graduate-profile

Future Ready – bringing your graduate profile to life!

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Beginning the year provides a great opportunity to ‘start fresh’ with our thinking, individually and as a staff. It’s a time where we can take a moment to reflect on what’s really important and what the key drivers are for our work.

For schools and kura this thinking is revealed in mission and vision statements.. These make explicit the aspirations they, and their community, have for learners in their care.

A really good mission and vision statement is grounded in beliefs about teaching and learning that are held by the staff and the community. These in turn reveal a lot about what they believe to be the purpose of schooling, what is expected of it by the community and society more generally.

I’m writing this as I reflect on three recent experiences:

  1. A camping holiday with my entire family during which we spent time sharing some of our dreams and thoughts about what’s happening in our lives and the hopes we have for the six grandchildren in particular.
  2. A day working with the staff of a large primary school in Auckland where we explored the implications of a ‘future focused’ perspective on all aspects of the school’s planning and activity, and how this is reflected in their statement of intent, vision and mission.
  3. The release earlier in the week of a new report from the OECD on Teenagers’ Career Aspirations and the Future of Work, and the headline in local papers telling us that half of Kiwi 15-year-olds expect to work in one of just 10 occupations.

The questions about ‘What is school for?’ and the ‘purpose of education’ are the common thread in these experiences. Whether a parent making decisions about a place of learning for their child; an educator making curriculum planning decisions for the year ahead; or a national or international policy body researching these things, we can’t avoid the reality that the most significant measure of success of our endeavours is the ‘product’ at the end of the line – in education’s case, the confident, connected, life-long learner who is able to thrive in a world where the future is uncertain and changing.

Considering how well school contributes to the preparation of our young people as future citizens, and how well they then contribute to society in the workforce is a key indicator of success. The journey towards this goal starts well before they get to the senior secondary years when the careers guidance programmes kick in.

The foundations that prepare young people for their futures, including work, are established early in life when parents and whānau begin asking “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Once they make their way to school or kura our children and tamariki encounter the curriculum with an initial emphasis on literacy and numeracy, gradually expanding to other domains of knowledge and the skills associated with them. The design of the curriculum is influenced by our beliefs (as society, communities, educators) about what they need to be able to know and do that will prepare them for what they do in the future.

All good so far, except that when it comes to what actually happens in school, it appears (in some cases at least) that this connection isn’t made. According to a 2018 article in Stuff, while we may consider our school graduates to be educated, tech savvy and enthusiastic, only half of 16- to 23-year-olds feel their education has prepared them well for the future. In that article, Massey University Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Paul Spoonley, is reported as saying that there has been a disconnect between employers’ expectations and the secondary and tertiary curriculum for some time.

The more recent OECD findings reinforce this earlier report, with the list of ten occupations identified through their research looking very similar to the list I would have made when I was at school, more than 40 years ago. None of the occupations identified in the World Economic Forum’s list of top ten skills you will need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, appear in the OECD list for example.

However, I’d suggest that the ‘disconnect’ should be considered more widely than simply being between what employers expect and the what is in the school curriculum – or perhaps more correctly, how it is taught.

Many schools and kura have made explicit the aspirations they have for their learners, in the form of a graduate profile. In almost every case, these profiles describe a wide range of competencies and dispositions that places of learning want to see developed in young people during the time they are with them. These are based on beliefs about what is important in terms of character, including the ability to adapt and cope with change, and not narrowly defined in terms of specific skills or knowledge outcomes.

Again, this is a really valuable exercise and one that I’d strongly support. Once developed, the graduate profile must remain a ‘living document’, not something that is filed away and used as a point of reference for achievement when learners reach their final year.

As the new year begins, I encourage you to revisit your graduate profile (if you have one) and reflect on the extent to which the programmes, themes, activities and topics planned for this term or year will provide opportunities for your learners to develop the characteristics you’ve identified. What measures will you take to so that you can confidently say these things are being or have been achieved? Moreover, as the characteristics described in a good graduate profile likely to develop, what strategies and measures do you have in your school, kura or centre to monitor and track this development over time?

Let’s make 2020 the year we shift our emphasis to be truly ‘future focused’, and take steps to ensure that there is no longer any gap between what we say we aspire to see learners achieve and what they report as their experience when they leave you to participate as contributing members of society – including in the world of work.

