Audio Transcript

[00:00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:16]
Ben Newsome: Welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Big week this week, and especially this week as I record this, it is National Science Week 2019, which means science is going off. It really is in libraries, in schools, in community events, all over the place. Fizzics has been very busy at this time. For this podcast, we’re speaking with someone who’s very busy herself, Libby Foley, who’s a primary school teacher who first started out as a learning support teacher at Centenary State High School back in 2008, but is truly passionate about mathematics and science education for primary kids and has bounced around Queensland, as you’ll hear in this interview, in all sorts of ways getting STEM going.

[00:01:01]
Ben Newsome: She’s very busy and well-respected when it comes to science and maths education, especially maths. She was the reSolve: Maths by Inquiry champion and a teacher keynote speaker at the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers biennial conference this year in July. She’s been sharing all of her different ideas and teaching workshops at the Queensland Association of Mathematics Teachers Early Years Conference and all sorts of other places. Libby is a very passionate person and has made some very interesting career moves through her time in education, as you’ll hear, but she’s very down to earth and would love to share her ideas with you. Let’s hear from Libby Foley, who’s got a lot to say and we’ve got a lot to learn.

[00:01:46]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:01:58]
Libby Foley: Hello, happy to be here.

[00:02:00]
Ben Newsome: I’m really stoked to have you here, considering just how busy your holidays have been. I always joke, but I don’t really think there’s such thing as a holiday for teachers.

[00:02:10]
Libby Foley: Everyone who’s not a teacher assumes we have these amazing holidays every term, but that’s not reality. So the last two weeks, I’ve just come off of a very busy working holiday. The first week I was doing mad preparations for the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers biennial conference. So I wrote a research paper, I was a teacher keynote speaker, so that involves one hour keynote presentation with a PowerPoint to supplement the words coming out of my mouth. And I ran an hour-long workshop so that there could be some practical sides of a different topic on mathematics I was talking about. So a week of preparation and then a week-long conference, which was fabulous and a really great experience. But long days, you’ve got conference, there’s all the networking and social activities at night and you pretty much just go home to rest, sleep, and hit it again the next day.

[00:03:22]
Ben Newsome: I know those conferences can get insane. I only just got back a couple of weeks ago from ISTE in Florida, the International Society for Technology in Education conference, and I wouldn’t say four days, I’d call it six days straight of just learning throughout the day and then there’s learning slash partying at night, which is crazy because you’re still working and yet it’s now 11 o’clock at night and you’re really tired but there’s still more ideas flowing. These things are insane and you come back exhausted.

[00:03:43]
Libby Foley: Yeah, and the conferences are amazing for going between the lecture style presentations or keynotes or major talks, and then going into workshops which are more practical. It’s also the networking time and connecting with other people. So at lunch or after afternoon and the evening events, they’re also really important where you have conversations and get to know others and industry professionals as well.

[00:04:18]
Ben Newsome: Sounds like you had a blast.

[00:04:21]
Libby Foley: I did, in a very nerdy, exciting kind of way. I had a fabulous time, but I am quite exhausted to hit school again for another term.

[00:04:32]
Ben Newsome: Well, good news is that you’re in good company when we’re talking nerdy because this is a STEM podcast. We’re allowed to do that. It’s a safe space, which is good. So Libby, tell everyone because some people wouldn’t have met you before, I mean those people at that conference absolutely, but you’ve been doing this stuff for quite a while now. What do you do?

[00:04:48]
Libby Foley: I’m a primary school teacher. So I’ve been teaching since 2008 and I’ve gone between learning support teacher and that’s been from Prep all the way through to Year 9 and literacy or in the high school it was maths and science, but also maths and English in the primary school. And I’ve also taught on class Years 2 all the way through to Year 7 and I’ve done some work in Brisbane and most part has actually been bouncing back and forth between the Sunshine Coast at Chevallum State School and Northern Peninsula Area State College, which is the very, very tip of Queensland on the mainland.

[00:05:40]
Ben Newsome: And that’s actually how we first ran into each other.

