It's with great pleasure just to make sure we're running to time, it's with great pleasure that I now would like to bring Melanie Porter in to our conference. Hello, Melanie. I wanna make sure I absolutely, get you, front and center here because, you are an associate professor at Macquarie University delivering research insights on ADHD students and teacher training in ADHD. And I've had the pleasure of, listening to you present before and being part of your forums. And I I'm very excited to hear your presentation here today, and thank you so very much for joining.

My pleasure. You can hear me okay?

Thankfully, we can, and we can see you. So we're off to a great start. Now all we need to do is make sure we can see your presentation. As I said, I don't wanna miss this one.

No problem. So I'm just going to attempt to share my screen. There's a few little things on here that weren't anticipated.

Yeah. We've made it not very easy.

It's asking me for a password, a login password.

To share screen. That's a new one. I've got your presentation here, Melanie, if we need it as a backup. If you're happy to display it just for the sake of Yeah. Time and that would be great. And I'll just say next slide if that's okay. Okay. Yep. I'm I'm well versed in that today. I feel like we're back in COVID days with the presentations with from the medical boards. I don't know if you remember when, anyway. If you're able to give us an introduction while I get everything ready and tee everything up, we'll be able to talk off cuff. Sure. Fantastic. Alright. Over to you. Thank you. So thank you, everybody. I'm going to be talking today about the impact of teacher education in ADHD.

On a few different things, teacher knowledge and understanding, confidence in meeting the needs of ADHD students, confidence in implementing classroom strategies and interventions, as well as influences on their teaching practices. And this work forms a partnership between Macquarie University, ADHD Australia, and a company called Online Training. And OLT is the company whose program that we evaluated in the study that I'm going to be talking about today. So just while we're waiting for the slides, I'm gonna be talking for about forty five minutes, just so that you're aware. So it is a long time. Thank you very much. The next slide, please. So just very briefly, I'll talk about, I'll give a little bit of a background to myself.

To the study context, then we'll move straight into the study, and we'll talk about the aims, results and findings sorry, and conclusions. And then where to from here, and then we've got a panel of experts for a Q and A session. I believe we've got some questions prepared from earlier generation from a wide variety of people there. Next slide, please. So just in terms of background, I think you're all aware that we're from Australia. I'm myself from Sydney, New South Wales, home of some amazing pristine beaches, the majestic Sydney Harbour, koalas and kangaroos. I'm hoping I'm doing a good job at selling this to everybody to come and visit. Contrary to belief.

Or popular belief, I should say, we don't have kangaroos and koalas roaming the streets and crossing the Harbour Bridge. Although, I do have to say that there is one exception to that. Next slide, please. We did actually have, for reasons unknown to me, a kangaroo crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge in January 2018, and you guys can Google the video of that later on. Next slide, please. So, I, in terms of my role when it comes to ADHD, I have a few different roles. I'm a mom of a beautiful boy, Oliver, who has ADHD and a few other complexities. He's due to start high school next year, so that's exciting. But also, I must admit, I'm a little bit nervous about that.

And I'm a scientist and practitioner. So I'm an academic at Macquarie University where I do a lot of research and teaching on ADHD and also some other conditions. In that capacity, I also train clinicians in training, and that includes clinical psychologists and also clinical neuropsychologists. And I'm a practising clinician. I'm a clinical neuropsychologist, so I do a lot of assessment diagnosis of ADHD. My work involves a lot of, let's say, collaborative problem solving, school visits, supporting and advocating for children and families, as well as management and intervention. In terms of my personal experience with ADHD with my son, Oliver has had three.

School changes. He's now in year six. So from kindergarten to year six, three school changes and three suspensions. I've had all sorts of conversations. I do try and just keep my role to being a mom at school, but sometimes it is very hard. So I've had people say things like, he's an absolute angel one on one. He's a beautiful kid. It's just that school brings out the worst in him. And I've also had one teacher along the way commenting that she has absolutely no idea where Oliver's skills lie academically. She found it very hard for him to engage in school. Next slide, please. Through my role as a clinical neuropsychologist, I've done lots of school visits, interacted with a lot of educators. Most educators are amazing.

