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“If you don’t lead with small data, you’ll be led by Big Data”

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Derek Wenmoth reflects on Pasi Sahlberg’s uLearn18 keynote address.

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The keynote address by renowned Finnish academic and author, Pasi Sahlberg on day two of the uLearn18 conference may best be summed up as providing a warning and a call to action. While many in the audience were expecting to hear stories of how progressive the Finnish education system is, Pasi took us in a different direction. In his casual, at times ‘under-stated’ manner, he made us reflect on the challenges facing our education system and education systems around the world. Pasi then explained how we mustn’t simply expect the ‘system’ to provide the solution – that it should be the work of the professionals in the system to step up and take responsibility by focusing on each child and each classroom to make the difference.  

The underpinning message throughout the keynote was the need to focus on and respect the learner, with his or her particular needs, strengths, abilities and ambitions, and to understand this as the key to a truly learner-centred approach in education. With subtle wit and humour, Pasi shared his own experience as a maths teacher who once wanted to be a mathematician. Teasing this out, he described the stereotypical view of a maths teacher that has established itself in the minds of students, and the disservice we do to the field of mathematics – or any discipline for that matter – when we allow the focus on the content or the discipline to become more important than the learner. In the learners’ experience their interests will typically traverse multiple disciplines and be more holistic, integrated and ‘linked’.  This focus on the learner and the learner’s perspective is pivotal in building a successful, future-focused approach to schooling.

The Warning

The warning Pasi gave us is simple, and is tied in made explicit in the title of the keynote: if we don’t lead with small data we’ll be led by big data.

The problem is that education policymakers around the world are now reforming their education systems through correlations based on Big Data from their own national student assessments systems and international education data bases without adequately understanding the details that make a difference in schools.

(https://pasisahlberg.com/next-big-thing-education-small-data/)

By ‘big data’ he is talking about all forms of assessment and achievement data that is currently being collected and collated at a national and international level, sifted, sorted and represented back in the form of statistics and trends upon which large scale decisions are made about curriculum, policy and resourcing. We know this well in New Zealand with the recent experience with National Standards and the pre-occupation with OECD data that appears to cause immediate swings in what is deemed to be important.

Pasi’s key warning here is “Don’t confuse correlation with causation”. Just because the data can be construed to reveal certain patterns or trends doesn’t make it true in the context of a specific student or school. To illustrate his point he used a combination of OECD data and national data on the amount of ice cream consumed to “prove” that ice cream consumption positively affects education scores!

The more concerning warning came when considering how technology may be viewed as providing a solution to meeting the demand for mass-personalisation. The argument presented is compelling – if 75% of education spending is on people, and we could reduce a third of the “people” by using artificial intelligence (AI) in education this would present an attractive proposition for budget-conscious politicians. But what will it mean for educating students as a whole person?

To illustrate that this is a very real and current concern, Pasi used the illustration of alt-school – a network of progressive schools in the USA. These schools advertise themselves as being completed learner-centred, providing learning that is self-driven, competency-based, personalised, socially embedded, and open-walled. It sounds like the ideal scenario – highly personalised pathways for individual students, powered by a sophisticated AI that is monitoring each student’s every move using a series of cameras throughout the environment, and monitoring their every keystroke and response to online content and instruction.

There’s no doubt this approach works, and produces students capable of passing exams and demonstrating their gains in learning – but what’s missing? Where are the relationships with others? Engagement in play? Interactions with people? Development of empathy and other effective qualities that may best serve the future of humanity?

A key question here is to ask, “if it is truly personalised learning by the AI, where is the child’s voice? How can it be personalised if the child does not have some form of input?”

So the challenge is around just how seriously we take this possible future – and not to simply cast it aside as a ‘pipe dream’ that is the work of science fiction, because after all, ‘technology will never replace a teacher!”

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The call to action

The call for action directs attention directly on those of us working with learners in schools – the teachers. Pasi challenged us to trust our raw instincts, to be amongst what is happening, not just observing from a distance. This will require a greater degree of professional trust is the key to the small data conundrum.

