Modern learning… bla bla bla, show me passion!

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Abraham Lincoln said this to Congress in 1862. I propose it applies today, not just to the political plight in the US, but also to education and to the stormy present of the classroom occasion. Great teaching relies on things that have been around for ages: good subject knowledge, good classroom control, good communication skills, passion for your subject and for the learners. It has nothing at all to do with the learning environment or does it?

Education researcher John Hattie in his book Visible Learning makes it clear what the main determinants of improved student learning are “when teachers seek evidence of their impact on students, who inform students early what success looks like especially about surface and deep learning, who provide appropriate levels of challenge and feedback”. Modern learning environments (MLE’s) don’t even get a mention. Hattie’s research says that teachers providing immediate feedback to students and the positive relationships that teachers are able to make with their students have the greatest impact on student achievement. Auckland Grammar’s teaching pedagogy of direct instruction, is listed as Hattie’s third most powerful teacher factor in raising student achievement and they don’t use modern learning environments, nor do AGS’s results suggest the need for them to change.

Mark Wilson (2015) investigated the effectiveness of MLE’s on student learning and achievement. His research showed consistently that “improvements in quality of physical spaces (e.g. sound, temperature, light) clearly improved educational outcomes. However, there is no consistent evidence that the use of open learning spaces make any positive difference to student achievement. ”  He also found that there is no evidence that this generation of students so called “digital natives” learn any differently to other generations, and that proven traditional teaching practices are still effective pedagogy (e.g. direct instruction).

Ken Robinson said we have ‘sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and its impoverishing our spirits and energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.‘ I agree that we need to change our education model from a manufacturing model, or a production line process to an organic process, much like the farmer who is creating the optimal conditions in which the learner can flourish. To me though, that doesn’t mean throw in some cushions, make all the walls bright colours, add in some dodgy laptops and call it a modern learning environment. For me, an effective environment should be personalising circumstances to those we’re teaching.

Baeten et al (2013) investigated whether a lecture-based learning environment or a student-centred learning environment deepened student learning. They found that student-centred learning was more surface level learning. It is important to note, that the teacher led learning was only deeper level learning when case-based learning was gradually implemented. Ideologically, I’d suggest creating a movement to which people develop their own learning solutions alongside external support (from the teacher and technology) with case based learning as part of a personalised curriculum. I think that technologies and teachers can revolutionise education as part of an MLE, but only if the environment lets the learner flourish. I’m not suggesting student led learning is the answer, far from it, but if you’re doing teaching in a way you love, you’ll gain energy and pass that energy on to learners as you share and empower them in the learning process, hopefully they’ll learn to a deeper level!

The best learning environment, modern or not, starts with the teacher understanding what the learners value, and engaging them in those areas. Learners will put in their best effort if they see the relevance or know the ‘why’. ‘Because its important’, or ‘you might need this for your assessment’ is not going to help the learner go beyond their expectations. How they learn is then crucial. I know I have limited knowledge, and that I don’t know everything but I have to be willing to explore strategies and styles of teaching I don’t yet know.

As a teacher I have the power of imagination, the power of creativity (actually we all do) to shape our lessons, units and themes of work. We should be able to create a learning environment that enables us and our learners to expand our imagination and extend our creativity. It can’t matter on the type of technology available, or the state of the room layout, but I guess it can help. Whatever the questionable motives behind renovating old schools or building new schools to have the latest MLE designs in place, if it creates an environment and a freedom for subjects to be delivered by a teacher who can be creative, flexible and passionate that is no bad thing in my view.

 

 

References

Baeten, M., Struyven, K., & Dochy, F. (2013). Student-centred teaching methods: Can they optimise students’ approaches to learning in professional higher education?. Studies In Educational Evaluation,39(Evaluating learning pattern development in higher education), 14-22. doi:10.1016/j.stueduc.2012.11.001

Hattie, J. (2015). The applicability of Visible Learning to higher education. Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning In Psychology,1(1), 79-91. doi:10.1037/stl0000021

Wilson, M. (2015) Investigating the effectiveness of modern learning environments on improving student learning and achievement. Taken from here.