Some of them do get a little bit lost along the way when it comes to ADHD, and we'll see that there's good reason for that. And and in many instances, it's not because they're not trying or not motivated. So these are just some of the things that I've heard in relation to students with ADHD. So he can concentrate when things interest him. He's just being naughty right down to, I'm at my wit's end, and I just don't know what to do anymore. There's also been some positive experiences. If you could ring on the next slide, thank you. So I've had some of those turnarounds after they have understood things a little bit better for a particular student that has ADHD or just increasing knowledge, and some are just off the cuff things.

That teachers have said. So I now understand that the reason she can't concentrate is because her brain works differently. He's a valued class member, and when she's struggling, we work things out together. So there's a bit of a mix in terms of teachers' attitudes and also their understanding of ADHD. Next slide, please. So I guess all those different roles that I have sparked my interest in doing some research and also all these things that I'm about to talk to you about. There's a very clear need. So there's a lack of pre service and in service teacher education in ADHD, and it represents a major and a pressing problem. So on average, we know that one student in every Australian kindergarten to year one classroom has an ADHD diagnosis.

Eighty eight students are predominantly occupying mainstream settings. They're expected to engage in undifferentiated and regular classroom learning. Despite this, I can speak for Australia in particular, but Australian pre service teachers, so teachers in training before they go out, I guess, to work in the real world, receive on average as little as one to five hours of training at university across their two years of training in special needs, and many receive no training at all in terms of ADHD. Moreover, ninety three percent of Australian sorry, the slide before. Ninety three percent of Australian in service teachers report that they would benefit from further professional learning in ADHD.

And of that same cohort, ninety two percent said that they weren't adequately trained at university to identify or support ADHD students. This lack of teacher knowledge in ADHD has a major impacts on teachers. It has major impacts on students, and it has major impacts on families. Also, while a number of professional education courses exist, they do vary in quality, and there's also a lack of research on the impact of teacher education in ADHD, especially beyond improvements in teacher knowledge. Next slide, please. So ADHD Australia conducted a large study and a critical gaps report on this in Australian schools reported that ninety five percent of parents believe that teachers and school staff need specific ADHD training.

Without appropriate teacher knowledge and evidence based accommodations for their needs, we know that ADHD students are experiencing major issues at school, including difficulty engaging in the learning process, stigmatization, compromised relationships with teachers and peers, academic underachievement, suspensions, early school dropouts, and I could probably go on for the the full forty five minutes there with the impacts. Many issues for children with ADHD start in primary school, and we know that there can be serious and cascading effects that extend into adolescence and also into adulthood, so there can be lifelong implications of this.

ADHD Australia's critical gaps report also highlights that one in three children changed schools as a result of ADHD related issues in 2019. Twenty four percent in that same year were suspended, thirty percent expelled, and fifty six percent of ADHD students received at least one detention. It's also estimated that between thirty one and forty five percent of ADHD students have coexisting specific sorry, a coexisting specific learning disorder. So that means difficulties with literacy, numeracy, or both. And that's five to 10 times the rate of SLD in the general population. We also know that due to social and academic struggles at school, sixty to one hundred percent of those with ADHD have a secondary mental health condition, such as.

A major depressive disorder or an anxiety disorder. We urgently need to engage teachers in effective ADHD education programs to reduce these negative outcomes. And it's widely accepted that developing the expertise and knowledge of teachers is one of the most fundamental measures to increase student achievement and to facilitate more positive outcomes for students with ADHD. Next slide, please. We know that this is a global problem. So in the academic literature internationally in South Africa, for example, there are comments like inclusion principles have not been adequately transferred into the mainstream classrooms. In The UK, teachers are often uncertain about how to respond to challenges of students with ADHD.

And these sentiments are also reflected in Australia and The US with comments such as teachers' understanding of ADHD appears to be limited. Teachers are not adopting basic evidence based strategies when it comes to students with ADHD. Next slide, please. In Australia, professional programs professional education programs are mandatory for Australian teachers, but the training programs need to be properly evaluated, and their evidence base is clearly documented. There have been systematic reviews to show that there is some evidence base, especially when it comes to improving teacher knowledge. There are what we call large effect sizes, so a good evidence base for improvements in teacher knowledge. But any other improvements are.