In Finland, trust is for us the full trust and freedom for our schools and teachers, believing that they can develop goals, teaching standards and content appropriate for their children. The trust is instilled deeply in our culture; it is not a single behavior in a particular situation.

(https://pasisahlberg.com/interview-teachers-need-a-sense-of-mission-empathy-and-leadership/)

Small data is what we gather when noticing the small stuff that is occurring in the specific context of the classroom or individual student learning, and will make a difference to the big picture when we combine what we observe with our professional wisdom. Pasi’s point is that this ‘small data’ reveals patterns and insights that the ‘big data’ with its statistical trends and correlations can never do.

Pasi’s call for action is that we discover together, at the local level, the power of collective professional wisdom. It is the little things we do as teachers with our learners that makes the difference.  This resonates well in the NZ context where we’ve valued Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJs) as a part of the assessment process – but if we’re to be serious about taking up Pasi’s challenge, we will need to become even more serious about ensuring we build our professional capacity even further – and deeper – so that we can be even more secure and confident about the ‘professional wisdom’ that we are able to bring to bear on the observations we make.

To achieve this Pasi recognised the need for educators and government agencies to work collectively to find ways to reduce teacher workload, support special education, fund public schools better and use student voice to design learning.

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The three key take-aways that Pasi left us with were:

  1. Build a trust-based professionalism – trust colleagues, bosses, children – and this will include building trust within the community too, with parents and future employers etc.
  2. Build professional wisdom as evidence – we need to give greater priority again to our professional reading, participation in professional associations and in-school professional learning groups (PLGs) where our professional knowledge can be challenged and honed.
  3. Lead with Small Data – if you don’t make this a priority, you WILL be led by big data!

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Building the capacity for organisational change

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Change is often referred to as the constant in our present age, particularly in education — but too often it’s something we like to watch from afar, preferring that it affects someone else. And yet, the reality is that few of us are ever immune from the impact of change. So, why is it that we find change difficult to embrace? Building our capacity for change, and doing the same for the learners in our care, ought to be a priority for anyone living in this fast-paced, ‘exponentially-changing’ world.

This is even more important when we consider the challenge of bringing about change in the organisations we work for or in. Changing an organisation can be like trying to turn a whale: until we think of it more as a school of small fish — when one turns so do the others, so the whole school changes in a more agile way than the large whale might!

Having spent some time with various individuals and professional groups on this matter, here are five tips that I think provide a useful checklist to consider when thinking about how well you’re building your organisation’s capacity for change.

1. Be informed

Being caught by surprise can be the biggest challenge to embracing change. It’s always better if we’ve had our ‘eyes on the horizon’ and understand the environment we’re a part of, so that when change does occur, we have a frame of reference to help make sense of it all. Some questions to ask here include:

  • What are you reading? Are you exposing yourself to multiple perspectives?
  • What conferences do you attend? Are they only relating to what you do in your work?
  • Who do you discuss this with? Do they challenge your ideas if they don’t agree?
  • What PLD programmes do you participate in?
  • Are you involved in a personal/professional learning network (PLN)
  • What is your personal inquiry? What guides your process?
  • How do you act on new ideas?

2. Understand the culture that exists

The culture of an organisation defines “how things happen” here, and understanding what that culture is will assist you in recognising where the enablers and roadblocks to change may be. Some questions to guide you here are:

  • What drives the way your organisation operates? Who ‘owns’ the learning there?
  • Does everyone demonstrate leadership – teachers, students, parents, community
  • Is transparency, trust, devolved responsibility evident?
  • Is there an appetite for risk, and acceptance of failure as a part of the process?
  • Do you devote time to building relationships and valuing ideas and input?
  • How do you celebrate and recognise achievements and successes as they happen?