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Auahatanga | Innovation

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When Māori first made their way to Aotearoa they used a variety of innovative ways to navigate to places they’d not previously visited. Once on land, their challenge came in finding ways to meet their everyday needs using what was available in this new landscape. Over the ensuing years Māori became adept at using the local flora and fauna to build shelter, make clothing and provide food and medicines to sustain themselves.

Centuries later, the European settlers came, bringing a post-industrial approach to building a life in this new land. These early settlers also had to adapt and improvise to meet their needs – including finding ways of fixing and maintaining the industrial age tools they’d brought with them. Number 8 wire, brought with them for fencing, was readily available and often used as a substitute for the parts that were missing or not working well. Out of this grew the myth of the Number 8 Wire mentality; otherwise known as Kiwi ingenuity.

From these early times both Māori and Pākeha have been identified as practical, problem-solver types, able to invent, fix and create solutions, often through improvisation and clever thinking rather than having access to the level of resourcing available to others. New Zealanders are recognised on the global stage for this number 8 wire mindset, from Rutherford’s work towards the splitting of the atom to Rocket Lab’s launching of a rocket into space.

While we may have grown up thinking of ourselves as the nation with the Number 8 Wire mindset, in our modern world we have become increasingly accustomed to having our problems addressed for us by others who have the knowledge, skill and resources to do this. The Number 8 Wire may have been useful in fixing a mechanical tractor or milking shed machinery, but it’s unlikely to be of use on one of today’s electronically controlled cars or ‘smart’ building systems for example.

Reimagining Aotearoa’s future will require us to innovate in different ways. We will need to connect and strengthen our communities; to disrupt what we’ve known and innovate to find solutions that meet new challenges and effect change. This will be a challenge in a world of increasing complexity and exponential change where our problems won’t only be about how to address our immediate physical needs, but will extend to how to address issues and concerns that affect the way we live and survive as a society, locally and globally.

In the modern world, education becomes even more important for developing the next generation of innovators, problem solvers and creative thinkers. It can ignite a passion for learning and provide students with the tools they need to thrive and succeed in the innovation economy.

Innovation in education requires:

  • Risk taking – valuing the ability to push the boundaries, to think outside the square and to try things even when there’s no guarantee of success.
  • Failure – giving learners permission to fail, to learn from failure and to persist with ideas.
  • Open-mindedness – not limiting one’s thinking to the conventions that exist, but being prepared to embrace new ideas and new thinking.
  • Collaboration – while individuals may be acknowledged for their original ideas and creativity, bringing new thinking to the fore requires the effort of a team.
  • Support – learners need to know that their efforts are supported, that they won’t be penalised for something that doesn’t work but instead encouraged to try again.
  • Resources – innovative activities will require things to get messy at times, with learners requiring access to things that will enable them to experiment with their ideas. Often these resources will exist outside of the school, kura or centre, so community relationships and global connections will become important here.

Innovation is one of the CORE uLearn conference themes this year, The focus questions developed for this strand provide some provocations for participants to consider how they create a climate of innovation in their educational communities:

  • How can we prepare our young people to be innovators and change agents?
  • How might we intentionally teach in ways that promote creativity, innovation, wonder, joy, and a passion for learning.
  • What is the role of inquiry in learning? In teaching? How does this lead to innovation?
  • How do we bring new ideas to fruition in our schools/kura/organisations?
  • How might innovation look and occur from different perspectives and through different cultural lenses?

edSpace is CORE Education’s online network for educators to connect with others, discuss strategies, and share information – join edSpace here. Once you’re there, head to our uLearn discussion forum, and join the discussion about Innovation.

As young people around the world begin to mobilise in response to the growing concerns they have about the problems they see looming on the horizon, we need to think about how we prepare this generation of learners, through developing an innovator’s mindset, so that they become the solution builders.

References
The Genius of Kiwi Ingenuity https://www.motovated.co.nz/genesis-kiwi-ingenuity/
Innovation in the Classroom: Why Education Needs to Be More Innovative  https://philmckinney.com/innovation-classroom-education-needs-innovative/

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It’s better to be on the bus than on the road!

