16 October 2024

Joining us in this literacy-focussed episode is Dr Kate de Bruin, a senior lecturer in Inclusive Education at Monash University. Dr de Bruin delves into the research underpinning the Multi-tiered System of Supports (MTSS), a framework designed to provide targeted reading instruction and intervention. Drawing from her presentation at the 2024 online Literacy Summit she offers insights into how schools can better support students' diverse literacy needs.

Show Notes

• AERO Explainer – Introduction to a multi-tiered system of supports (edresearch.edu.au)
• Reading instruction and intervention within MTSS plink course (internal link)

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. Today, we're talking about reading instruction and intervention within a multi-tiered system of supports with Dr. Kate De Bruin from the School of Curriculum, Teaching and Inclusive Education at Monash University.

Dr. Kate, thanks for joining us.

Kate De Bruin: Pleasure to be here, Dale.

Dale Atkinson: So first question, multi-tiered system of support (MTSS), can you tell us what that's all about?

Kate De Bruin: Really, MTSS is a framework for service delivery that takes as its foundation that all students are entitled to a high-quality education that's equitable and needs based where everybody has access to the benefits of high quality teaching in classrooms. Any child who needs access to any kind of support or resource available in schools and systems, can access that quite quickly without restriction.

Dale Atkinson: Where did this come from? What's the idea behind it?

Kate De Bruin: MTSS really grew up with dissatisfaction to the kinds of models of service delivery [00:01:00] that have been in place before.

So under these more traditional models of support services, a lot of times students access to any support that they might need was determined based on whether they could access funding. And there was a quite a sort of medical approach to that. Which said, look, you know, children who need this support service can only access it if they're funded and they can only access funding if they've got the right diagnosis or if they've got a level of impairment that meets a sort of minimum threshold.

What that meant was a lot of kids missed out. Kids might miss out for a period of time while they go through a diagnosis process. Or they might miss out altogether because they might have a type of disability that wasn't funded, or they might not quite have met that minimum threshold for impairment.

So there were a lot of gaps in service delivery and over time, there were actually disproportionate growth in particular areas. So, in relation to learning disabilities, as they were called in the United States, particularly in reading and also [00:02:00] in relation to behaviour. There was some concern that there was skyrocketing numbers of students getting funded under these categories.

And there was some suspicion that perhaps either there was some issues in how students were being assessed for these. There were also some concerns the outcomes weren't good. So there was a look at how students access these support services and they found the outcomes weren't great.

Dale Atkinson: How does the framework apply across a classroom of students?

Kate De Bruin: It's helpful to think about the original seeds of the idea. These multi-tiered frameworks come from healthcare and the classrooms is a group of kids from the population. At a whole population level, we think about health services as primarily trying to prevent illness. So we do a lot of things to try to keep people as healthy as possible.

We might give quality education about healthy eating and levels of exercise. And we have mass population practices like vaccination and screening. And [00:03:00] then what we might do is provide some additional supports in place for people at high risk. We might provide free vaccines, for example, for populations who are at risk, like older people are entitled to free vaccines for certain conditions, we start cancer screening at the age of 50.

So the first population mass level is tier one. Those are the things we do to prevent illness in the general population. At tier two, we prevent illness in people at higher risk. And at tier three, what we're then doing is treating illness when that hasn't been prevented and we might provide medication or allied health treatment or hospitalization and so on.

So if we've understood that logic, we can think about in the classroom and say, what can we do to support the best possible learning outcomes and wellbeing outcomes and behaviour outcomes for all students in the classroom. And then we use those practices in teaching and creating a positive learning environment for every kid.

And then we say ‘who's not thriving here and what else can we do [00:04:00] quickly to ensure they are thriving or respond if they clearly aren't?’ At a class level it looks like high quality teaching, you know, creation of environments that are calm where all students feel they can belong and have their needs considered.

Dale Atkinson: So when we think about MTSS and the tiered system, what are the key components that sit within that?

Kate De Bruin: I'm often presented with people's triangles and they say, look, we've got an MTSS because look, here's our triangle. MTSS isn't actually synonymous with that triangle that's often used to discuss a certain component of it. MTSS is this proactive and preventative framework for quality instruction for everyone on the basis of need, but it's characterized by a number of important components and we have to have all of them in place to have that MTSS.