3. Develop leadership capabilities among all involved

Change is everyone’s responsibility — not just ‘those at the top’. For real change to occur, everyone must take ownership of what is being changed, and be prepared to be a part of the change process. This works best when everyone in the organisation is recognised for the leadership capabilities they bring. Some questions to reflect on here are:

  • How are the strategic decisions made in your organisation? Who has the final say?
  • Do learners and teachers have agency in their work?
  • How do you recognise and value the particular talents and skills of individuals?
  • How do you foster the emergence of new thinking and leadership?
  • Does everyone demonstrate leadership — teachers, students, parents, community?
  • Do learners and teachers have agency in their work?
  • Do you devote time to building relationships and valuing ideas and input?

4. Develop strategies for coping

Ultimately, organisational change requires a commitment to action, and action requires that we have strategies that can be used to guide the activity of everyone involved. There is a plethora of advice on strategies for change that you can easily access on the web or in a bookstore, but some worth considering are:

  • How do you accommodate risk and accept failure as a part of learning?
  • Is there evidence of a “Fail fast, fix fast” mindset?
  • Is professional inquiry and personal reflection an integral part of organisational learning?
  • What frameworks have you adopted that provide common insights and the basis of a shared language of change?
  • Is there a regular celebration of what has been achieved?

5. Don’t do it alone

Organisational change is not an individual endeavour! A characteristic of our modern age is the emphasis on collaboration; on partnership; on being ‘networked’. To bring about meaningful, sustained change we need each other, and to understand it is a corporate endeavour, where everyone’s voice must count, and everyone’s actions matter. Some questions to ask here are:

  • Is there an emphasis on “We” not “Me” in your organisation?
  • Are staff and students required to work regularly as teams?
  • Is learning and teaching happening cross curricular using integrated approaches?
  • Is collaboration the norm?
  • Do you understand how ecologies operate? Are you operating as part of a “network”?
  • Are you prepared to give a little? Don’t sweat the small stuff!

This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point for some personal reflection and for conversations you may wish to have with others in your own organisation. While the questions are primarily posed to challenge the thinking of organisational leaders, there is plenty in here for those who have other roles.

Listen to Derek Wenmoth discussing these ideas:

Building capacity for change from CORE Education Digital Media on Vimeo.

 

If you’d like to know more about how you can build the capacity for change in your organisation we have a number of consultants at CORE who are specialists in this area and can work with you to find solutions that work for you and your context. Please contact us.

You may also find it valuable to attend Tēnei te Tira Hou | Culture of Change, the pre-conference day at our ULearn event, from 10-12 October

Image Credits:
Change sign adapted from photo artwork by Diana Boucino on Flickr under CC 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0)

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Learning to Thrive in a Transforming World

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For most teachers, the beginning of a school year is an opportunity to look ahead with fresh eyes, thinking of our students and how best we can nurture and grow them as learners. In our schools, kura, and early years settings, there’ll be lots of activity around preparing the themes, topics, and resources required to inspire creative minds, not to mention the physical arrangement of the learning environments, scheduling of time, and allocation of tasks that will enable all of this to happen.

In the midst of this, many of us will be participating in some form of teacher-only time, where we take the opportunity to look at some of the ‘wider’ issues facing our work. For some, that may mean a fresh look at areas in the curriculum where learners need additional support, for others it may involve the introduction of some new, school-wide initiatives, while for others it may involve an opportunity to stretch ‘out of your comfort zone’ for a moment, and reflect a little on the bigger questions such as, ‘What is the purpose of education?’

The latter can be a challenging, and often uncomfortable, experience. How often do we hear “We live in exponential times!” to explain the constant pressure to change, and as an expression of the challenges ahead? But what does this really mean? And what are the implications for us as educators?

Wherever we look nowadays there seems to be another conference with keynote speakers professing to give a glimpse of the future — featuring examples of science fiction-type technological advances that are now becoming a reality. Whether it’s the prospect of flying cars, robots taking our jobs, or virtual reality providing places to hide from the real world, some find themselves endlessly fascinated with these ‘miracles’ of modern technology. For many, however, it can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed and ‘powerless’ when these things challenge and even threaten the very basis of our established norms and practices.