Empowering the individual

Earlier in the term we had a lecture on biculturalism, the Treaty of Waitangi and Māori education. I confess I shamefully knew very little on this topic, and am yet to know enough, but now I know I need to know about this topic. Being new to these shores I grew up learning about the history of the British Empire, the horror of two world wars and the great industrial revolution; all factors that shaped the history and culture that formed my world view in conquering Great Britain. Now I’m out of my depth in New Zealand, playing catch up to what looks on the surface as a ‘partnership’ between two cultures, out of which come social inclusion, political justice and a recognition of both culture’s uniqueness and history (Lourie, forthcoming). Dig deeper and it all gets messy – the tribes, the injustice, the various translations, the lies from the crown, the loss of cultural identity to Māori and it’s dangerous ground for me to provide a summary of biculturalism or the Treaty of Waitangi as if I know it all when in fact I have just listened to some lectures and read some articles. Before moving on, I will state I’m sorry the country I grew up in, messed up the beginnings of this great country and I hope to put in place a culturally responsive pedagogy that looks forward, and changes the horrors us Brits did in the past. I’m also sorry I don’t yet know enough words, phrases or have the cultural awareness of Māori (and Pasifika groups) so my token words and poor pronunciation is probably patronising and painful but it is all I can do for now.

So how do I, we move on? How do we as teachers put into practice biculturalism in away that brings about a shift in thinking and action on the troubles of the past?  Well I look to what’s going on around me and see how I can get on board, or imitate whats successful elsewhere.

As I finished school at 16, the Welsh government made in compulsory for all schools in Wales to teach Welsh in English-medium schools up to and including the age of 16. Students would leave school with a GCSE (NCEA level 1 equivalent) in Welsh. This along with a Welsh television station (1983) and the Welsh language officially gaining equal status with English (1993) led to an increase in the spoken language. The 20011 Census showed there were 582,000 (20.8%) Welsh speakers, up 2.1% on 1991.

Why isn’t Te reo Māori compulsory for all learners until they achieve NCEA level 1? What would the cost be, to the learner, to the culture, to their future?
Based on my assumption that if you learn a language, you can learn the culture, improving Te reo Māori speaking in lessons, schools and the community has to be beneficial.
In 2013, 125,352 Māori (21.3%) could hold a conversation in Te reo Māori, a 4.8% decrease from the 2006 Census. Of the Māori who could hold a conversation in te reo Māori 26.3% were aged under 15 years – down 6.2% from 2006. However, the survey Te Kupenga undertaken by Statistics NZ in 2013 suggests many of the very fluent speakers of Māori were likely to be over 65 years old.

There is no compulsion in mainstream secondary schools for Māori language to be learnt to an NCEA level 1 standard, it is an optional subject. Māori bilingual/immersion programs can be delivered in separate schools which teach mainly through the medium of Māori and adhere to Māori values and protocols. These schools can be considered dual-language as their goal is to produce students who are fluent in both Māori and English at primary school level. Māori learning programs may also exist as a separate stream in a school. I witnessed this in action at my most recent placement and it was both humbling and inspiring. The school ran a kura kaupapa Māori program which had these values or principles…

Kaupapa

• To restore identity and self worth to the individual by empowering them with knowledge about themselves and their Maori history.
• To enhance self confidence in the individual by the strong demands of the kaupapa and course of which has a rigid etiquette of personal courtesies.
• To develop humility and self-restraint by the high standards of discipline and behavior required in the use of the Taiaha as a weapon.
• To promote fluency in Te Reo Māori and Tikanga.
• To promote top physical fitness and good attitudes towards health.
• To master all uses of the Taiaha as a weapon, ceremonial and as a fighting art.

