The Barker Journey is the flagship project of the Barker Institute. It’s a longitudinal study that tells an ongoing story of a group of Barker students making their way through school in the 21st century. The second iteration of the study commenced in 2019 with the first co-educational Year 3 cohort . The Junior School component comes to an end this year with these students now in Year 6, and a fully co-educational Junior School.

You can read the story so far in three articles telling the Barker Journey from aYear 3,Year 4, andYear 5 perspective(the Year 5 story was highly impacted by Covid, with the interviews being conducted entirely online). 

The focus of this study is the class of 2028 (or Year 6 class of 2022) which now has over 160 students each with a valuable story to tell. These students completed a survey during Week 2 of this term. A wealth of data regarding student ambitions, expectations, memories and values is ready for ongoing analysis. During Week 3, the Barker Institute staff conducted individual semi-structured interviews with the 29 students that form the core group who give additional voice to their stories each year of their Barker Journey. Copious notes and approximately six and a half hours of audio and video recordings now exist to be transcribed, coded and analysed.

Keep watching the Barker Institute website over the next few weeks to see our preliminary findings about Year 6 and how they have bounced back from a substantially Covid-adjusted year in 2021. Later this year we have been accepted to present our findings at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference in Adelaide. We will also be sharing more with the Year 6 community as they celebrate the end of their Junior School journey, and will produce two academic articles that encapsulate these students’ story.

For now, the only teaser is the image in this article: a word cloud indicating the most common words used by the Year 6 students to describe Barker. The positive impact on these students is clear to all.

The Barker Institute wishes to thank the wonderful students for generously sharing their stories. We also wish to acknowledge the Year 6 coordinator, Mr Timothy Moyes, and the Year 6 teachers for their support and facilitation, along with Head of Junior School, Mr Martin Lubrano, and Head of Barker College, Mr Phillip Heath, AM.

Dr Matthew Hill

Dr Matthew Hill is the Director of The Barker Institute with a focus on professional learning, research, and innovation in the school.  He teaches Physics and the new Science Extension course at the School which introduces students to scientific academic research. Matthew's doctorate reflects his passion for science education focussing on Representational Fluency amongst physics students at school and university. He has published in leadership, education, and science journals and been involved in course development and teaching at The University of Sydney and The University of Western Sydney. He has also completed a Graduate Diploma in Divinity at Ridley College in Melbourne.