Improvement vs transformation

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About this time last year I wrote about two agendas that are driving change in our education system — these are the improvement agenda and the transformation agenda. In preparing for an online course I'm about to teach I put together the short video above that is an attempt to illustrate the relationship between these two agendas, and how they need be working together, not viewed as 'either-or'.

The critical thing, however, is the notion of the 'third place' as the aspiration or goal we must have for our work to re-define schools and schooling, otherwise we simply get caught in the trap of continuous improvement, which sees us doing more of the same, but better.

The 'third' place is where we will achieve the practices required to operate effectively in a modern learning environment, where professional practice is de-privatised and collaborative activity becomes the norm, and where schools cease to be completely autonomous, competitive units, and become a part of a network of provision.

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Ten Trends 2014: Learner Agency

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Ten Trends 2014: Agency from EDtalks on Vimeo.

CORE's Ten Trends for 2014 have been published. This post considers the first of these trends: Learning Agency. We shall be publishing posts on one of the trends approximately each month. You are encouraged to comment or provide supporting links.

The concept of agency has been central to educational thinking and practice for centuries. The idea that education is the process through which learners become capable of independent thought which, in turn, forms the basis for autonomous action, has had a profound impact on modern educational theory and practice.

One way of thinking of learner agency is when learners have “the power to act”. When learners move from being passive recipients to being much more active in the learning process, actively involved in the decisions about the learning, then they have greater agency.

Three core features of learning agency

There are three things that I think are core features of our understanding of learner agency. The first is that agency involves the initiative or self-regulation of the learner. Before a learner can exercise agency in their particular learning context they must have a belief that their behaviour and their approach to learning is actually going to make a difference for them in the learning in that setting – in other words, a personal sense of agency. The notion of agency involves a far greater tapestry of intentionality on the part of schools and teachers to create that context and environment where the learners are actively involved in the moment by moment learning and well being.

Second, agency is interdependent. It mediates and is mediated by the sociocultural context of the classroom. It’s not just about a learner in isolation doing their own thing and what suits them. Learners must develop an awareness that there are consequences for the decisions they make and actions they take, and will take account of that in the way(s) they exercise their agency in learning.

And thirdly, agency includes an awareness of the responsibility of ones own actions on the environment and on others. So there’s a social connectedness kind of dimension to that. Every decision a learner makes, and action she or he takes, will impact on the thinking, behaviour or decisions of others – and vice versa. You can’t just act selfishly and call that acting with agency.

Implications

We could start by adopting the use of individualised education plans (IEPs) as a way of personalising the approach to learning, not just in terms of the delivery, but in terms of the learners’ ownership of that learning – the direction, content, process, and assessment of that learning.

It is critical to consider the pedagogical approaches that are adopted by teachers and schools, and to question and challenge those that are overtly teacher-centric, with an emphasis on delivery and curriculum coverage. Learner agency will develop when learners are involved in the whole learning process – including decisions about the curriculum itself, involving learners a lot more in the choices about the what as well as the how and the why of what is being learned.

We need to consider student voice is that reflected in the day to day decisions that are made around school – not simply in order to satisfy ourselves that we’ve heard what students have to say, but in more engaged and authentic ways that are about their learning.

Challenges

  1. What use is made of IEPs in your school to enable the development of a personalized approach to teaching and learning?
  2. Who designs these? Who has access to them?
  3. How is student voice reflected in all aspects of school life?
  4. What safeguards do you have for ensuring no students ‘fall through the cracks’?

Examples and links:

For more about the Ten Trends:

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What can we learn from PISA 2013?

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Derek Wenmoth ponders the PISA Results for 2012

Reactions to the recently published PISA Results

The recent release of PISA data for New Zealand (top-line results here) has led to a wide range of reactions from teacher organisations and principal groups, to social commentators and government.

Some have responded by questioning the reliability of the PISA statistical methodology, while others point to social and economic conditions that impact on the results. Read in isolation such responses may be regarded more as excuse making or political positioning, but when viewed together in the broader milieu within which our education system operates, we gain an insight into the complexity of issues with which educational leaders must grapple — at every level, from those leading learning at the classroom level, to those leading schools and those leading the national level support and policy frameworks that guide this effort.

The 2013 rankings reveal New Zealand slipping from seventh to 13th in reading, seventh to 18th in science and from 13th to 23rd in mathematics. No one likes to feel they’re ‘failing’ in what they do, and the first response may often appear defensive. It’s ironic that when the previous results were announced a lot was made of New Zealand’s position in the top five countries in most areas. Now we read that ‘while we have dropped in most areas, we’re still in the top half of the OECD’, pointing to similar drops by other countries including Finland and Australia.

To react negatively or politically is to miss an opportunity for improvement

To respond only to the headlines, or to simply quote the ‘rankings’ to defend a particular ideology or political stance, is to miss the opportunity to learn from what the PISA data tells us. Over the next 12 months we’ll see the more in-depth reports released, based in further analysis of the data, and providing more specific insights into the achievement areas of literacy, numeracy and science. There’s a lot the data will be able to inform us about in terms of links between socio-economic status and achievement, or what areas specifically within the mathematics curriculum (or science, or literacy) are strengths and which are weak, for example.

