We know that students in Years 7 to 9 respond differently when teachers adapt their approach to the realities of adolescence — using inquiry-based learning, building respectful relationships, and connecting curriculum to students’ developing sense of identity and agency. We also know that most secondary schools haven’t actually managed to make those changes stick. This Victorian study, conducted across two secondary schools with very different histories of middle years reform, investigates why.
Researcher Peter Burridge spent years inside both schools asking a deceptively simple question: what actually drives the teaching decisions teachers make in the middle years? What he found is that pedagogy is never a purely technical choice. It is shaped by a teacher’s professional identity and habits of practice, by the social dynamics of the staffroom, by the structures the school has or hasn’t built to support change, and by broader pressures from curriculum accountability and community expectations. The school that had successfully sustained middle years approaches for a decade had done so by attending to all of these layers simultaneously. The school that struggled had made structural changes on paper without shifting the social and individual factors that determine what actually happens in classrooms.
For anyone thinking seriously about improving engagement in the middle years, this study offers a clear-eyed account of the gap between reform intention and classroom reality — and what it actually takes to close it. The research is grounded in Victoria, making its findings directly applicable to the contexts this hub serves.