 

The learners pictured here above were full of laughter, unity and positive attitude throughout the lesson, even though it was all in Māori and physically tiring and repetitive. The Kaupapa values were obvious to see, as was the positive transfer into other subject areas and life outside of school following conversations with learners and teachers.
I’m not suggesting every learner does this type of program in school, but it could help, couldn’t it?.
In 2014 there were approximately 17,713 children (ages 5 to 16) were enrolled in Māori bilingual/immersion education programs of over 50 percent instruction in the medium of Māori. If speaking the language increases cultural awareness for the next generation of learners, whatever their skin colour or cultural heritage, surely that’s a good thing for the bicultural nation we live in.

Thanks for reading

Jonny

 

References

http://www.maorilanguage.info/index.html

Lourie, M. (forthcoming). Biculturalism in education: Haere whakamua, hoki whakamuri/Going forward, thinking back. New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work.

Fleras, A. and Spoonley, P. (1999), Recalling Aotearoa. Indigenous Politics and Ethnic Relations in New Zealand. Auckland: Oxford University Press.

What does the future hold?

When Janet Gilbert provoked us in a lecture about 21st Century teaching and learning she claimed that the school curriculum is based on an outdated system of what knowledge is. Gilbert (2012) argues that the 21st Century view holds knowledge as fluid, in process, always changing – its purpose is change. Weinberger (2011) adds that individual books, databases and our minds are now way to small. It isn’t a stable body of truths. “Knowledge is now ‘in the network’ it lives, is created and replaced in the space between minds, databases”. If this is so, what the heck does it mean for me, a newbie teacher about to set foot in the world of changing lives? I don’t want to teach outdated information and material… but do I have a choice?

The theory goes, its now all about innovation, working in the third spaces – connections and relationships, networking and those buzzwords; taking ideas farther and faster than any individual could. Gilbert argues that young people today need to ‘not fit in’ to today’s jobs but be agile enough to face any possibility. She feels that 20th Century learning creates clones, and breeds obedience. I’m up for this challenge – to be rogue and encourage diversity and intellectual agility, but when the school system – exams, curriculum, achievement standards and data collection seem to be what judges the outcomes, how can I create learners agile enough to face any and every possibility?

Looking outside of education and at the alternatives of technology today, I hope to grasp an idea of what we still need teachers for…
Exponential technologies are following Moore’s law and changing at an unbelievable rate, healthcare, car manufacturing, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs … what’s next Artificial intelligence? Or is it already here? Computers are becoming exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. IBM Watson is a cognitive system enabling partnerships between people and computers where you can get legal advice with a 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. Software programs like Uber and Airbnb are now the largest company’s in their fields in world yet they don’t own any cars or any properties respectively. Tradition is being disrupted and technology has become exponential. At the end of this year, new smart phones with have the 3D scanning possibilities to complete 3D printing at home. According to Dr Robert Goldman, by 2027, 10% of everything being produced will be 3D printed. We’re in the 4th industrial revolution and I reckon education needs to be on board and change, or left behind.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation invested $1 million in edX, the world’s largest online learning initiative. Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX boasts a growing number of “massively open online courses” (MOOCs). EdX is billed as “the future of online education: for anyone, anywhere, anytime”. There are other providers out there too Udacity, Coursera, and the Khan Academy, not to mention the billion views recently chalked up by TED talks.

However, change in education isn’t just about technology or putting a screen in front of you though. A screen cannot offer personality, community, interpersonal dialogue, shared space and time. I hope these fundamentals are only going to feel more precious amid the increasingly rich educational pickings online. I hope that instead of just providing screens and a network for all to access and in so doing, watching it just ‘happen’. I actually envisage collaboration and community driving learners aspirations, integrated in the current institution of schools and colleges. If educational institutions resist reform then yes, the future of education is likely to prove an uncomfortable place for me, and for us all.  One hopes that resistance won’t be continuing, but for now I shall endeavour to adapt my pedagogy to help prepare learners for anything and everything, especially change.
Thanks for reading,

Jonny

References

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning & teaching: A New Zealand perspective. Wellington: Ministry of Education

Gilbert, J. (2005). Catching the knowledge wave? The knowledge society and the future of education. Wellington: NZCER Press.

