Why choose us?
Improving the environment to improve student outcomes: A social-ecological approach
Developing Safe, Supportive and Inclusive Learning Environments
Empirically Validated Instruments
The instruments developed at NSI assess the classroom and school-level climates. NSI’s instruments are built on an extensive research program and have strong, published psychometric evidence to support their validity and reliability.
Alignment with Policy Requirements
NSI data assists schools with all five reform directions outlined in the Education Act: quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, meeting students’ needs, and transparency and accountability. NSI data also helps teachers and leaders to document their progress against the Australian Professional Standards.
Meeting Students’ Needs
NSI’s tools allow students to express their needs and perceptions of inclusive practices at the school. Student feedback provides evidence to inform decisions about changes to ensure the school climate addresses students’ needs. The strong relationships between school climate factors, student development, and adaptive functioning make putting student feedback at the centre of improvement decisions a critical consideration.
Transparency and Accountability
NSI data assists school reporting and accountability. First, to avoid the mistrust engendered through mandated assessments that use a goal-oriented approach, NSI uses tools that schools can contextualise to ensure data is relevant and valuable. Second, NSI data can be used as part of an integrated, process-oriented approach to facilitate school improvement, facilitating system-wide data collection that can be used to affect change and satisfy accountability needs. Third, principals can use the over-time data from NSI’s instruments to evidence and address the Australian Professional Standards.
Supported School Improvement Processes
NSI’s Effective School Improvement program provides innovative professional development and detailed resources to help build teacher and leadership expertise. Schools learn in action through our flexible empowerment approach, tailored to meet the needs of individual schools. Our research-based processes promote sustainable educational change.
Empowered Leadership
Using NSI’s tools and processes develops capacity within the leadership team, teacher-leaders (encouraging distributed leadership), and students. Our instruments provide needs-assessment tools that can be used to promote stronger partnerships with parents/carers, co-construction of the learning environment with students, and informs goals included in mandated school improvement plans.