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“If you feel overwhelmed and confused by the global predicament, you are on the right track. Global processes have become too complicated for any single person to understand. How then can you know the truth about the world, and avoid falling victim to propaganda and misinformation?”

Yuval Noah Harari, introduction to part IV of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

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In response to my indecision about how to face a particular challenge in my career, an old friend of mine once suggested, “it’s better to be on the bus than on the road!” I took that to mean that it is better to be a part of the change than simply allow it to ‘run over’ me and be overwhelmed by it all. An unfortunate consequence of the current state of relentless, exponential change, both locally and globally, means many of us feel we’re ‘on the road’ at times, simply watching everything pass us by and feeling helpless in what to do about it.

Being ‘on the bus’ holds much more appeal for me than being on the road – for a start, from the bus you get a different perspective of the challenges you face. You get to see more of the other things going on – from the various sights you’re passing to a view of the horizon. In addition, you do all of this with others – realising that you’re not alone in facing these challenges and that together, you’re in a better place to both appreciate the good and to find solutions.

In times of accelerating change it’s easy to fall victim to a ‘stable state’ mentality, thinking that if we simply wait a while everything may return to a state of ‘normal’ again. In a world where developments in technology, climate change, threats of war and political uncertainty all contribute to feelings of anxiety and indecision, it is more important than ever before that, as educators, and as responsible citizens of the world, we need to understand a return to ‘the stable state’ isn’t a likely scenario. We need to see ourselves as being ‘on the bus’, engaging our collaborative and critical thinking capabilities to help us make sense of it all, and to find solutions to the challenges we face.

Being ‘on the bus’ doesn’t imply a physical place to be – it’s a mindset. It involves resilience, fore-sight and critical thinking. Resilience because we need strategies that will allow us to cope with the feelings of uncertainty and threats to our personal comfort and security. Fore-sight because we need to be able to see beyond the present and be aware of what is on the horizon, and of the actions that are likely to make these things a reality. And critical thinking because we are living in a ‘post truth’ world, where what we are being exposed to through the media and other channels, requires us to be able to exercise the ability to critically examine and evaluate the factual evidence to form views and change our behaviours based on that.

Fundamental to this is ensuring we are well informed, that we have access to the information required, and that we view it from multiple perspectives. It doesn’t require too much searching in the popular media to find that for every opinion claiming a certain ‘truth’ or certainty, there is an equal and opposite point of view. Our view of foresight shouldn’t be based simply on what the latest guru or ‘influencer’ tells us we should believe. Our response requires us to draw on our ability to delve beneath the headlines and their simplistic message. We must take a critical stance that weighs multiple perspectives and tackles issues of complexity with an appropriate response.

There’s another benefit of being ‘on the bus’ – we are with other people. This is critically important, as our journey into the future must increasingly be regarded as a collaborative one, not something we’re left on our own to contend with. The strength of the collaborative group is that we’re able to debate and discern things as a collective – to challenge the status quo and at the same time, be there for each other as the change impacts us differently. Of course, this will work best if our ‘team’ doesn’t consist solely of like-minded individuals forming a sort of ‘echo chamber’ that reflects simply what we want to hear and what we feel comfortable with. Authentic change will require us to learn to work collaboratively in settings where we feel uncomfortable, and where a part of the solution will lie in being able to resolve differences and work through multiple perspectives.

Engaging with resources such as CORE’s Ten Trends provides a useful way of starting this journey. They have been developed with the intention of providing information about some of the things that are currently challenging educators and the contexts they work in, providing some insights into the things that are driving these changes and offering prompts to begin the process of reflection and action at the local level. Importantly, the trends link back to a central core of five key themes that apply across the whole of society, so that these changes and their impact can be seen in a wider context than simply education.

My challenge to readers of this blog is to use the Ten Trends as a way of ‘getting on the bus’, to understand more of the things that are impacting the work we do, and combine with others to critically engage in forming a response that is appropriate in the contexts in which you work, in particular, a response that will ensure you are preparing the learners you are working with for their future, not just as ‘workers’ but as citizens who themselves will be able to influence and shape what happens in this world we all inhabit.

CORE’s Ten Trends 2019 have been released.

Read them online or download the document now!

 

Photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash

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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!

ulearn18-keynote-pasi-graphic ulearn18-keynote-pasi-graphic-2

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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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