Weinberger, D., (2014). Too Big to Know : Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. Retrieved from http://www.eblib.com

Chatfield, T. (2014) retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/futureeducation

 

 

Charter Schools

Well, this is a hot topic.. it seems politics is at the heart of everything whether subliminally or in your face. I have to admit, I wasn’t the most knowledgeable when it comes to charter schools, and a provocative lecture investigating the educational issue left me not much clearer for the way forward without being judgmental, but its certainly been provocative since its arrival in New Zealand in 2011.
This guy.. John Banks said “charter schools create an opportunity for a model of excellence for those groups of learners the system has routinely failed and neglected.” Then this guy Peter O’Connor said of charter schools, “..an ideological drive to dismantle quality public education, bringing about the deunionising of the teacher workforce with high levels of flexibility for unqualified teachers”. Along with the PPTA, many organisations and educators are all to quick to blame, judge and condemn the efforts being made by charter schools or their co-conspirators!

The nature of public education has been changing these last few years and its not getting any easier. Charter schools are public funded, but run by private sponsors. Supposedly charter schools have provided freedom, choice, responsibility, less government interference and world class education – all values of charter schools according to John Banks and his ACT party, all total woffle! Pie in the sky stuff if you ask me.

This is the state of reality from my humble opinion.. Wanganui Collegate got a $3 million extra investment to help the failing charter school. It didn’t work and the school closed… whilst the government is trying to cut $43 million in the public spending budget for education. I know how $3 million could be very useful in public education right now – employing more teacher aids for one, improving resources and sports equipment in under privileged schools for another idea.

There’s research and a range of manipulative statistics on both sides, miss-interpreting data to try create radical solutions. Jha & Buckingham (2015) reported that the studies found some charter schools were more successful than others; in particular, charter schools in urban areas that enroll more students with socio-educational disadvantages.
Snook (2012) found that in Sweden there are now more than 700 ‘free schools’ enrolling upwards of 100,000 students and two major studies concluded that although there were some short-term improvements in student achievement, these were not sustained.

Whats the solution? Well if we’re going to copy other educational formats from around the world, rather than improve our own, Finland is a good enough place as any and its top of the ratings too… Finland embeds its educational policies in a framework of welfare so all students receive a free two-course meal on a daily basis. There is free health care, free transportation and free learning materials with counselling and mentoring support freely available in their schools, despite the cost. See video here.
Finland shows me there is a better model for teachers too: one which avoids centralised controls and refuses to focus narrowly on the assessment of student progress. Instead it favours high levels of teacher education and ongoing professional development which if we replicated would renew teachers pedagogy’s in New Zealand, closing the gap of inequality in educational achievement and remove our most vulnerable children from the mercy and potitical minefield that is the free market.
Above all, (apart from staying away from education!) I’d like to see politics being open honest and transparent about what it wants to do in and with education, especially about the manipulation of charter schools as the answer to failing literacy and numeracy rates.
Of course I don’t know how to make policies that work for education, but I guarantee if you stopped giving money to charter schools and instead gave it to public schools and teachers that need it, literacy and numeracy rates will increase and be sustained.
Thanks for reading

Jonny

 

 

Jha, T., & Buckingham, J. (2015). Charter schools, free schools, and school autonomy. Policy. 31(2), 52-58. 

Snook, I. (2012). Charter schools: an investigation.NZ Principal, 27(2), 5-8.

Street, S. (2012). Public interest threatened by public gain. NZ Principal, 27(4), 11-14.

A successful ‘alternative’ ?