[00:05:43]
Libby Foley: That is how we ran into each other. So that was in my second stint up there. I taught at Bamaga Junior Campus, and my husband is also a teacher. He was at the high school teaching PE and running camps. We moved to the Sunshine Coast to have our babies. But while we were up there, my mum and dad followed us up there. My mum’s a special needs teacher, and my dad’s a youth support worker, and they stayed when we moved back to the coast. Johnno, my husband, continued to go up to the Cape and run camps and team building sorts of activities with the kids and teachers.

[00:06:24]
Libby Foley: And then he was invited back by the traditional landowners to apply for the principal of the primary school in Injinoo. And so he applied and was successful. So we went back up with our babies, and I taught at Injinoo Junior Campus while he was the head of campus there. And then the high school wanted him, so he moved over to be deputy at the high school campus. And we only moved back again in December. So it’s been a whirlwind.

[00:06:57]
Libby Foley: But yeah, we came across you when I was last up there. So last year, I applied for one of the Advance Queensland Engaging Science Grants, because I love all of the different disciplines in STEM. And being a really remote, isolated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, the children don’t have access like other students do around Australia. So I wanted this grant to try and create a spark, some sort of engagement, curiosity about the world around and connect in with fun activities and professionals.

[00:07:41]
Libby Foley: So I was successful in the grant and we had a couple of professionals from JCU in Cairns fly up and help run activities for National Science Week and share their expertise. And we had you along as well to do virtual excursions in our classrooms and to run a teacher PD workshop for us, which was so much fun.

[00:08:08]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, these things were so fun. And I must say, it was just so cool to meet up with these kids. I mean, connecting via a video conference, sometimes it’s a bit hard to get the feel of the kids’ enthusiasm through a screen because there’s a screen in the way. They didn’t have that at all.

[00:08:26]
Libby Foley: Yeah, and you did so well. I mean, Injinoo doesn’t have mobile reception, so we had everything crossed that the internet was going to be working that day. And you did so well, because you had classrooms with children who don’t speak Standard Australian English as their first or second language, it’s more like a third or so. And just doing the team teaching, it was really cool to have you do a bit on the screen or discuss, and then the teachers and teacher aides going between the kids and interpreting some of the things that they were saying. It was a lot of fun.

[00:09:09]
Ben Newsome: No, absolutely. And one thing I wanted to actually ask, which would actually help people listening who have not sort of applied for these sorts of grants before, is it a massive process?

[00:09:20]
Libby Foley: It’s not a massive process. You just have to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you’re going to go about doing that. For National Science Week this year, it’s become like a seed grant, so they’re not as much monetary value as what it was last year, and that’s to try and kick off a project. So it’s called a seed grant so that you won’t rely on the grants in the future years, it’s just to get your programme up and running and then you can continue with it.

[00:09:58]
Libby Foley: The grant I applied for, it was more money, but being remote, I had to do a lot of ordering of things that had to travel via the boat, so it came on Sea Swift from Cairns. And Cairns, just for a reference point, is 1,000 kilometres south of where I was.

[00:10:21]
Libby Foley: And so also getting Associate Professor Hilary Whitehouse and Dr Cliff Jackson up from James Cook University in Cairns. They were fabulous and stayed with us in teacher accommodation. And the virtual excursions as well. We had to get some resources that typically would be at your local supermarket, but not everything actually was because I was remote.

[00:10:54]
Ben Newsome: Oh, I mean, we’ve seen that before. We’ve done connections into Alaska State Libraries and some of the schools along Alaska and the amount you actually have in common… It’s quite… They fly theirs in rather than boat them in, but the same issues are applied. I do remember actually doing a connection to a school and they were like, “Well, the balloons don’t arrive for three weeks.”

[00:11:16]
Libby Foley: I had a minor panic attack. So in National Science Week, on the Friday, we had a Science Extravaganza Day and we had rotation activities: some were science, some were tech, some were engineering. It was across the school. We had the Bamaga Junior Year 6s coming down for a special Year 6 day as well. And it required a lot of ordering of a variety of materials and one of the orders didn’t get processed properly, or somehow it just… some things didn’t make it through.