Lacking to show very good efficacy. So they're inconsistent or limited in their findings. And that includes teachers' improvement in use of strategies in the classroom after completing teacher training. Next slide, please. We know that understanding the effectiveness of ADHD professional training is compromised by a few different things, the varying quality of the teacher training programs, with some not including evidence based strategies, some not being delivered by ADHD experts. There are a variety of outcome measures and methodologies that are being utilised, and outcomes are often limited to just looking at changes in teacher knowledge. Sometimes there are also small and restricted samples. So for example, just looking at.

Programs that have been implemented in one school or in one particular region. Next slide. Thank you. So finally, in terms of the background, I just wanted to point out that there is lots happening, and I I'm sure that there's lots of talks and discussion about this in during this conference. There's lots happening in Australia, and there's a lot happening globally. So fingers crossed that we're going to get some positive changes. I just wanted to point out a couple of things. One was the, senate inquiry inquiry into disruptive classrooms, which myself and ADHD Australia put a submission into. So that heavily focuses on ADHD, I know, because I've read a lot of the submissions. And there's a US Senate inquiry into school refusal.

And reading that lengthy document, there's also a lot to be said, and ADHD is mentioned quite a lot in there. Next slide. Thank you. And then the next one. So we're now moving to the study and starting with the aims and methodology. Next slide. Thank you. And the next slide. So in terms of the aims, the aim of the the current study was to provide a preliminary evaluation of the impact of a blended learning course, which is OLT OLT's understanding ADHD course on teachers' perceived knowledge, perceived confidence and skills, and changes in their teaching practice. And blended learning basically means that teachers do some self paced learning online, as well as some class led sessions with a tutor and, eight to 12 other educators.

It's hoped that findings will inform other teacher training programs, but the ultimate aim for this collaboration initially is for this preliminary work to inform the enhancement of OLTs understanding ADHD program, and then to design a study that looks at the real world impacts, both short term and long term, on teacher training for teachers, for students, and also for families. Next slide, please. So the current study utilised what's called a mixed methods retrospective study design. So mixed methods means we basically analysed some number data, and that's things like responses on rating scales, and also, I guess, some verbal or word data, and that that includes comments by teachers both before and after completing the training.

And the retrospective study design means that we've used data that had already been collected from OLT before we started the collaboration. And we looked at this data that was collected both before training and also after training. Next slide. Thank you. So I'm not going to go into detail about OLTs, the course itself, but there's a website there, and you can certainly have a look afterwards and look in detail at what the course has to offer for educators. There's also a parents course in ADHD. So the teacher course is designed for those who work in schools with students, particularly teachers, school executives and support staff. And the target age range is basically compulsory education, so any children at school. The course is offered.

In a learning cohort of up to 12 participants. The online self paced component is twenty hours. So basically, it's a big commitment from teachers and educators, and they will have an opportunity to learn a lot about ADHD within that timeframe. Next slide, thank you. So there are lots of different questions that are asked, before or pre, and after or post training. And some of these include, different ratings, as you can see here. So things like, how do you rate your current level of knowledge and understanding of ADHD? How would you rate your current skills in assessing the needs of students with ADHD? How would you rate your current skills in planning and implementing interventions for students with ADHD?

And how confident do you feel in meeting the needs of students with ADHD? They're also asked to indicate their current level of confidence in using a computer to study online. Next slide. So some other questions are things like how do you rate the online course content? How many tutor led sessions they had had? And so on. How did the tutor led sessions contribute to learning, etcetera? Next slide. So some of these questions were asked at the initial tutor session, and then that's the introductory questions, and then the conclusion questions at the very last tutor led session. The The couple that I've underlined are what I'm gonna go into a bit more depth on with you today. So please share with the group three key things that you've learnt.

And list three things that you'll take away from this course and implement in the classroom, in the school, or in your practice. Next slide, please. So I'm not going to go into any detail here, but this is for any statisticians that have joined us today. Basically, we dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's that we could. It was a large sample size that we evaluated, so 2,111 participants. Some of the data we analysed on a random sample of 100, and that was things like the verbal responses from teachers, because it was quite intensive there, where we had to read and categorise each response. Two independent researchers did that, and then a third person came in to sort of cross check. So it was very time consuming.