Picture the scene… students are conducting a problem solving task to see who can make a self-propelled car travel the farthest distance. As students get stuck into their balloon car making activity, one particular student preferred instead, to fill his balloon with air and spit and then release his balloon to blow around the classroom. Bless the lad, for once the spit had settled, he didn’t last long in the school or in any other form of mainstream education, because of that and many other incidents.

This leads me to ask, is our education system too rigid to cater for all students? Put another way; are children unteachable?

 

Karen Vaughan, (2004) says “schools can create programs that combine workplace and classroom learning, offer qualifications administered by industry training organisations, non-conventional subjects, foundation skills, life-skills, and multi-level NCEA learning options.” Sounds like the ideal option for a school… Vaughan adds that these initiatives are not peripheral or alternative to, but actually integral and part of, the diversity-mandated secondary-school curriculum. However, there’s obviously a discord in delivery as only units and programs now formally recognised as Alternative Education (AE) are implementing these courses in mainstream schools or on their own and they are specifically for those at-risk young people, including teen parent units and activity centres, but not for all.
Simon Denney (youth report, 2009) says AE raises academic achievement including, increasing reading ages, literacy levels and raising student attendance. In addition to this, AE provides soft skills in a holistic approach, leading to an improvement in manners, character and managing self. Again, seemingly ideal for every young person to learn in every school, surely?

So what is alternative about alternative education? Alternative Education has varying programs of education such as boys programs, girls programs and trades programs. Tutor to student ratios are usually 1:7 and run to a more flexible curriculum. Nairn and Higgins  (2010) stated that, “Alternative Education operated as a space of refuge from alienation experienced in mainstream schooling as well as a site of containment, separating AE students from their mainstream peers”. Vaughan goes further by saying that AE tests the limits and meaningfulness of diversity and pathways; stating that “they still have a role to play both in highlighting the places, means, and ends where school does not adequately serve everyone and in insisting that school—or perhaps something else—do the job.”

So if these educators are keeping the tail of underachievement wagging and are proving to be successful where other areas of education are not succeeding, why are we putting the least amount of funding into the students that are most vulnerable? Is it to hard to admit the education system doesn’t work for all… Or that its failed already. The government acknowledges one size doesn’t fit all (by letting AE providers operate), yet it gives little to help where its needed most?
One student said AE is like putting fresh clothes on, to alter, to change. AE seems to be following the good practice mainstream schools try so hard to emulate – child-centred and individualised learning; flexibility in school timetabling and class structures and a recognition that play and hands-on learning experiences are important.

The stated ideal of Alternative Education programs is re-integrating students into the mainstream system even though this rarely happens in practice. Instead I suggest mainstream education adopts more of the AE programs and pedagogy as their normal operating procedure, then the students might have more hope of re-integration, let alone succeeding.
Currently the blame culture that exists is a linear argument that will go nowhere to solving the student failure rates and rising NEET numbers in education. Instead of saying certain students or programs are a wasted investment*, how about we address the issues each student brings with them. Lets provide resources for families, the right funding and resources for AE and mainstream education to work together. Lets combat the shame, the cultural difficulties and past cognitive distortions that have branded AE and dispel the notion that children are unteachable. I’d love to know how to make these concepts a reality, but sadly its all a bit above my pay grade, so instead I’ll just focus on teaching for now and leave the big stuff to Ken Robinson & co.
Thanks for reading.

Jonny

 

References

1. Nairn, K., & Higgins, J. (2011). The emotional geographies of neoliberal school reforms: Spaces of refuge and containment. Emotion, Space and Society, 4(3), 180-186.

2. Vaughan, K. (2004). Alternative education today. SET: Research Information for Teachers, 3, pp. 24-25.

3. Adrian Schoone

*supposed wasted investment, but per person, prison costs $130,000 per year, AE costs $30,000 per year).