The other useful thing about such a rich data source is that we can begin to explore any comparisons between what it reveals in terms of NZ students’ achievement in these international results and what our own, domestic results are telling us (NCEA, national standards, Bursary etc.). If these are consistent, then our response will be quite different than if we discover there are inconsistencies. This should also help us identify specific areas that we need to target for interventions such as targeted professional development, or resource allocations etc.

The key thing will be to take sufficient time to make a considered and informed response, and to avoid any sort of ‘knee-jerk’ reaction (although that will be a challenge for New Zealand given that 2014 is an election year). Rather than using the results for political points scoring, it would be great to see a genuinely cross-party and cross-sector approach to resolving what we need to do as a country, for the sake of all of our learners, now and into the future, regardless of which political party happens to be in government.

What can our schools do with the report findings as we plan for 2014?

As we plan for 2014 it’s likely we’ll see a number of responses at a national/policy level, including more targeted provision of PLD, even before the review of professional learning and development is completed, with a special focus on science being called for.

Within our schools we need to be encouraging more in-depth engagement with the PISA findings with our staff and communities in order to understand what an appropriate response should be. Even more important, our response should be to think more critically about how we are using data more broadly — not only the PISA data. As educators, we are collecting data regularly from a wide variety of sources — our challenge with all of it is to consider how we are using it to inform what we are doing with the programmes we offer, to ensure that student needs are being met, and student achievement remains the focus. The PISA results provide a challenge to consider what we’re doing in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and science — but what about our programmes in the arts or social sciences? Where is the data to show how we’re supporting achievement in these areas for instance?

Let’s not fall into the trap of laying blame or making excuses. Let’s use the challenge of the PISA results to become more intentionally engaged with data in our schools, in the way we collect it, interpret it, and make plans based on the evidence it provides — across all areas of the curriculum.

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Ten Trends 2013: Open-ness

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The concept of open-ness is gaining currency in almost every facet of our human organisation and civilisation. From the last few decades we can see the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the opening up of the Iron Curtain, the Bamboo Curtain, and so forth, showing open-ness in whole political regimes.

We’re hearing a lot more recently about open government, open data, and open management systems. The concept of open-ness, then, is something that we need to be exploring as educators as it applies in our world ahead. And, technology is a significant driver in all of this.

Open-ness in the social context

In the social context when we think about open-ness, one indicator we can look at is the whole emergence of an alternative to our traditional copyright system, which represents the previous closed mind-set that we had, which identified knowledge or information or artifacts as being something that were owned or possessed, and very rarely distributed or at a cost to others. The alternative is creative commons licensing, which has emerged through the understanding that as we create and share and give to the community, so we can also gain in return. So the creative commons licence identifies five areas in which we might licence a particular contribution to the pool, whether that’s written, or it’s a story, or it’s a song ,or whatever, but we can identify whether we want to let others use it and distribute it at will and reuse it and remix it through to using freely without changes.

Open-ness in technology

In the technical area there’s a lot of talk about open-ness. We’ve now got open standards and open access appearing as alternatives to the traditional closed software systems. So where large companies made fortunes through selling their software that tied you in to then having to pay for updates and so forth, we’re seeing an emergence of a whole different economy behind how companies can stay afloat and still become successful and wealthy, but through distributing and making their wares available more freely and in an open way. Open access and open standards are allowing a lot of these platforms and these applications to share data, and to kind of plug-and-play in much the same way as a jigsaw does, where previously there was no way you could take one piece of software and make it share data or share in an application way with another.

Open-ness in education

And then there is, of course, education. There are a couple of really significant trends occurring in education that are signifying open-ness in terms of how it applies in what we are doing in our schools, our universities, and so forth. The first of these is in terms of open education resources. Education is traditionally developed on the premise that you come to school or you come to a university because that’s where the repository of knowledge is. And frequently, we think of that knowledge being bound up in things like textbooks, or, more recently, videotapes, or online artifacts. This is the way that knowledge is represented. But, traditionally those resources were closed, in the sense that you couldn’t just carry them away or take parts from them and re-represent them. There’s a whole movement evolving in a way that counters that, using the creative commons principles, where the resources don’t define the university or the school, but it’s what we do with them. It’s the intelligence and the engagement with them, it’s the mentoring and coaching of people to develop and contribute their own knowledge, which is really important. So, we’ve seen large institutions like MIT open up all of the content, all of the resources that they use in their courses, and make them freely available, without any threat to the on-going existence of the university to which people still go because they want that engagement, they want that challenge that comes from being exposed to the people there. Whilst that’s happening at a tertiary, university level, the same applies in our schools.

Our schools are producing every-day, new knowledge, new artifacts, new resources, that, if shared liberally and freely across the sector, could enrich everybody to the benefit of the entire sector, and at the same time save hours of teacher time. In New Zealand the development of the Network for Learning represents a pathway of where this sharing can happen. What it creates is an opportunity for far greater sharing and distribution of ideas, resources, courses, and expertise that could be manifest in this open way.