[00:11:59]
Libby Foley: So I had received the bulk of goods and there was probably one or two boxes that hadn’t arrived, and it was bits and pieces from pretty much every activity that I had organised for the day. And that was something like 12 different activities. And so it was the week before and I was like, “What am I going to do?” I was making all these Plan Bs and the wonderful groundsman, he raced up to Sea Swift, to the port on the day it came in. It was a Friday and thankfully my boxes were there and he raced it back to the school. He’s like, “You’ve got it, you’ve got it!”

[00:12:39]
Libby Foley: So then I spent the next week just planning out everything and getting all the resources sorted. So that was a close call for me.

[00:12:48]
Ben Newsome: I’d imagine so and it would have had… I mean, it helps your heart keep beating and all that sort of thing.

[00:12:54]
Libby Foley: It does! And it’s like, “Oh no, where am I going to go? I’ve had to order this ages ago, like months ago to get here.”

[00:13:03]
Ben Newsome: But the thing is though, we’ve done connections before whereby things just haven’t arrived. Luckily, via the virtual connections, at least the materials are on the far side. So the other site might have the stuff, the kids just don’t get to do it quite at this time. It’s a learning experience for kids to say, “Look, not everything will go to plan because life gets in the way.”

[00:13:25]
Libby Foley: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s a good life lesson for the kids as well.

[00:13:31]
Ben Newsome: Well done getting that grant and getting a couple of researchers up from JCU, that’s fantastic. And this got recognised, didn’t it?

[00:13:42]
Libby Foley: Yeah. So part of having the grant, you do do a report write-up at the end and they are interested in any media publications that’s been involved with it. So that includes newsletters or newspaper articles in the local paper, Facebook or Instagram, Twitter, whatever the school social media platform is. And I submitted it to the Science Teachers Association of Queensland because those people are very much interested in National Science Week activities.

[00:14:22]
Libby Foley: And they published it in one of their journals. So I got to be the teacher profile in the front, and they published the article in the back of their journal as one of the articles. So that was pretty cool.

[00:14:38]
Ben Newsome: That’s well done. And the thing is though, we’re lucky in that we get to go to like seriously, I can’t even tell you the right number, I don’t know, 60 schools during that week or something like that. The thing is the number of schools who are doing really cool stuff, but then don’t let other people know.

[00:14:56]
Libby Foley: No, I know. And often you feel like you’re in this isolated space, but everyone’s doing the same sort of stuff and everyone’s searching for the same sort of resources and hacks and shortcuts. And we just need to get better at sharing. That would be great if we could get better at sharing.

[00:15:17]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. I mean if you’ve written something up, I mean send it into your local State Science Teachers Association or something. You might have different names for this in other countries, but having it out there for people to read over or even just chatting on Twitter or something like that just to connect with other teachers doing stuff who want to learn from you and you can learn from them.

[00:15:37]
Libby Foley: Yeah, yeah, because like I personally scour all these different places to try and find ideas and what are other people doing or do they have an open day or some sort of event where we can come and see and visit their school or their classrooms. That’s what I’m also interested in.

[00:15:57]
Ben Newsome: And the thing is like, something that you’re clearly also interested in, having just got back from that conference which was around mathematics. I mean this is something you very much deep dive into in the primary sector.

[00:16:07]
Libby Foley: Yes, very much so. I kind of get pulled in two directions because I love science so much and then I also love maths so much and I’m trying to reign myself in in the tech space as well because you can’t do everything at the level that I would like to. But yes, in the primary school, so important to have a really great grasp on the content and to see how it plays out then in high school and how it then leads into future career pathways and industry. And having a solid foundation for the children in primary school is so important. So I do, I do get a bit carried away in the research space of mathematics just because I want to understand it all better and do a better job in the classroom. It’s the same in science. I get a bit carried away in that space too.

[00:17:08]
Ben Newsome: In mathematics education, it can take a whole bunch of different forms for all different age groups. What are some of the things that you’ve seen where you go, “This just works”?

[00:17:20]
Libby Foley: For mathematics, what I personally have been going really deeply into right now is trying to do more in the problem solving and reasoning space, and actually really focusing in on the reasoning. And with that, it’s around establishing routines on a day-to-day, lesson-by-lesson basis so that children are exposed to the language of reasoning and the language of problem solving and working with activities that take them in that direction with the proficiency strands.