The simple truth is that we are facing times of unprecedented change, with lots of it happening as a consequence of technology, and all of it impacting significantly on the ways we live, work, communicate, and spend our leisure time. Much of this change is ‘unpredictable’, being the unintended consequence of some sort of intervention – all of which adds to the dilemma of how we respond, both individually and collectively.

The concept of schooling has always been premised on preparing young people for life in the adult world — as contributors to the “economic engine” that underpins modern society. Our current education system, which emerged in the middle of the 19th century and was designed to serve the needs of the Industrial Revolution, is facing significant stress. There is an increasing perception that our education system is failing to meet the needs of modern society, leading to a plethora of ‘school reform’ movements across the world.

Today, education has to be about learning to thrive in a transforming world.

The statement above should be printed across the doorway of all of our staffrooms and on the cover of all of our planning documents as we look ahead to 2018.

We need to be asking ourselves what we can do to enable each and every child, whatever their starting point, to flourish and lead fulfilling lives and to become responsible and active members of society. We also need to be open to exploring together what is the role of education in creating a fairer society.

To work towards this, here are three things that may be helpful to frame some of your thinking and planning as you prepare for your learners as they return for the new school year:

1. Focus on building capabilities

We must do more to shift from a system that has been predominantly focused on ‘front-loading’ learners with the knowledge and skills required to function productively in future society, to one that recognises change as the constant and prepares learners, of all ages, with the strategies and capabilities to cope with and feel empowered within this world of change.

Our school curriculum and the pedagogical approaches we use must inspire and motivate our young learners to develop the kinds of capabilities that are key to leading successful lives. This includes things such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication.

As you prepare for the coming year, ponder these questions…

  • How are the key competencies in the national curriculum really addressed in what happens on a day-to-day basis in your classroom and across your school?
  • To what extent do your students and parents/whānau regard the development of key competencies as a priority?
  • What is the evidence you look for and gather to ensure these are being developed?

2. Learning as a disposition

It is now widely acknowledged that learning occurs across diverse contexts and throughout our lifetimes – not only at school! We know that learners accumulate knowledge, skills, and competencies in formal and non-formal settings, and understand that, without regular maintenance, some knowledge and/or skills may depreciate with time.

As a consequence, we need to ensure the focus of our education system is on learning (i.e., ‘how’ we learn), and less on the content (i.e., ‘what’ we learn). We need to foster the development of a learning disposition that will ensure the learner is able to engage with and learn about new ideas, new skills, and new thinking as required throughout their life.

The concept of life-long learning is well established in our rhetoric and many of our policy settings, but it often exists as a vague intention rather than being a strategically and explicitly planned part of how we think and provide this within our ‘organised’ learning systems. Thinking of how you might give a greater focus to this in your context in 2018, you might ask:

  • How might you build a ‘language of learning’ among your students, staff, and community, where these capabilities are prioritised and reinforced through the learning endeavour?
  • How do you recognise and acknowledge learning that occurs beyond the school boundary – in clubs and after-school groups, across all domains – cultural, sporting, academic etc.?
  • How are you and your colleagues demonstrating a learning disposition in your personal and professional life, and what is the evidence of this learning on your approach to the work you do?

3. Learning involves everyone

The percentage of children who struggle to engage with education for a range of reasons, often connected with poverty, is well documented. The task of addressing the broad range of learners’ needs in our modern society cannot be addressed by schools alone. There is a clear recognition that unless the difficult questions about how to improve outcomes for learners and their families are tackled, the aspiration to build a more equal society cannot be achieved.