Open-ness in learning environments

Another area in education where open-ness is becoming evident is in the design and construction of modern learning environments. We’re seeing a move away from single-cell classrooms, where one teacher is engaged with just one class of 20-30 kids—in a primary school, all day, and in a secondary school, period-by-period. We’re moving towards seeing those physical environments including the concept of open-ness, with much bigger spaces in which students can interact, and learn, and move about with less defined areas for specific groups at any particular time. So, the concept of open-ness there is manifest in very real, practical, and physical ways, as much as they are in more temporal ways online.

Open-ness in online courses

The other big area that’s occurring in education is the development of MOOCs, Massively Open Online Courses, and they are beginning to appear in a range of ways. But the fundamental principle here is, instead of creating a course to which you have to pay in order to enrol, a MOOC is simply a course that’s designed for a huge enrolment of people for free. So you participate, you engage with the materials, you will complete tasks and assignments, you might get linked to other people for discussions and forums, or whatever, but the pace and the extent to which you participate will depend on your own circumstances and level of interest. And so we see MOOCs being participated in now by people who go right through and complete every little thing, to others who just dip in and out to satisfy a curiosity or to meet a particular need. Of course, where MOOCs are becoming profitable in some areas is that they encourage the people that are participating then to sit an assessment of some description, which becomes credentialed, and at that point an exchange is made that recognises the work involved in actually credentialing or giving extra tuition towards that.

There’s still a lot of development to go. It’s early days to say that these things are going to particularly be, in their current form, things that we should take note of. But the trend is well established. This move toward open-ness, this move towards sharing, which is an underpinning part of being part of a globally connected knowledge-building communitiy.

Drivers for this trend

Social
  • Creative commons licensing
  • Increased online access and availability
Technology
  • Open source
  • Open access
Educational
  • Global competition among institutions
  • Reaction against the walled garden approaches of the 80s and 90s
  • Openness in school design – open spaces

Implications

  • How ‘open’ are the approaches to resource development and sharing in your school?
  • What use do you make of ‘open’ content and open teaching in your school?
  • How could access to open education options benefit your students? Your staff?
  • What processes would you need to put in place to ensure the appropriate licenses are adhered to?
  • How will you/your staff gain the experience of open teaching?
  • How will you ensure your students gain the skills/experience of learning this way?
  • How much of your learning programme is developed with teachers from other schools?

Examples and links

For more about the Ten Trends:

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CORE’s MLE tour to Melbourne—inspection, ideas, inspiration

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CORE MLE Tour group

Twenty places to visit in 5 days may seem a lot, but the hectic schedule didn’t deter the 13 school and ECE leaders from New Zealand who travelled to Melbourne on the CORE MLE tour in September. Interest in modern learning environments (MLE) has become a hot topic, and it's been a priviledge to help organise and be a part of the tour. Here's my take on the tour, and I hope it helps inspire others to participate in further MLE events and tours.

Designed as an opportunity for New Zealand educators to experience a range of modern learning environments to help inform their decision making back in New Zealand, the tour included visits to state and private schools and centres, and to new school builds and renovated schools and centres. Participants had the opportunity to speak with principals, teachers, and students about their experiences in these environments, and were accompanied by the architects involved on several of the visits.

In addition to the school visits the group had the opportunity to attend a meeting with at the Department of Education, who briefed us on the background to the new school building programme in Victoria, and were able to ask questions of the programme managers there.

MLE Tour group

Another highlight was a visit to the Architecture Faculty at the University of Melbourne where we spent a few hours interacting with the members of the team there, who are heading up the learning spaces design project, including Kenn Fisher, whose work is familiar to many involved in thinking about the link between learning space and pedagogy.

While the initial focus of many in the group may have been on looking at the building design, use of space, and furniture, it soon became apparent that it is the emphasis on having a sound pedagogical vision that makes the difference when it comes to how these spaces are used, whether they are new buildings, renovated buildings, or simply creatively used re-locatables!

The ways in which architects had worked with the pedagogical vision of the schools/centres and expectations of their communities was clearly evident in the places we visited. From the Reggio-inspired early years centres to the merged secondary schools in a low socio-economic area of Melboure, the integral link between the architectural design and the pedagogical vision could be seen.

The group was accompanied by Dr Julia Atkin, who shared her knowledge and experience as someone who had been involved in the design process of many of the schools we visited. Greg Carroll and I were also there to help lead the tour.

At the end of each day we spent time debriefing together, capturing thoughts, images, and reflections on the online tour community site. These reflections, together with the hundreds of photographs that were captured and shared, will make a valuable resource for the tour participants as they now work back in their own contexts with staff and communities on the design and building of modern learning environments to meet the needs of their own students.

Future tour

CORE is planning another tour early in 2014 – details will be available early in term four. If you would like to be a part of our next tour, please contact us and register your interest.

See also:

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