemeteries that no longer has markers for the graves.

Third Cemetery 

These gravestones are found on the other side of the Head and contain those who passed away at the Quarantine Station during the turn of the century and earlier. It's a very quiet spot, and there is still a lot of archaeological work being done here to establish identities for the worn-away sandstone headstones. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the cemetery is the way it looks over the harbour and the Pacific from its serene vantage point.

The Funicular Stairway
I had a hard time with these stairs due to their length and height. I don't deal with heights very well so I found it much easier to do these stairs at nighttime rather than in the day when I could see between each step. These stairs sit in place of the steep railway that used to transport items from the wharf to the other buildings.

Wildlife

The most surprising aspect of this little national park is the prevalence of native wildlife in such close proximity to the city. Ringtail Possums run along the length of the Funicular Stairway's rails, fearless in regards to the human foot traffic alongside them. We also saw this Echidna nuzzling about in the dirt on our way back to our cottage one night - it seemed completely unperturbed by my presence as I crouched down next to it and at one point it looked up at me with its little beaky nose before returning to its antwork. 

Bandicoots

North Head is home to an endangered population of Long-nosed Bandicoots. I've driven through this area before and registered their presence, hoped to see them one day, and was happy to return to Manly in the hope that I might see one. They emerge at night and the area is apparently full of them. On the first night I was here I stepped out of the restaurant to get some air and looked down to see the little guy above inquisitively weave between my feet in his search for food. I watched as he systematically investigated each table and chair before disappearing into a nearby kitchen door! One of the pictures above also shows the little pockets they dig everywhere in their search for worms. 

Programme

As you can see, the days were spent doing a variety of activities relating to poetry. The poet and writer Kirly Saunders from Red Room Poetry visited on the Tuesday to talk over a few techniques and strategies she likes to use, and we workshopped some great ideas while exploring The Disappearing, one of the creative apps pioneered by Red Room Poetry. 

Anyway, it was a fantastic opportunity to work with other writing English teachers, share valuable feedback, and just have a space where I could write and experiment with different styles.

Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment

UNSW, where Ignite the Spark 2018 took place

About a week ago I attended the Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference. This Professional Learning was mainly focused on assessment in relation to giftedness but what was most interesting across the conference was that, underneath a rhetoric built around excitement for assessment and the need for teacher quality, the real subtext of most of the sessions seemed to be that the HSC Exams have become obsolete and that the requirements handed down from NESA and the DoE aren't represented by this increasingly irrelevant process.

But, like it or not, the HSC exams remain largely unchanged and this means that Stage 6 has become an increasingly challenging transition phase between all the requirements of 21st century learning covered by Years K-10 and the need to perform well in a 19th century-styled examination at the end of Year 12. 

Enter Lisa O'Neill, the Head Teacher of HSIE at St Mary's Senior High, who presented a brilliant seminar at Ignite the Spark that centred on how we can better meet the challenges set forth by the demands of the HSC in 2018 and beyond by differentiating our assessment of Year 11 and 12. In her presentation Lisa identified our tendency as teachers to focus on preparing students for exams, and the way that our assessment tasks lead towards the HSC exams, and questioned the capacity of these assessments in actually helping these students to learn. We can't eradicate the exam but there is a concerted need to shift our thinking so that students become more skill-focused. NESA seems to be acknowledging this through the mandating of only 1 formalised examination per subject, per year. There is an undeniable tension, though, between the push for assessment in Stage 6 to become less focused on preparing for the HSC exams and the HSC exam-focused culture that already exists in NSW schools.

Here are some things we need to consider:

• NESA syllabuses include a requirement that each KLA assesses their students using assessment as, of, and for learning. I've tended to interpret this as meaning that not all assessment tasks should be based on establishing data that assesses student ability (assessment of learning).
• About 60% of domestic university student enrollments from 2014-2017 were non-ATAR, which suggests that universities are becoming less concerned with the HSC examination when it comes to evaluating who they admit into their courses.