[00:18:05]
Libby Foley: Because I think, especially… I don’t know if it’s just a primary school thing or if it goes all the way through, but I feel like we often focus in on the understanding and building procedural fluency. So we just continually practise questions and “Yeah, do the kids get it? Yes.” And you might do a few problem solving bits and pieces along the way, but sometimes it feels like it’s this add-on to maths that “Oh, problem solving is what you do at the end,” when it’s something that you do the whole way along. And it’s just about developing that routine in the classroom. And it’s fun! You do lots of fun hands-on engaging manipulative inquiry-style lessons and you can make it accessible to all learners just by having that low-floor, high-ceiling approach.

[00:18:50]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. I mean, I just got back… actually I was in a rush just to be able to make this podcast on time with you. We’re heavily involved right now with the holiday programmes and one of them’s being delivered at the Australian Botanic Gardens whereby we’re doing a working mathematically programme called Number Crunch.

[00:19:04]
Libby Foley: Oh, fantastic!

[00:19:05]
Ben Newsome: And I must say, it’s kind of a Trojan horse for mathematics. It’s straight-up science experiments where the kids are just doing all these science experiments, getting numbers, and putting these integers into equations and finding out “Do your numbers actually make sense?”

[00:19:21]
Libby Foley: Yeah, I love it though. Last week, you’ll probably like this, Dr Alan Finkel, who’s the Australia’s Chief Scientist, he gave a keynote address. And his background is obviously engineering and high-end science, but one of his key messages was that mathematics is the language of science. You know, you can’t have science without the mathematics and you need that maths to be a foundation to make your science make sense.

[00:19:54]
Ben Newsome: It’s qualitative versus quantitative, yes?

[00:19:57]
Libby Foley: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I just love how, yeah, when you bring out the maths in science, you help see things in a different way as well. It kind of gives it a bit of substance too. Science is all about theories and is it predictive? Can you test it? Can it be proven? And the maths just helps back it up a little bit with some evidence.

[00:20:23]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, well this is the thing, like sometimes kids will happily with a smile on their face hand over a thing which is beautifully created from the maths works, it all makes sense, but at the very end they’re giving you a number which makes no relevant sense to what they were actually doing. I’ll give you an example. So there’s a particular activity in that whereby they’re doing this thing… it’s a mark and recapture experiment whereby they’re trying to estimate the number of red plastic koalas in a set sample of all these different colours of koalas: red, yellow, blue, etc.

[00:21:08]
Ben Newsome: And the idea is pretty simple. Firstly, they put their hand into this box of koalas, none of them are red yet, they take out whatever they can fit in their hands with their eyes closed and then they count out how many they got in their hands, maybe it’s six. You then replace those coloured koalas with red ones, so you’ve kind of tagged them, you’ve painted them so to speak, and you release them into the wild, into this box of other koalas and you mix them up.

[00:21:49]
Ben Newsome: You then close your eyes and you dip your hand back in again. And the idea is that in your hand comes out on the second sample of the koalas, some of these koalas may be tagged red, some may not be tagged at all. And it comes down to just plugging into a little bit of a formula to work out what is the estimation of number of koalas in the sample. And the thing is the kids’ concept of what happens when zero turns up in a formula… so what happens is that they’ll be looking at this box of koalas which frankly only holds about 160 koalas, they’ll happily tell you that there’s infinite koalas in there!

[00:22:02]
Libby Foley: No!

[00:22:03]
Ben Newsome: And you go, “Okay, let’s work out the maths. Yes, you are very correct, it’s infinite. Do you think it’s infinite?” “Yes!” It’s that connection between what’s happening on their paper versus what they’re seeing in front of them and that can be quite difficult.

[00:22:18]
Libby Foley: That’s the part of a science investigation where they really need to analyse their data and evaluate it. Cross-checking with a peer as well: did your observations not only line up to your hypotheses and what was actually conducted, but how does it line up to a partner as well? And then the discussions that stem from if they are different.

[00:22:47]
Ben Newsome: It’s amazing how close they can get to the true answer once they start doing that. There’s a station in there which I love. I can never say the word, so I’m going to mess this up on the podcast, but anemometer. I always go anem-om-om-om-ometer.