So that's probably all I need to say there. We'll do next slide. So we'll just move into some of the results. First of all, most people did complete the recommended three tutor led sessions. So you can see lots of yellow there. So seventy seven percent completed that. Most people accessed the tutor led sessions online, whilst for many of OLT's courses that they do recommend face to face attendance. This was during the COVID-nineteen lockdowns. So that's why there's a higher percentage that had attended online. And we're anticipating that most people will move to face to face from here on in. Next slide. So this is the full sample. And you can see the numbers there.

And also in brackets, the percentages. So the majority of people that completed this course so far are primary schools, so 65%. And you can see that about eighteen percent of the completion rates were from high schools. Next slide. This is the breakdown of roles. So paralleling just that previous pie chart, the majority of educators that are completing OLTs, understanding ADHD program, are primary school teachers, forty percent. We've got a select number of high school teachers. We've also got some people that work in disability and inclusion, so specialists, assistant teachers, and then some people in leadership as well. Next slide. So this is the same data represented in two different ways. Essentially, there were.

Significant changes from pre to post for all these different variables. So teachers had shown a very significant improvement in things like their rated or perceived teacher knowledge, their perceived skills in assessing the needs of students with ADHD, and so on. So we might move to the next slide. And that's the same for these other variables here. So you can see a large percent have moved into the sound to comprehensive after the training for things like their confidence in meeting the needs of students with ADHD. Okay, next slide. So this shows that a lot of people rated the course as being excellent to high. 80% of of the 2,111 people said that they that they found the the course excellent to high. And a very large majority, 96%.

Have said that they refer back to the course content and make use of what they've learned. And that's after completing the program, which is great because it means that there's probably maintenance of skills. So with the next slide, this is what we call a thematic mapping. So when we categorized all the different responses from that random sample of a 100, we came up with two major themes or categories. One was teachers were telling us, in terms of what they'd learnt, it was all about improved knowledge and understanding. And the other theme that came out was improved application. So in terms of knowledge and understanding.

You can see there in the percentages in the brackets are how many teachers endorsed that particular item. So sixty four percent of teachers said that they had an improved knowledge and insight into ADHD after completing the program. 50% interestingly said that they now understood that students differ and that we need to individually cater for the needs of students with ADHD. So that's interesting, and that percent might be surprising to some. So I think that prior to the training, some teachers thought that all children with ADHD were the same. And nine percent said that they learnt how to identify signs of ADHD. In terms of improved application.

Sixty four percent that they're now using strategies and interventions that they'd learnt during the course to help support students with ADHD. Twenty three percent reported having things like higher empathy and more positive relationships with ADHD students. And eighteen percent said that they were using the screening tools that were taught to them so that they could identify ADHD or potential ADHD. So just on the next slide, there's a quote by one of the teachers. So this is an example of it's a real world quote. So I found this course interesting and insightful, down to the following as some key learnings that I've discovered along the way. ABC analysis and other forms of testing for ADHD, for rich data on student behaviors.

Effective strategies to assist students with ADHD in terms of learning and behaviour management, and also that what may work for one student with ADHD may not work for another student. Students with ADHD all function differently. And as educators, we need to cater for their individual needs. So another thematic mapping, an example of a thematic mapping was to the question sorry. Next slide. If they could list three things that they would take away from the course. So one theme that emerged was implementation of learnt strategies and interventions. Another theme was relationships and collaborations. And the third theme was was changed, teaching practices. So with the first theme.

That gave us some insight into exactly what strategies and interventions they were now using in the classroom. So things like positive behaviour support by a large majority, generating SMART goals, so specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time based goals, which is something that they're taught to do in OLT's program. Use of ADHD screening tools, use of visual supports by 21, environmental modifications and adjustments by eighteen percent, and use of social stories and scripts by eleven percent. They also reported that educators that completed the course reported, increased increased collaborations with teachers and other, educators and schools. Again, the theme for more positive relationships with ADHD students themselves.