Education is critical to social and economic development and has a profound impact on the wellbeing of all in society. The old saying; ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ has special significance nowadays, particularly as the fabric of ‘the village’ is not as well woven as it may once have been. We need to be exploring new ways of enabling the village to work together again — dispelling the siloed mentality that so often separates the very services and supports that need to be working together to create a learning society. Some questions you may ask as you reflect on your start to 2018 could include:

  • What opportunities do you create for multi-generational learning to occur in your context – i.e., adults in the classroom, evening classes, project-based mentors etc.?
  • What use do you make of community resources and contexts for learning? What about access to community expertise? Is this reciprocated in any way?
  • How are you embracing the richness of diverse cultural backgrounds represented in your ‘village’ — how are different groups learning from each other in this way?
  • How might you initiate or cultivate a learning focus in areas of your community other than school – e.g., within local libraries, local clubs, and service organisations, health centres etc.?

Let’s make 2018 a year when we focus more intentionally and explicitly on the development of key competencies/capabilities.

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Change, beliefs, and the ‘F’ words

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The annual uLearn conference is over for another year, and as the new term begins it’s worth taking a little time to reflect on the ‘big ideas’ we came away with — the overarching themes and messages that persisted through the various keynote, spotlight, and workshop presentations. I had the privilege of doing a quick summary at the end of this year’s conference, and want to share that in this blog post as an ‘aide memoire’ for those who are interested.

For me, there were three ‘big ideas’ that kept surfacing (four if you count my two “F” words) which are expanded on below:

Change

“Do not raise your children the way [your] parents raised you, they were born for a different time.”
― Ali ibn Abi Talib

The theme of change was overwhelmingly present in all of the keynote presentations. And not just any change — we’re talking exponential change. Change of such unprecedented proportion that it is becoming impossible to predict the future with any certainty at all, and where our ability to cope is severely challenged. The message was clear, we need to do more to understand the significance of this exponential change for our schools, our learners, and our society. It is time to recognise that our linear ways of dealing with change in the past are simply inadequate when it comes to preparing our young people for their future.

As educational leaders, we are extremely well-versed in the linear approaches to change and change management. We settle in for months, and sometimes years, of sequential interventions designed to help us adapt to the latest change in curriculum, assessment, or pedagogical approach. The problem is that we’re constantly feeling like we’re ‘behind the eight ball’ and never achieving anything before the next wave of change is upon us. This is what happens when we attempt to respond to exponential change in a linear way.

If there was one key message from each of our presenters, it was that we need to set aside many of our traditional approaches to change, particularly if we see ourselves as leading the change, or worse, managing it (now there’s an oxymoron). Linear approaches to change are premised on the notion of certainty — that by doing x and y in sequence we’ll end up in the changed state of z. The problem is, the world of exponential change is characterised by uncertainty — and that is a state that is almost impossible to manage in the traditional sense.

Coping with uncertainty requires everyone involved to accept that they may not have the answers, and more importantly, to realise that the answer is more likely to reside with the collective rather than in the mind of a single individual (i.e., the leader).

As educators, we need to move beyond seeing ourselves as the ones who are passing on our knowledge to our students, or even, facilitating them to discover that knowledge for themselves. We don’t have all of the answers, and the uncertain future our learners will face will present them with challenges that only they will be in a position to solve. This requires a level of humility in our actions as educators, and a growing emphasis on the development of competencies as distinct from domains of knowledge. As one of our keynotes observed; “I want my students to stand on my shoulders, to solve problems I/we can’t yet solve”.

Beliefs

“Focus on changing beliefs – it’s the only thing that matters”
– Eric Mazur

Through the conference we were repeatedly reminded to ask the ‘why’ question — to examine the beliefs that lie behind our actions, be they the things we do as individual educators, or the systems, structures, and processes we adhere to and defend with such vigor.

Understanding how our beliefs shape behaviour is central to understanding how we can respond to change. We see the impact of change in practice without the change in belief all too frequently in our current system — be that the move from single-cell classrooms into open, flexible learning spaces, or the adoption of new forms of assessment. Unless they are underpinned by a fundamental change in belief on the part of the educators involved, the change to some of these things will, just as quickly, be followed by a change back — ending up in the proverbial ‘ping pong’ we see in so many situations – from the school level through to the political level.