[00:23:02]
Libby Foley: Don’t worry.

[00:23:03]
Ben Newsome: So, anemometer. They have a simple handheld anemometer and they’re meant to measure the wind speed of a fan.

[00:23:13]
Libby Foley: Mmm.

[00:23:14]
Ben Newsome: Now, if they put the anemometer right in front of the fan, well it wants to spin but it can’t because one side is getting hit by the wind and the other side is getting hit by the wind, which pretty much makes it stationary. And they go, “Well, the wind speed is, well, nothing.” You go, “Well, you’re feeling something.” Or otherwise, they’ll put something into their mathematics whereby they’re saying, “Well, the wind speed is about 200 kilometres per hour.” This is out of a fan, right? Like a desk fan.

[00:23:37]
Ben Newsome: We go, “Understand.” So we then go, “Righto, let’s put your maths off to one side. There’s this thing called the Beaufort wind scale which talks about calm seas through to a full-blown cyclone or hurricane, and what you would see on land or on the sea based on what the trees would be doing or what the waves would be doing.” And we just say to the kids, “So if this fan was in front of a tree, would it rip it from the ground?”

[00:23:55]
Ben Newsome: “No.” Okay. And you work backwards from there and the kids can usually work out, “Well, actually, it’ll probably make the leaves rustle.” And we go, “Well, that’s about 15 kilometres per hour give or take.” Great, now we’ve got an estimation of what we possibly should be might be getting in our mathematics. And then they go back to the numbers and work out where they went wrong.

[00:24:12]
Libby Foley: Yeah, that sounds like so much fun and a great way to spend the holidays as well for the kids.

[00:24:19]
Ben Newsome: We talk with the parents, they fully acknowledge it’s 100% a Trojan horse programme. But they love it. The kids come out just going, “You know what? I get why we’re learning maths.” They don’t say “We understand maths” because frankly any lecturer in mathematics would say they’re still learning what mathematics is.

[00:24:41]
Libby Foley: Oh yeah, and that’s so important that the kids learn that the learning doesn’t stop. You never have fully learned everything. It continues to flow with different applications and new discoveries. And you know, when things don’t go right and don’t go according to plan, that’s often the best discoveries that come from that.

[00:25:01]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. When you were at the conference last week, what were you presenting about?

[00:25:10]
Libby Foley: The keynote was on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners of mathematics and reflecting on some of the things that I did up in the Cape.

[00:25:24]
Ben Newsome: I imagine it was quite well received because you were asked to be a keynote. So what were you doing up in the Cape that was obviously worth telling people about?

[00:25:40]
Libby Foley: Well, so I became involved in a mathematics project called reSolve: Maths by Inquiry. So I was one of the champions of the programme and that is a joint initiative between the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers. And so with that, there’s so many free resources on the internet. It’s all about trying to bring inquiry into the classroom and we were trialling different lesson resources from all around Australia and providing feedback just to refine and become part of this national community of mathematics educators.

[00:26:22]
Libby Foley: I was also involved in looking at Indigenous learners of mathematics and what are some things that might need to be taken into consideration when working in a remote community? Some of the things that I spoke about was adapting the content to your context. So you need to, yes, have a great grasp on the content of mathematics, but you need to see it through the lens of your learner and take into account the language backgrounds, the histories, the culture of those students.

[00:27:04]
Libby Foley: Where I was teaching is a really unique and special place because there are different Aboriginal groups of people and there are different Torres Strait Islander groups of people all in these communities and going to the same school. So there’s a lot of diversity in cultural background.

[00:27:24]
Libby Foley: Some of the things to consider when you’re in the classroom is the use of home language, because Standard Australian English is coming through from the classroom teacher. You’ve also got to take into account that you’ve got cultural groups that are different from your own if you’re a non-Indigenous teacher, and you might have a different world view compared to your students. And so you’ve got to listen and be willing to learn from the community and the students and your fabulous teaching assistants.

[00:28:02]
Libby Foley: I also spoke about utilising your teaching assistants to help you, like to partner with you in the classroom, because they bridge the gap between the language and culture between teacher and students. And they are an amazing resource to adapt the mathematics to the context. So for example, when you’re doing number stories, which everyone in primary school does, you write number stories for different operations, you just adapt it to use scenarios that the children can relate to, so events that are happening in the community.