Getting back to Lisa O'Neill's Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment presentation, she takes her lead from John Hattie in approaching differentiation as something that "relates more to addressing students' different phases of learning from novice to capable to proficient rather than merely providing different activities to different (groups of) students" (from Hattie's Visible Learning for Teaching). O'Neill also piqued my interest by using this to interpret the as, of and for dichotomy of assessment in a more holistic sense - that each individual assessment task should encapsulate all three of these forms of assessment. 

I think I'm down with that. 

Linking her work to the Professional Standards, O'Neill highlighted Standard 1, IE. 'Know Your Students', and clarified her interpretation of differentiation as having one broad task that allows access points for all students. In a nutshell, assessment:

• Should provide students with multiple ways to achieve.
• Can provide access points for students moving through a spectrum of novice to capable to proficient.

O'Neill presents on the Assessment Cycle of Love

 Here are some other recommendations made by O'Neill:

1. Use what she refers to as the 'Assessment Cycle of Love', a diagrammatic tool for designing assessment, to identify gaps in your tasks. Are the outcomes, marking criteria, feedback, and process of assessment all as per NESA advice? Are assessment as, of and for learning all functional within the task?
2. Staff evaluation should be an integral part of the process, with consideration of whether a task has allowed students to set learning goals, and what skills students were taught while undertaking the task.  
3. Know the data - use SMART, SCOUT, our own assessment tasks, and the Educator Calculator (a data tool for assessment that can be found at the DoE Centre for Education on Statistics and Evaluation).
4. Consider the need for access points in tasks so students don't become disheartened when an assessment task has shown them that they can't do anything in preparation for the HSC exams. They might be able to access a band in the marking criteria, but can they access a skill set?
5. Include feedback in the marking criteria. Feedback is pivotal for Stage 6 assessment and all criteria should be a form of assessment for learning (IE. What can teachers and students alike gain from reading this criteria in preparing for future learning?)
6. Can we shift the student mindset away from marks and towards skills? Have students make an appointment for feedback conferencing and use this time for students to annotate their own response. Identity their areas of weaknesses ahead of time and get them to look for these weaknesses in the task so that they can establish learning goals.

Some Useful Links

"Crunching the Numbers" - A report from the Mitchell Institute on the use and usefulness of the ATAR.
Student Conferencing and Feedback  - providing students with 1:1 feedback to facilitate personal growth.
Assessment For Learning - an alternative approach in using separate diagnostic assessment with students.

Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference: Ways of Assessing Giftedness

On Friday I attended the Ignite the Spark Conference at UNSW in the hope of learning some new stuff about assessment. Associate Professor David Blaazer, the Deputy Dean for UNSW Arts and Social Sciences, opened up the conference after a reflective Welcome to Country delivered by a representative of the Dharawal people, and this led into an address from DoE Director of Secondary Education Lila Mularczyk, who spoke enthusiastically about the conference's role in highlighting the need to tie our assessment practice to current policy. 

Assessment is a funny beast though.

All teachers do it so it's not KLA specific, and the need for Professional Development around assessment can sometimes get relegated elsewhere due to its non-denominational nature. With this in mind, it's always interesting to see who shows up to these kinds of conferences. Suffice too say - there were a lot of teachers here and the presenters represented many different sectors of the education system - from primary to secondary, private to public, and including counsellors, psychologists, NESA representatives, DoE corporate, and other agencies who help care for our kids.  

The keynote address (which this blog focuses on) was delivered by Dr. Jae Yup Jared Jung, and focused on his research relating to assessment in gifted education, which represented a systematic review he has published in the Journal of Advanced Academics (28, 163-203). NESA considers 'differentiation' to include adjusting and modifying assessment activities in order to cater for both individual students and larger groups, and the idea of assessing students to locate giftedness is accordingly mandated. It should be noted, however, that there is no real standardisation for catering to the gifted in NSW and this is why Dr Jung's research is so incredibly relevant.

