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Student Action Teams:
Implementing Productive Practices in Primary and Secondary School Classrooms
Student Action Teams outlines practical ways to implement such teams in primary and secondary school classrooms. It tells the story of primary and secondary schools in Melbourne's northern suburbs that are currently organising Student Action Teams and reflecting on their implications for their teaching and learning.
The basic ideas about Student Action Teams are fairly simple - but with profound implications for schools and communities. Student Action Teams are just what the words suggest: teams of students who, as part of their school curriculum, adopt a community issue that they care passionately about, research it, decide what needs to be changed or improved, and take action to achieve that.
These teams are:
• Purposeful: the learning that takes place is seen by students to have immediately useful purposes; and
• Productive: the work that students do produces practical and significant oucomes over and above individuals' own learning, and beyond the classroom.
Student Action Teams can be set up by individual schools or clusters of schools around issues such as safety, the environment, values, recreation, bullying, health and so on. The Student Action Teams in this cluster of 10-15 schools have been researching and acting around traffic safety and the environment.
This book outlines the basic principles of Student Action Teams, summarises what has been learnt about their practical operation, and tells the story of successful approaches and outcomes in two projects. The principles and approaches outlined here can be used to guide developments in any school - acting alone or in a cluster.
Student Action Teams: Implementing Productive Practices was first published in April 2006, and copies are available from Connect.
Order your copies now for $30 each (including postage and handling). If you're a current subscriber to Connect, we'll again let you have copies at a discounted rate: $25 each including postage! (Add $5 per copy for postage outside Australia; all payments in AUD.)
10% discount for 10 or more copies; 20% discount for 50 copies or more.
To order, see contact details on Connect home page.