[00:28:40]
Libby Foley: You might use language words that are significant to them. If you’re doing money, obviously go take photos at the local shop and all around town so it’s familiar to them. If it’s timetables, which comes up, it’s not using bus and train timetables because that is an abstract concept to them. They don’t have buses and train timetables up there. So adapt it to something that they do use. You can make your own school or daily timetable instead of bus and train timetables. Or look at what are some of the TV shows that we’re watching, or maybe we’re going to plan a trip to Cairns, this very exciting travel to Cairns, and maybe we’re going to see some movies there and look at those timetables.

[00:29:33]
Libby Foley: For mapping, we use mapping of the local area with the language names that are familiar to students and teach all of the conventions of mapping alongside a familiar place.

[00:29:45]
Ben Newsome: You can even see this come up in straight-up science concepts too. For example, I remember as a kid thinking about autumn, why do the books say the leaves should go orange and fall down? This doesn’t happen in Australia because, if you’re not from Australia, most trees will just be consistently drab green.

[00:30:09]
Libby Foley: Yeah, unless they lose all of their leaves.

[00:30:12]
Ben Newsome: Yes. And mind you, it allows you to actually tell the difference between the European and Australian trees because, and by the way, if you’re listening and you’re wondering why they do that, it’s the chlorophyll breaks down and you get all the other colours, the anthocyanins coming through, which is the yellows and the pinks and the reds come through and eventually the whole leaf falls off. What’s actually happening is it’s conserving the nutrients, whereas… well, not conserving… my brain just went the wrong way… the Australian bushland conserves the nutrients whereas the Europeans just drop it anyway. There are differences. And I remember just sitting there as a kid going, “Well, it’s not doing what the book says.”

[00:30:51]
Libby Foley: Yeah. And for a child up in the Cape, going, “Well, bus timetable, tell me more.”

[00:30:58]
Libby Foley: And I know in the high school, an example my husband used, they were looking at distance on maps by how many drums of fuel it would take for the boat to travel between islands. Because this is what they do. They travel between islands in their dinghy and it’s calculated by how many drums of fuel you need. And then you have this discussion around taking into account weather and currents and all of that sort of stuff. And that makes so much more sense than going, “Oh, let’s look at how many kilometres,” etcetera. You relate it to the context and in the world in which they live. And you value and acknowledge the rich histories and knowledge systems they do have.

[00:31:49]
Libby Foley: So, something with science, because we went onto science, is trying to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures within the science classroom and sharing those knowledge systems with the students and then also bring in contemporary Western science perspective alongside it and give them that perspective as well.

[00:32:11]
Ben Newsome: Well, that would have been really rich because you had multiple cultures in the same room.

[00:32:15]
Libby Foley: Yeah, yes we did. Which is really cool. So it’s a really awesome place to have been able to experience. And again, teacher assistants are, oh, a teacher’s best friend, really, in so many ways. And the wealth of knowledge and just guidance that they could give. Because you could just bounce ideas off them and they’d share their advice with you.

[00:32:44]
Ben Newsome: Having it… the word assistant pretty much says it. They’re there to assist you, help you. Use them! Makes sense. Actually, that brings up the point, if you had a bunch of people in the room and you were going to give them some assistance in some way, some sort of parting words of some ideas that might help you in your classroom. This is kind of broad, right, because it could be on anything. But in a STEM context, what kind of advice would you give these people in the room who are kind of a general audience? Some of them are pre-service, some are brand new to teaching, some have been doing this for a while. What are some things that you could suggest at least from your own experience?

[00:33:23]
Libby Foley: Don’t be scared to give things a go, just have a crack at it and make mistakes and learn and grow from them. And reach out to others because there are so many people out there already doing similar sorts of things. If you’re in Education Queensland or department, we have discussion lists and people just put out little questions or advice on there and that’s a platform we share resources. If you can connect in with your state mathematics association or science association—believe me, every subject area has their own association—connect in with them because you’ll meet equally passionate educators and industry professionals and there will be workshops and conferences that you can get involved in or just meet people to ask for their advice.