Dr. Jung demonstrates what a non-verbal ability test looks like.

The Research

In his search of research literature from 2005 to 2016, Dr. Jung essayed each of the major academic databases and the reference lists of retrieved articles found in the top research journals. By doing this, he found the following:

• 148 articles in total that dealt with the topic of assessment in gifted education.
• A clear majority within this of 128 articles that deal with identification of gifted students.
• Only 14 articles that covered evaluations of gifted programs.
• And just 8 articles that deal with learning growth. 

The majority of the presentation went on to cover the ways that gifted students are identified (since this is where the majority of research focuses). Dr Jung identifies two major categories of common assessment: Objective (or Traditional) assessments, which are quantitative and result in a number used to identify ability, and Subjective (or Non-Traditional), which involve qualitative judgements made by teachers, psychologists, counsellors, parents, etc. 

Objective Assessments

1. IQ Tests

These involve problem solving, utilising logic, and demonstrating recognition of patterns or relationships. Examples of this kind of testing includes the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V), the Stanford Binet 5 test, the Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test, the Cognitive Abilities Test (CoGAT), the Australian Council for Educational Research General Abilities Test (AGAT), Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), and the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test II (NNAT-II).   

Benefits: The WISC-V is designed to measure five different areas (verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, visual spatial ability, working memory, and processing speed) and therefore allows for the recording of strengths and weaknesses in said areas. The Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test is an abbreviated IQ test that can be given by teachers rather than psychologists, and the CoGAT and AGAT can be administered in groups rather than individually (which is practical for schools). The Raven's and Naglieri methods are nonverbal ability tests that assess students through the use of visual-spatial stimuli and can be useful because they reduce the reliance on a student's prior educational history or ability to speak English as a first language (or at all).

Concerns: The WISC-V and Stanford Binet 5 tests must be administered by appropriate accredited professionals (psychologists) and are designed for 1:1 testing. These can therefore be quite expensive; $1000-2000 per individual student.

Quote: "Aw, c'mon! Tell me which Poplar Tree is the tallest!!!" The Window Effect refers to the idea that if we assess whether students can achieve to a certain point then we can't see what they could do beyond this point.

2. Above Level Tests

Achievement tests designed for older students in higher grades, with 'higher ceilings' (see cartoon above). These tests are difficult for the majority of testees to 'top out', and assist in the search for talented individuals whose abilities may go beyond the scope of most assessment tasks. Examples include American-style examinations such as the SATs, ACTs, and EXPLORE tests. 

Benefits: Allows for the identification of outliers: the small percentage of people whose ability does not fit on the regular scale of assessment. This style of testing is also designed for specific age groups, so it allows for more targeted assessing of students.

Concerns: Results can be disheartening for the majority of students who undertake the test, so this data usually needs to be kept confidential and for teacher purposes only.

3. Computer Adaptive Tests

Online testing instruments that adapt questions to suit student ability, and scale each question based on prior performance in the same test so that the student is constantly working within their zone of proximal development. Abbreviated as 'CATs'.

Benefits: Can be a very efficient way to gather data as the computer generates reports automatically. It also differentiates the test for each individual student, which means no two tests are the same.

Concerns: CATs can be calibrated too closely to a 'pass-fail' dichotomy that doesn't allow for a diverse data set. These tests can also only measure as far as the student goes - when a student or the test finishes we may still not know what the student is truly capable of.

Subjective Assessments

1. Nominations

Having 'gifted' students nominated for recognition allows for us to consider the unique perspectives of various groups familiar with gifted students. One such group are parents, who are a subjective source of information but can also provide lots of information that we don't or can't have access to otherwise, such as milestones like the moment the child first spoke or formed a sentence.

Benefits: Nominations allow for assessment of different types of giftedness, and can also be a useful way of incorporating the input of a student's individual teachers (therefore making them part of the consultative process, which is useful and supportive in the formation of any kind of school-based gifted program).