I don’t do emotions, I just do teaching…

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”

The famous idiom that gets joked around but actually does my head in! As I commit to the professional practice of teaching I am learning to deliver a new set of skills, techniques and teaching strategies to a variety of co-ed personalities with mixed ability, who are culturally diverse, and many more factors that make the classroom one big bundle of dramas! Add to that, I am well in the deep end of a quandary as I determine my values, aims and philosophy of Education to cater to all the needs of all my students, the expectations the school and the wider society.
I am annoyed at the idiom because I am already in fear of the impending workload about to be upon me and the seemingly impossible task of facilitating students to achieve excellence in a classroom full of constraints. Yet my profession is joked around like it’s a job for those who can’t manage or who haven’t succeeded in life.

Beverly Bell in Theorising Teaching in Secondary Classrooms writes that teaching is an interconnected set of nine socio-cultural practices that each form her metaphorical ‘socio-cultural jigsaw.’ These practices include emotional, relational, social, cultural, caring, ethical, embodied, spatial and political factors. This framework although complex, helps me to make sense of the varying parameters that create the sociocultural contexts in which my teaching (and learning) occurs. Metaphorically, according to Bell, I have to wear nine different hats, some at once, to deliver a lesson to students.

Nias (1996) said “as an occupation, teaching is highly charged with feeling, aroused by and directed towards not just people, but also values and ideals” This is a form of emotional practice and is one of the puzzles in the jigsaw. When I come into a classroom before or after the students, I am bringing with me an ever changing set of emotions that influence my practice. ‘Inspired’, ‘relaxed’, ‘passionate’, or ‘discouraged’, ‘tired’, ‘under pressure’ are some examples I’ll regularly feel. Some emotions I may have to suppress, others I can shout from the roof tops, but all will affect the way I teach and all will affect the way the students will learn. Linking in with the other puzzles of practice will also determine the emotions I teach with (or without).
Some say teaching is an act and I think there is an element of truth to this. If I am feeling tired and discouraged and let that show, my classroom won’t be a positive learning environment. If I express emotions that are encouraging, supportive and joyful will that guide the students to success? Will my emotions mask or remove the other conflicting power struggles or conflicts the puzzles can create?  Can the students tell?
However, what’s more eye opening to me, is that yes I may be practicing teaching with many different sociocultural hats on, but the students will also be learning through their own jigsaw of emotions, cultural influences, political pressures, relationship matters and many more influences.

The routine of a student before my first lesson of the day can sometimes go something like this…
4pm, I’m home from school with sugary snacks from the shop, I play with mates until 7pm when I find food around the house as nothings been cooked. Its pizza and chips, no fresh fruit or veg. 8pm I go back out on the streets with mates, smoking, energy drinks, listening to music and home at 10pm when it gets too cold to stay out. Don’t do homework, I chat online until 11pm then play computer games until I fall asleep about 1am. I wake up late, showers broken, no time for breakfast, so I rush to school with dirty uniform from yesterday. Eat sugary snacks from the shop and an energy drink before walking into class 5 mins late and with no pen to write with. Then the lesson begins…

I have signed up to managing the hidden and obvious emotions of each individual student for each case in point and time. Add in all the other puzzle pieces they could be experiencing, I have to rely on my ‘relationship building’, my ‘Do Now’ activity and my inspiring lesson content to engage the students and meet the set learning outcomes to keep everyone ‘happy’.
In all this, I have to ponder, what am I actually teaching them? How does my teaching inspire and transform their thinking, whilst they sit in a room that echoes the wider troubles of society? Either way, try wearing my ‘teaching hat’ for a day before you tell me what I can and can’t do.

Thanks for reading.

References
Bell, B. (2010). Theorising Teaching. Waikato Journal of Education, 15(2), 21-40.

Bell, B. (2011). Theorising teaching in secondary classrooms: Understanding our practice from a sociocultural perspective. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Nias, (1996), p. 293 cited in Bell, B. (2011). Theorising teaching in secondary classrooms: Understanding our practice from a sociocultural perspective. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.