[00:34:25]
Libby Foley: And freely give your resources and advice back as well. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Everyone’s trying to do the best they can in the STEM space and there’s really exciting and innovative things that are going on all over the place, but you need to be connected to access them.

[00:34:46]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, it’s a bit of a shame to be in your silo doing a great job but missing out on awesome opportunities at the same time.

[00:34:54]
Libby Foley: Yeah. And in regards to embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, that’s actually an area where there’s a big movement at the moment. And so Australian Curriculum have a lot of resources. There’s the Curricula Project, and that’s in partnership with the University of Melbourne. They’re providing a lot of resources on particular science concepts. So last semester with my Year 2, 3, 4s, we were looking at the night sky and space. And I accessed the Curricula Project’s astronomy resources and they were just so helpful in being able to share Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander star constellations and star maps and their scientific understandings of the night sky.

[00:35:53]
Libby Foley: And then I was also able to then share contemporary Western science views of the night sky, and it just complemented each other in a really beautiful way. And the children, I think, learned a lot more deeply the different concepts because they weren’t just all abstract. There were stories that tied things together.

[00:36:13]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and wherever possible too, if I could add to that, you’re in the community, talk with the community. Find elders or some champions who might want to spend a little bit of time, because let’s be honest, the curriculum’s crowded, but if you can tap into a resource where someone can impart some cultural advice, some stories from the conversations that they would have in their own communities, that would be really handy for kids to hear from rather than just coming from the sage on the stage, the teacher, all the time. Because they want to listen to their own people as much as possible.

[00:37:04]
Libby Foley: Most definitely. And you definitely need to be connected with the traditional owners in the nation area that you live in Australia. But, you know, I’m back on the Sunshine Coast and this unit was what I was doing with kids on the Sunshine Coast. So you don’t have to be in a remote location to teach the scientific understandings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups. You do it everywhere you are because, you know, it’s a fundamental thing to do to be a proud Australian and acknowledge the histories of this nation.

[00:37:21]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely so. And if you’re in another country, do the same.

[00:37:24]
Libby Foley: Exactly. You have traditional owners of whatever country you’re in and knowledgeable people within the communities who would love, and they do love sharing their wealth of knowledge with you and kids.

[00:37:38]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. I mean, when you mention the star maps, my brain went straight away to remembering some of the maps I saw from the Mayan culture, Aztec culture, right through to the Greek mythology. There’s so many different versions and discussions around it. And yet there is a unified thing because funnily enough, the unified part is the actual sky that we all get to see. Only issue is that if you’re in the south or northern hemisphere, that’s the only thing.

[00:38:03]
Libby Foley: Exactly. And it actually helps create this empathy in children in understanding and learning from another’s perspective. So it’s a life lesson in itself for children to learn those skills.

[00:38:18]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. And look, I think you’re doing awesome. You’re doing a fantastic job. And look, trying to get that information out to everyone is an amazing thing. Thank you very much for sharing that stuff through Science Teachers Association of Queensland, through to going to conferences and sharing all this stuff about mathematics ed. It’s really good.

[00:38:38]
Libby Foley: Yeah. I get so much out of it too. I’m going to share, but I’m expecting to get a lot back in that other people share with me and just from building relationships. You know, I’ve got people’s connections now, we can reach out and talk to each other via social media or just send an email. But you’ve got those connections.

[00:38:59]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. Look, Libby, thank you so much for jumping on this podcast. Now I guarantee there’ll be people who want to reach out to you. So how would they be able to get in touch?

[00:39:09]
Libby Foley: The best way is probably emailing me. My email is [email protected]. That’s my work email. I have avoided all social media platforms for my own personal stuff because I don’t want a large digital footprint out there. I do have LinkedIn as my only other way of contacting me. And that’s just my own decision to keep a few things, you know, cut off from the world, because everything is out there.

[00:39:49]
Ben Newsome: Yes. Absolutely so. I mean, it’s a crazy thing about this world, isn’t it? Sometimes you just want to hide away sometimes.

[00:39:56]
Libby Foley: No. And it’s also to control myself too. I’m going to be honest, if I was on a lot of social media platforms, I think that’s a rabbit hole that I would happily go down and who knows where I would come out.