Concerns: This process relies on human judgement and therefore lacks the psychometric rigour of I.Q. testing and similar methodologies.

2. Performance-Based Assessment

These are assessments that look more like subject-specific assessment tasks. This style of assessment could be: asking students to act in a prescribed way to create a product or a response, such as a written composition, or a teacher observing students in problem-based learning activities.

Benefits: The familiarity of this kind of testing will appeal to teachers already used to gathering data in this way. This method is also fairly open-ended and can elicit a wide range of results.

Concerns: There may be a lack of clarity in how it should be scored as each teacher will mark to the criteria in their own particular way. It can also be more time-consuming than objective methods of assessment as each individual student requires an individualised evaluation of their work.

3. Dynamic Assessment

Of all the things Dr. Jung spoke about in his keynote, I found his discussion of Dynamic Assessment the most interesting. I probably found this the most interesting thing about the whole conference and I can see myself looking forward into it in the immediate future.

Dynamic Assessment is a process that involves interaction between the teacher and the student, with a focus on how the student responds to educational interventions. It's not about the student's response to the task but about measuring how a student improves or reacts to a task. There are two main kinds: 

• The first is the 'Sandwich Format', in which a student is pretested, given an intervention, and then post-tested. In the post-test the level of improvement in the student is measured in comparison tot he pretest. 
• The second kind is the 'Cake Format', in which a student is given a task with a series of items and assistance is provided only when the student encounters difficulties. The amount of instances, or types of intervention, are then measured to show how much growth the student exhibited, or how much/little help they needed in independently adapting to the demands of the task.

Benefits: This process deliberately acknowledges the inequality of educational opportunity among students - as each student comes to us with their own unique context this means that their giftedness may have been either nurtured in the past or completely ignored. The result is that there isn't an even playing field when it comes to trying to 'see' the natural level of giftedness in a student. Using Dynamic Assessment minimises the role of performance in previous assessment tasks as this form of assessment focuses on observing the student's capacity in adapting to difficulty.

Concerns: A high degree of standardisation is needed when training teachers to administer this process of assessment. As such it can be time-consuming, resource and staff-intensive, and involves a lot of effort.

Dr. Jung

Further Observations of Dr. Jung

1. Multiple Criteria Identification

With so many different methods of assessment available to identify gifted students the consensus seems to be that multiple criteria should be used together. This allows for the minimisation of bias and multiple opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to demonstrate giftedness. So, with this in mind, Dr. Jung asserts that we should use both objective and subjective methods. Some other things to take into account:

• We need to ensure that we're using instruments appropriate to our context - this means look at current student numbers, demographics of the region, etc.
• Identification needs to take place as early as possible and there should also be training provided for the teachers identifying the students.
• If using multiple criteria, the data should be collected and analysed concurrently so no students get left behind.

2. Disadvantaged Groups in Gifted Programs

Dr. Jung also expressed several concerns in relation to the under-representation of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. He posited that this happens due to several factors:

• Inappropriate/unfamiliar content in assessment tasks.
• Pre-defined conceptions of giftedness could be inherent in assessment tasks.
• Pre-conceptions of teachers could lead to unconscious bias.
• Socio-economic factors.
• Lack of a mechanism for universal assessment of gifted students in NSW.

This last point is a big issue with giftedness in general. Not all schools test for giftedness and the ones that do may do so in very different ways, with specific ideas of what giftedness means. Many schools have 'self-select', 'opportunity', or 'academic-focus' classes but the criteria used to create these classes often have little to do with natural giftedness and more to do with prior performance.

Nevertheless, as we move forward into the 21st century, I have strong hopes that NSW will inch its way closer to some kind of standardised mandate to identify and better support those who may be hiding in plain sight.

Dr. Jung's research can be found here, but you will need access to academic journals in order to read it in full.