And also, better collaborations with parents and families. So this is just another, example quote. I'll just read the last bit there. I always believe in building into the whole class teaching instead of segregating the student. The teacher needs to accommodate for the student as opposed to segregating and separating learning. Okay. So next slide. We also did some fancy statistics that are called regression analyses, and this basically gets us it allows us to look at predictors. So what variables are predicting other variables. This process also allowed for us to control for things like school and region that might be influencing results because they're not educators, for example, from the same school, their data is not necessarily 100%

Independent. So basically, it was a gold sort of standard approach for the statistical analysis. Next slide. So one thing that came up was that the, teachers perceived knowledge of ADHD before the training, predicted their rated knowledge of ADHD after training, which makes sense. There was a significant improvement from peer to post. So educators on average reported a very high change in their rated knowledge of ADHD. What was a little bit surprising was that their confidence in using a computer for online study also was significantly related to their post ratings of knowledge of ADHD. Next slide. We'll come back to that in the conclusions.

This basically shows, whilst there were significant increases from pre to post on all these different variables, from knowledge of ADHD right down to confidence in meeting the needs of students with ADHD, their pre ratings did at least relate somehow to their post ratings, and that makes sense. So for example, how much you know before you start the course does sort of influence a little bit on how much you learn. And how confident you were before training will influence, to some degree, how confident you are afterwards. But as mentioned, there was a significant increase in all those variables from pre to post training. Next slide. So another thing that came out in the analyses were that those three variables of knowledge.

And understanding of ADHD, skills in assessing needs of ADHD students, and skills in implementing interventions all significantly predicted how confident educators were in meeting the needs of ADHD students. And that relationship was significant both prior to them completing training and after they completed the training. So this suggests, that there may be, a bit of a hierarchy where the first three are, I guess, lower level skills, and that confidence in meeting the needs of students with ADHD really hangs on those other three variables, the knowledge of ADHD and so on. Next slide. So the other analysis that we did showed that rated knowledge of ADHD and rated skills in assessing ADHD students' needs.

Were the only two variables that related to the overall rating of the course. And this is probably related to what educators were expecting to learn from from OLT's Understanding ADHD program. So we won't go into detail about that today, but indeed, one of the questions is about what do you expect to learn, and the thematic map did map onto those things. So teachers and educators were expecting to know more about ADHD, and they were expecting to be able to assess ADHD students' needs after completing the program. They didn't necessarily expect that they would have increased knowledge in things like their confidence in meeting the needs of students with ADHD. So those things, I guess, were an added benefit. So next slide.

And the next one. So just in terms of conclusions, we found significant improvements were noted in perceived knowledge, skills, and confidence following the completion of the course. Overall, educators seemed to rate the course highly and seemed to refer back to the learning material and the course content on a regular basis, which was great because it does mean that that will facilitate maintenance or long term effects of their course completion. Role wasn't significantly related to overall satisfaction with the course content or post course perceived knowledge and all those other variables. So regardless of role or level of expertise, all people that completed the course seemed to benefit, which was also great. Next slide.

Perceived improvements were noted in teacher attitudes, in their levels of understanding and compassion towards ADHD students, their perceived implementation of learnt strategies and supports, their perceived outcomes for students after completing the course. Perceived improvements were also noted in relationships and collaborations, which is great, and teaching practices after the the completion. Of note, while school school type didn't have a significant impact on findings, I did note that primary school teachers were substantially more likely to partake in the course than high school teachers, and that is something that we want to do some investigating into. So why is that the case? What are the reasons?

And we'll talk about that with the the future directions component in a moment. Next slide. So somewhat surprising, we did find that the teachers pre their confidence prior to completing the course with using a computer to study online did significantly relate to their post course perceived knowledge and understanding, but not any of the other variables. And perhaps this is because knowledge and understanding, as opposed to those more applied skills, do require a lot of reading, a lot of access to resources on the computer. As mentioned before, we also did note that there seemed to be some lower level abilities and things that teachers really wanted, such as a good knowledge and understanding of ADHD, feeling that they had skills.

To implement interventions, and feeling that they could meet the needs of ADHD students before they were really confident in what they were doing in their day to day teaching practice. So next slide. Where to from here? So moving forward, we, as part of the partnership between OLT, ADHD Australia, Macquarie, we had a few things that we wanted to tick off, and a couple of those have now been ticked off. So we have had a look at OLT's understanding ADHD program and, completed an evaluation, at least a preliminary evaluation. Last month, we ran our first focus group, and that included a multidisciplinary panel of experts into ADHD key stakeholders and end users. We'll be running a second.