[00:40:11]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I think we all become Alice going all the way down.

[00:40:17]
Libby Foley: That’s right. That’s right.

[00:40:18]
Ben Newsome: Well no, thank you very much for having chatted and letting us know some of your perspectives about what happens up in Cape York through to contrasting that with down the Sunshine Coast. And I’m sure that you’re going to have more adventures. It’s really cool.

[00:40:32]
Libby Foley: Oh, definitely. I just take the saying “fly by the seat of your pants” literally, I think. That’s how I live. And, you know, opportunities come up and you’ve just got to grab it and learn from it, take it, use it.

[00:40:47]
Ben Newsome: I agree. Libby, have a fantastic afternoon.

[00:40:51]
Libby Foley: Thanks, Ben.

[00:40:53]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

[00:41:11]
Ben Newsome: Well there we go, we just heard from Libby Foley, who you can really tell is an incredibly passionate primary educator who loves her STEM. And how cool would it have been to head up to Cape York and do all that awesome science stuff with the kids up in the far north Queensland area, and then take that information and bring it back to the Sunshine Coast. Very, very cool, and I know that she’s having a blast. So speaking of which, I hope you’re having a blast. It is, as I record this, National Science Week 2019. I hope you’ve been doing heaps of science, heaps of maths, heaps of technology and engineering in lots of different ways.

[00:41:46]
Ben Newsome: And let’s be honest, National Science Week really isn’t just a thing for this week. It really should be the whole year. Not just the one focused week, we should be doing science the whole year and having fun with it too. So, on that note, I am… I have to go do some science because I actually have to connect in with a group in South Korea to do some programmes on the human body. So I better get off this podcast. I hope you’ve had a bit of fun listening into this and I hope to catch you another time.

[00:42:08]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

[00:42:36]
Announcer: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. aeon.net.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can teachers make mathematics more relevant for students in remote Indigenous communities?
Libby suggests adapting curriculum content to the local context. Instead of using abstract bus or train timetables, she uses boat travel between islands, calculating distance based on the number of drums of fuel required for a dinghy. This acknowledges local knowledge systems and makes abstract mathematical conventions immediately relatable to the students’ lives.

What is the core focus of the ‘reSolve: Maths by Inquiry’ programme?
The programme shifts the focus from simple procedural fluency to deep reasoning and problem-solving. Libby advocates for establishing daily ‘reasoning routines’ that allow students to explore mathematical concepts through inquiry, ensuring that maths is an active part of investigation rather than an isolated ‘add-on’ activity.

How do science and mathematics intersect in the primary classroom?
Reflecting on Dr Alan Finkel’s view that mathematics is the ‘language of science’, Libby explains that maths provides the evidence and substance for scientific theories. By using maths to analyse and evaluate data, students can determine if their scientific predictions are supported by quantifiable evidence.

What role do Teacher Assistants play in remote STEM education?
Teacher Assistants are vital cultural and linguistic bridges. Libby highlights how they help non-Indigenous teachers bridge the gap between Western curriculum and the students’ home languages and cultures. They provide guidance on how to adapt lessons to be culturally responsive and help translate complex concepts into familiar contexts.

Discussion points summarised from the Primary Science & Maths with Libby Foley with AI assistance, verified and edited by Ben Newsome CF

Extra thought ideas to consider

The Importance of Multi-Cultural Astronomy
Integrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander star maps and constellations alongside Western astronomy provides a more holistic view of the night sky. This approach fosters empathy and allows students to see how different cultures have used scientific observation for thousands of years to understand the universe.

Moving Beyond the ‘Sage on the Stage’
Authentic STEM engagement in remote communities often involves stepping back and allowing community elders or ‘champions’ to lead the conversation. Tapping into local human resources ensures that the curriculum feels like a shared community journey rather than an external imposition.

Sharing the ‘Teacher Hacks’
Libby emphasises that educators should not work in silos. By sharing successful classroom strategies and ‘hacks’ through professional organisations like STAQ or AAMT, teachers can collectively improve STEM outcomes and reduce the professional isolation often felt in rural or remote settings.