So, one of those components is that teaching and support should be coordinated across a sliding scale of intensity across tiers. Another is that evidence based practice should be used at each tier, yet a further one is around data based decision [00:05:00] making. Data should be used at a tier one. Where we screen all of our students responsiveness to Tier 1 teaching and learning environments and whether they're thriving.

We use data to make precise decisions to understand the instructional need of any student, whether that be small differentiation at Tier 1 or Tier 2 or 3 layered on top of Tier 1. And we also need to use data to monitor the progress of students receiving tiered interventions to make sure they're having the desired impact.

And that students are in fact going to meet intervention goals and graduate out of intervention back to tier one. At the heart of this is an assumption that all students can succeed at school with quality teaching and the right amount of support provided just in time, but we need all of those elements in place for this to work well.

Dale Atkinson: What do you say to educators? That sounds incredibly comprehensive and logical, is it more for an educator to apply this framework?

Kate De Bruin: It's a different way of thinking. People, once they learn a [00:06:00] little bit about it, they realize they are already doing a lot of the things that are actually essential to doing this well, they find that quite reassuring.

And they also often agree that the outcomes from the current system aren't optimal. There are kids that they think need support that aren't getting it. You know what I mean? So they, there's often actually agreement about the kinds of things that are really needed. And huge reassurance that what's in place isn't something radically different, but it may be some tweaks in how we pick up the kids that aren't succeeding and it may be some tweaks in how we think about what support looks like for those kids.

Dale Atkinson: So a high degree of nuance and judgment, can you talk about the difference between areas that need a point of differentiation and those that need an intervention when it comes to reading support?

Kate De Bruin: Differentiation is often quite misapplied or poorly understood. So in relation to reading, differentiation is what we're talking about when we're thinking about how we use that ongoing formative data that we collect in classrooms. So for teachers, for [00:07:00] example, in the early years of primary school, you'll be doing weekly checks to see whether students are learning those sound spelling correspondences that you're teaching. And if you can see that a couple of kids haven't quite mastered that concept that you introduced last week, you'll put, you'll put in place a little bit of practice. So that's what we call database differentiation. You might do small group targeted practice for those kids who need more. Differentiation is that data informed adjustment to instruction at tier one.

At tier two and at tier three, which are those higher levels of support. That's when you're putting in place something a bit more intensive. So tier two is additional instruction on top of tier one 30 minutes, four times a week in a small group. It's time limited and it's driven by data. So if kids are really struggling with a number of concepts and it might be that they haven't really acquired those new concepts yet, or they are not able to, you know, use them fluently and apply them well in [00:08:00] practice. Then you're going to do perhaps, you know, 12 weeks of really intensive practice and catch up for those kids. Or at tier three, you might even do an hour a day, five days a week, where they're going to get a much higher, what we call a much higher dose of intervention. That will always exist on top of quality tier one and ongoing differentiation.

Dale Atkinson: Have you got views on how you arrange the logistics of tiering these things out in the classroom and what teachers and leaders should be thinking about in terms of resourcing it?

Kate De Bruin: Schools have most of the resources they need, but they may not be allocating them in ways consistent with the data driven approach of MTSS.

Historically, we've had the categorical based funding model. It's taken time to change, and I'd want to shout out to the great work that South Australia's done in pioneering some revisions in those funding models. They are one of the leaders in Australia and change takes time and I'm sure any teacher listening to this is, you know, wanting to say to me, look, it's not perfect yet.

It's not, but it is, you know, vastly improved on where it was. We now have [00:09:00] needs based logic embedded in our system. And now we're trying to tweak to get that right. So the resources that schools may have to provide intervention should be provided to any student. Regardless of whether they get funding, regardless of whether they have any kind of diagnosis that points to them needing it, it should be based on any data that indicates that they need it.

So the other thing I was going to say is about grouping and that can really, and scheduling, and that can really vary depending on what kind of level of schooling we're talking about. So if we've got one of those, you know, kids in the first year of school, You may well be able to access intervention within the classroom because that will be very much reteaching what's already part of the curriculum.

So if we're talking about, you know, very basic code, simple alphabetic code that's being taught, that's able to be taught in the classroom alongside what's already going on in the classroom. It'll be different for older students. So if we're talking about a child in the upper years of primary or in high school where those foundational skills are no longer part of the [00:10:00] curriculum.