Most importantly, we need to consider the notion of coherence — from our beliefs at the centre, the expression of these in terms of the values we espouse, to the practices that we engage in on a daily basis. If there is any inconsistency across these three ‘layers’, then we discover the fragility of any initiative we might engage in – however well intentioned it may be. This is where asking the ‘why’ question becomes so important. We need to be constantly reflecting on the beliefs that underpin our actions, as this is the only way we will build a unified view of the purpose and value of what we are seeking to achieve in our schools, our Kāhui Ako, and our system.

The “F” words

“Fail Fast, Fix Fast, Learn Fast’ is a leadership maxim I advocate”
— Kevin Roberts

If there’s one thing our education system isn’t easily disposed to embracing, it’s the notion of failure. We simply don’t have time for it. Having to deal with failure will simply hold us back from ‘covering’ everything we need to get through, or cause too big a gap to emerge between those who can and those who can’t.

The big issue here is that we live in a time where innovation is being celebrated as something we need more of in our education system – we’re constantly being told how we need to encourage innovators and entrepreneurs in our schools, and yet, for these people, the one thing they have in common is failure. More than that, they have learned through failure. They understand how to confront failure and to learn from their mistakes.

The secret is to heed the advice of ex-Saachi and Saachi CEO, Kevin Roberts, whose maxim is to ‘fail fast, fix fast, and learn fast’. In other words, don’t despair when things go wrong — use the opportunity to find a solution, and to ensure you learn from that so that you can avoid the same mistake in the future. If we are to succeed in coping with change in this exponential future, we need to make sure that our teachers and our learners are given permission to fail, and from that failure come to a position when they gain both success and insight as they turn their failure into an opportunity for learning.

Finally – one more “F” word that was prevalent in our conference – FUN!! As educators, we can become overly serious at times – to the point of being morose, at times. Amid the excitement, the learning, the challenges of the conference, it was good to see people simply having fun! This is something we do well to recall as we return to the work we do on a day-to-day basis in whatever context we come from. If we lose the sense of fun, we lose an important ingredient in what motivates us to do what we do, and what attracts others to work and learn alongside us.

derek wenmoth

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Ten Trends in education 2017

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CORE's Ten Trends 2017

CORE’s Ten Trends for 2017 are now available to view and use for personal reflection, research or as a catalyst for staff discussion.

Every year our team at CORE invests time drawing together ideas from a range of areas to create our Ten Trends. There’s a lot of value for our staff in doing so as it ensures we are keeping abreast of current trends and developments and thinking about how they may impact on the education sector. In addition, when we share these with the wider community of educators, they provide a catalyst for further exploration, debate and discussion in staffrooms across the country – and further afield.

We believe these trends are a way of assisting educators and others to gain a broader perspective on the changes taking place in our schools and society. Every day we are challenged by new things happening and new technologies driving some of this – and this exponentially changing world can often be overwhelming. By taking some time to examine the trends, and to examine both the positive and negative impacts of each, we can be better prepared to respond to the changes that may occur, to understand the drivers behind them, and to work in ways that ensure a human response is made.

This year we’ve placed a greater emphasis on explaining the importance of the five central trend areas in our diagram. These are really the domains in which the things we identify as trends are having an impact – and where we are seeing the changes occur in our educational institutions and in society generally. For each of these five domains we have focused on two things that are illustrative of these trends – one of which is impacting on our lives in the immediate future, the second being a little further off, but worth watching!

Another change this year is that we have decided to publish our trends as a PDF document that you can download from the CORE website. We’ll still be publishing them electronically on our website – including video material, but we’re now publishing these in PDF format in response to feedback received over the past couple of years from educators and school leaders who are keen to use them for research or as conversation starters with staff.

If you’d like to be a part of some wider discussions around these trends,  I encourage you to join the Ten Trends group in edSpace, our new online community space, where educators from across New Zealand are taking time to engage with each other in discussing things that matter to them, their learners and their communities.

Derek Wenmoth interviewed by Anaru White about CORE’s Ten Trends 2017

Links:

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