Focus group. Sorry. Next slide, please. We'll be running a second focus group towards the end of this year or early next year. And the main goal of the focus groups is to develop some key guidelines on what pre service and in service teachers need to learn in order to successfully teach ADHD students. So that aim will span across focus groups one and two. As part of focus group two, we'll be running forums that includes both primary school and high school students with ADHD. We'll then compare those guidelines to OLT's Understanding ADHD program to further enhance that program. And, of course, those guidelines will assist with enhancing other programs in the future as well. Next slide.

The other thing that we're going to be doing as part of the collaboration is that we'll use all the information that we collect from the analysis and also from the focus groups to develop and design a new study that will be looking at both short and long term outcomes or impacts. And so, you know, how does when a teacher engages in in the ADHD course, how does that impact on the teacher themselves? How does that generalise to positive improvements and impacts for children and parents? Next slide, please. So the sorts of things that we'll be looking at for teachers will be things like have their confidence has their confidence and self efficacy improved, knowledge and awareness, their well-being. So we'll be looking at mental health.

Burnout rates, and also be doing pre and post observations of their teaching practices so that we can see firsthand whether there have been improvements in that regard. For children, we'll be looking at whether there's improved academic outcomes, social outcomes, more desirable behaviours, improved emotional well-being and mental health, and lower dropout rates, and all those other things that I spoke about at the beginning. And then for parents, if a teacher engages in professional training, does that mean that it reduces parents' stress levels? Does their confidence and self efficacy improve? And does their mental health also improve as a result of that? Next slide. So in the future, other things that we.

Will be able to do will be to go beyond New South Wales. So for that future study, we'll be starting with New South Wales because we will actually be going out and visiting schools and doing some face to face stuff with the teachers, the students, and also the parents. But we'll hopefully be able to move beyond New South Wales. We'll be able to look at pre service training and make some changes in in pre service training and what's happening at the university level. And we can also move to some international collaborations, especially easy given that OLT is they provide training internationally to a wide range of different countries. So next slide. I've got my email address there. If people do have any questions.

Or thoughts, I'm very happy if you would like to send me an email. And I think we're now moving to a q and a.

Gosh, Melanie, I I'm in awe of what you've been able to achieve, and I know that working through, you know, a a research, piece like this, you know, requires such diligence and and working through, you know, the key factors and making sure that everything there is a checks and balances so that, you know, when when you get to the future state, these key learnings are are relied upon, to to move forward and to propel. I just really thank you for, pulling this together and being able to share with this team. I, want to I wanna inch I want to move through to our education panelists, but if you just bear with me for just a sec, I've got some questions, around your presentation.

And knowing again that, you've you've kind of touched on it in regards to where to from here and what what you're really hoping for. But as you've moved through your first and initial stages of the research pieces with the forums and you've collaborated with some individuals and gained some insights, what's been a really key takeaway, for you from from your cohort that you put through the the initial run of research forum?

We're still processing the data from that forum, but, you know, it really does just having the conversations that we've had and, you know, especially with the students themselves, we can see the real need for this teacher training and getting some real insights through some of those conversations with the day to day struggles that not only the students are having, but that the families are having. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I've lost you there. I'm not sure if you saw Oh, sorry. There we go. Yes. Absolutely. I'm here. Don't worry.

And so just in regards to, I guess, the next hopes for that next phase with primary and high school students, is there a distinction there between what you're hoping for for those groups of of kids moving through the schooling system?

Yeah. I guess a big thing that I've noticed is that there's not, at the present stage, a lot of high school teachers engaging in these professional training programs. So with the high school students, it will be even sort of nutting out more what's the content, like what do high school teachers need to know? And, obviously, that will be with the students themselves learning from their day to day experiences as well as from educators, health professionals, and other experts in ADHD.

Perfect. And this is the thing, you know, and obviously being a mom, and stepping through this process as you already have, I'm sure it gave it gave you a lens in which to approach this. What's a key piece of advice that you would give to other moms and parents out there who who may relate to your story?

I think that you know your children best. Always continue advocating for your children, trying to teach them skills to be confident also to be able to advocate for themselves and to help people better understand ADHD.

Wonderful. What a lovely message. Gosh, Melanie, thank you so very much for your time.