learning matters (nz)
Saturday, February 6, 2010
tough times ahead for our young folk?
The statistics (see "Brian Gaynor: Surge in jobless hitting younger Kiwis hardest") show unemployment having risen to a staggering 18.4%. That's nearly one in every five young people who want a job - can't get one.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Why Bother ?
What about the Content?
OK, I am a little left of centre on this. Content is not king, content is important, essential even, but it is not king. It is time teachers and administrators decided that content is subservient to higher order educational objectives and ran their schools accordingly. It is time teachers stopped being so precious and protective of 'their' content area.
As I mentioned on the Skype call, what is the good of content if we do not DO SOMETHING with it? For example, what is the good of learning about the Iraq invasion if we are not able to discuss this with someone living int eh Middle East who may have a different perspective. What is the good of knowing facts and figures and writing about them just for one teacher, one examiner and perhaps a fwe classmates?
Dr Marc Rosenberg asserts that today's e-learning is both inadequate
and ineffective. Starting with the punch-card learning he experienced 30 years
ago, enthusiasm for technology rather than pedagogy has all too often driven
development. This has resulted in 'vending machines' churning out 'PowerPoint
learning', poor learning experiences and a market penetration of only 20
percent. In conclusion, Dr Rosenberg explains that he is here to save
e-learning, not to bury it, and demands new, better forms of e-learning to
address the skills of tomorrow. For now though, the 'e' of e-learning stands for
'enough'!
So the challenge is how do we shift the focus back to the learner and how ICT can make them a better learner. How do we shift the focus of ICT from being just a tool, or conduit to others' information ... to being a collaborative tool that helps students to build their own and collective understanding?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The Challenge of Leadership
So much happens in a school, and it happens at pace. Large or small, the academic year is not long and the regular checkpoints such as reports home seem to come all too fast. In this environment, it is easy to see time slip away ... and to become reactive. Responding to the needs and agendas of others.
The challenge is to shift from the reactive to the proactive. The challenge is striking the balance between doing the more mechanical (and typically reactive) parts of the job, and doing the leadership (proactive) parts of the job. The challenge is getting the correct balance between serving the needs of others (reactive) and guiding the work and vision of others (proactive).
This can be hard. It is easy to assume the responsibility of others, when in fact your job is to ensure they are playing their part in the team. There is always someone with a monkey to place on your shoulders. There the multiple agendas to negotiate, and the different attitudes that exist within the team.
The challenge is to bring all this together to meld a team.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Perimeter
Think of managing student behaviour. By far and away the major proportion of interactions with or between students are positive. Or where they are negative, they are easily resolved. It is only when the matter gets significant or contreversial that they reach a senior manager.
It is the role of deputy principals to deal with and decide on these cases. And as with the development of law by the judiciary, the deputy principals are repeatedly enforcing and defining the expectations of a school. In this sense they work at the perimeter of the school.
The principal is even more so. Cases will only come to him or her when the situation exceeds the warrant of a deputy principal, or a final interpretation of rules or expectations is needed. The work of the principal is often at the perimeter of school systems and life.
And if the principal is at the perimeter, the Board of Trustees is also there ... but on the other side of the fence. The principal and the Board share a responsibility to collectively protect that perimeter ... in order to protect and promote the interests and wellbeing of staff and students inside the organisation.
The challenge to senior management is that whilst must of their work is at the perimeter, they do not live exclusively there. They must foray into the center of the organisation ... which in a school is the classroom. This is the chalkface. This is where most (not all) of student learning takes place, and as the best evidence synthesis of school leadership by Vivianne Robinson shows, principals must make this their primary focus.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
iPod
I can't enter text in the normal compose box. Rather I can only do it in the HTML box. Quite frustrating really!
Labels: Ipod
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Constructivism
This morning I was sitting next to parents with a young 4 month old baby. It's interesting to consider what is going through the mind of this young child. As he looks around I would imagine there is a mosaic of colours and lights that mean little to him. At the same time he is hearing a cacophony of sounds which are equally meaningless.
Gradually over time, the baby will see and hear similar things until they start to form regular patterns and memories. Certain shapes will become faces, certain faces will become his family. Other shapes become buildings. Gradually the baby's knowledge of the world grows.
This process of turning random bits of information into understanding about the world is learning. As the child experiences more of the world, he constructs his understanding of it. Hence the term constructivism. Constructivism is a theory of knowledge (or learning) that says our brains build their own understanding of the world ... partly by ourselves, partly through interacting with others.
Individual or cognitive constructivism places more emphasis on the individual building understanding by him or herself. Piaget is often associated with this theory. He talked of individuals expanding their understanding of the world around them through assimilation (absorbing more information that supports an individual's existing understanding) and accommodation (changing an individual's understanding due to information not fitting in with an individual's current understanding).
Social constructivism sees learning as more, though not exclusively, a shared experience. For example as we grow we learn the language of our community. This language shapes how we form our thoughts. Also talking to others challenges our thinking, hence the social aspect of learning.
An understanding of constructivism is essential to teachers ... primary and secondary. The process of learning continues as the baby grows to a toddler, a young child, a teenager, an adult. We continue to expand our understanding of the world around us. Sometimes taking on the understanding of others, sometimes challenging (deconstructing) it to build a new understanding.
Good teachers will be competent in three areas:
- they will know their students well
... what they already know, how they learn, what motivates them - they will know their subject well
... what do students need to learn now to learn the next set of information later
... they are comfortable having students challenge and deconstruct a subject to try and reconfigure it - they know how people learn
Put this all together and you have a quality teacher in front of students. And then you are in the right place to get student learning, evidenced by high student achievement.
And that is what schools are all about.
Labels: constructivism, learning, quality teaching
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Rethinking Reassessment
Effective assessment practice is a critical element of education. We assess what we value, so any changes to assessment practices must be sure to reflect what we value. And I question whether the proposed changes do so.
The suggested guidelines seek to push internal assessment closer to one-off assignments, to be more like tests or exams. This is done in the name of authenticity. They propose that once an assessment is submitted, students should have no further ability to get feedback and then re-consider their thinking.
And this is the point. There is a greater drive in education towards developing thinking skills and communication skills, rather than content. On process rather the final product. Yet these guidelines (inadvertently or otherwise) push assessment in the wrong direction.
If, for example, a teacher designs an assessment around original thinking (e.g. an analytical essay, a creative art piece) ... then at some stage they must leave students a significant body of time to formulate their thinking, as opposed to data gathering, etc. It is not always possible to place milestones in this process, nor in reality will students take advantage of these. The reality is that many students leave work until late in the piece and we must accept this reality, especially given how busy students are.
Certainly some teachers, and it is a very small minority, have abused the current freedom in assessment guideines. But let's not punish our students. We urge our students to 'give it a go' and to 'learn from their mistakes'. So too with assessment, we must allow students to formulate their thinking, communicate it, receive feedback ... and then have an opportunity to reconsider their thinking.
The re-assessment guidelines must allow for students to re-do an assessment (all or part of it) after they have received feedback from the teacher. This makes for effective learning. Will appropriate guidelines, this can be done very effectively.
We value thinking and clear communication, so we must assess it - properly.
Labels: assessment, education, learning