It would be much more difficult and undesirable to do that in the classroom. That generally means withdrawing children from the classroom. Now, there are really good reasons to avoid doing that where possible, because the moment you pull a kid out of class, they're missing out on something. Schools have a variety of ways they can think about that.

One of them is to actually reorganize the schedule. And I've seen schools that have done this incredibly well. where they have a block in the day and they term it various things. Some of them call it MTSS time, others call it what I need time or win time, where you have a block in the day where everybody gets something that they need based on data.

So no kids missing out on anything, they're getting the thing they need. If you're in a school where that's not in place, then you need to start making some really difficult decisions about what you pull children out of. And that's why it's always best to get kids succeeding from the outset and minimizing the number of kids getting pulled out for intervention.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, that's a really interesting point. What about students who are highly proficient readers? How do they get [00:11:00] accommodated within the tiered system?

Kate De Bruin: They get accommodated the same way, they get data based differentiation from the outset. So if we're talking about children, let's say, in those first few years of primary school, and we know that children often start at very different starting points.

So if you've got children who've already mastered some code, they'll be present in the classroom while it's being taught. That doesn't do them any harm. And then you'll have that database differentiation where they may be pushed to apply that concept that's being taught in a more complex way. And practice that at, you know, a high level if you like. So differentiation works well for those students.

Dale Atkinson: What sort of duration of time does it take for a site to kind of implement this approach?

Kate De Bruin: There's a large body of work and research around what that looks like. And in general, we need to think of change as a series of steps and they need to be implemented fairly methodically and you need good buy in.

So if you've already got a high degree of buy in for change at the site, that may take less time than in another site where people feel very [00:12:00] hesitant or have some concerns about change and about letting go of things that they've done or starting to do something that feels very new. You really need to get good, solid amount of buy in and you need to implement things slowly and methodically rather than everything all at once.

If you were in a school that wanted to embrace MTSS. You would be very wise to introduce that perhaps by thinking first about the data that you're collecting. Are you collecting the right data? That's going to get you there to make good decisions and introduce that and then start at tier one. So you need to sort of build it slowly so that you are not asking everybody to change everything all at once. That can set things up to fail.

Dale Atkinson: So one of the things I know about educators is generally, if you're trying to convince them to do something new, They want to see the evidence base. What's the evidence base behind this?

Kate De Bruin: There's pretty good evidence behind MTSS and a lot of that has come from the United States. Different frameworks introduced over 20 years ago and in fact build on the research that came before that. So I might [00:13:00] delineate my response a little further. The components of MTSS are exceedingly well researched and there's good, you know, studies to show their impact. As an entire framework, we've got that kind of population level, system level data.

And there were two huge studies, now quite dated and it would be great to have them updated. But there were two very large studies that looked at the essential components of MTSS implemented at a system level. And they had really sound benefits for both the system itself. As in the, the funds were used better and got better outcomes and they got better outcomes for students.

And those outcomes were better for students academically. There were better behaviour outcomes. There were fewer referrals for intensive specialised placements, far fewer students ended up in that most expensive placement of all, which is a special ed placement, a vast drop in those numbers. So it was good for systems, kids and schools. It would be great for that data to be updated and to have some Australian [00:14:00] research, because people like to see that.

Dale Atkinson: Where have you seen this applied well?

Kate De Bruin: I've seen components of this applied well. There are some excellent schools, particularly primary schools, where starting at tier one has really been embraced.

And quite often that's done in a very inclusive way because it's gone along with understanding that there are kids with disabilities missing out. So, it's gone along with that, how can we start with high quality teaching for all of our students? Make sure classrooms and learning is accessible to everybody without exception.

How can we make sure any kid who needs support gets it in a timely way? We're starting to see some fantastic results in high schools as well. AERO have a lot of case studies on their website where you can look at high schools that have started to try to implement tiered interventions well and close those learning gaps for students who are really struggling and far behind.

Dale Atkinson: We'll include some of those, uh, notes in the show notes around the Australian Education Research Organization's research papers. [00:15:00] I'm joined by Dr. Kate De Bruin, who's the Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education at Monash University. She is one of the many international experts presenting research evidence, informed advice and effective practices for literacy improvement at the 2024 Department for Education Literacy Summit.

Dr. Kate, thank you very much for your time.

Kate De Bruin: Absolute pleasure, Dale. Thanks again.