League tables, cell phones and learning

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Mobile learner

I had the good fortune to travel to England and Europe during Term 3. While I was in England league tables of GCSE results per school were being published which led to many newspaper articles about improving the academic performance of students.

A familiar theme of these articles got me thinking.  Some schools were celebrating their decision to ban all cell phones from school, because grade levels had subsequently improved.  Hmm…

Surely if schools were allowing students to bring their cell phones in, it was for an educative purpose that had already been discussed widely among staff, students and the community, with strategies set in place to manage and use these tools effectively for learning?

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Professional Learning and Development – Choose wisely and well

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e-learning in PLD

I have had a few sobering moments when scoping new schools for Learning with Digital Technology (LwDT). At one school, I was asked, “Is this where the IT training starts?” At another, the principal started counting the professional learning and development (PLD) initiatives on her fingers and proudly told me they got everything they asked for.

My experience with the LwDT project has shown me that good quality pedagogy and good quality professional inquiry help decide PLD and technology use, so you can see why my heart contracted when I had those conversations. I wondered what care and thought had gone into choosing appropriate PLD.

Effective, sustainable, professional learning and development is about change, about a culture shift, and as such requires quality thought, discussion, planning and implementation. Schools need to think about – ‘What is important for all our students to be like, to know, and to be able to do to help them become engaged, contributing and fulfilled citizens in a changing society?’ And then … ‘How do we do that?’ It is at this point that schools might identify PLD that will help them in their quest.

I can’t emphasise enough the absolute importance of discussion and communication with all stakeholders – school and community in this process. Have the conversations and involve everyone, it is after all and should be, whole school reform. The purpose is to bring about a positive difference for all students. ‘The moral and political purpose of whole-system reform is ensuring that everyone will be affected for the better starting on day one of implementing the strategy.’ Michael Fullan and Ben Levin.

If I was to write an open letter to principals thinking about engaging in external PLD, here are some questions and statements I might include:

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Learning for the future

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Yesterday, Now, Tomorrow

It is widely understood that advances in technology have created a rapidly changing world. We’re globally connected, life is more complex and uncertain and there are increasingly challenging questions for us to grapple with.

We can appreciate, therefore, the difficulties that this must create for schools.  Keeping up with this pace of change and ensuring that students are being taught in a way that reflects the current world they live in is challenge enough, let alone educating them for a future world of which we have little conception.

In the past, education served both a social role of keeping students off the streets and an economic role of providing a workforce for a narrow range of known jobs.  With the advent of technological change, these sorts of roles are no longer required; the growth of the knowledge age has brought with it the need for urgent educational change.

So looking to the future what will be important for students to know?  And, how can we make sure that all students are able to access this knowledge?  What content and what skills will support all students into a future quite different from ours? Recent research suggests:

  • knowing oneself
  • understanding how to learn
  • collaborating effectively with others
  • working in teams on worthwhile authentic tasks
  • having a choice
  • having a voice
  • being creative
  • being able to problem solve
  • making use of effective technology.

Bolstad et al in Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching – a New Zealand perspective suggest we need to adopt a much more complex view of knowledge, one that incorporates ‘knowing, doing and being’.  21st century learning principles such as ‘a commitment to personalized learning, embracing diversity, rethinking learners’ and teachers’ roles and forging new partnerships are also mentioned  (Bolstad et al., 2012).

For me an image comes to mind of students immersed in learning, where they have the opportunity to behave as mathematicians, scientists, writers, artists and musicians exploring their topic of interest to their fullest capacity, drawing on the support of peers and experts and sharing their new learning out into the community.  ‘Being’, ‘doing’ and ‘knowing’, in other words.

Guy Claxton (2008) points out that we ‘can continually develop our portable capacity to learn in new and challenging circumstances throughout our lives.’ And I would argue we are more likely to be able to do that if we experience rich future-focused learning opportunities. However I wonder where our current model of ‘accountability’ assessment sits with all of this.
What sort of ‘knowing, being and doing’ might then support students to function, participate and thrive in a complex future world, and what pedagogical lens can we critically apply to learning activities and events to ensure that they equip students for their future?

What questions could we use to ‘future proof’ learning in our schools? Perhaps we could ponder the following when planning work for students to do:

  • Why will it be important for students to know this?
  • Where could students be expected to make use of this knowledge in the future?
  • How does this knowledge link to a student’s current context and community?
  • What ‘future – focused’ skills are built into this activity?
  • What opportunities and technological tools are there for students to access and reshape this knowledge in a new way?
  • What impact will this knowledge and artifact produced have on the student and their community?

I wonder what else is needed to enable schools to think more critically about what learning practices should be stopped, what should be continued, and what ought to be started in order to better prepare all students to be effective and knowledgeable participants and contributors in their future.

References:

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

Chambers, M., Powell, G., Claxton G. ( 2008) Building 101 Ways to Learning Power. Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education

Yesterday, Now, Tomorrow Image:  http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/agree-terms.php?id=10088342

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Emerging Leaders Summit 2012 | Video Summary

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The first Emerging Leaders' Summit was run in Wellington in March 2012, with the aim to 'Develop Change Leaders – Connect the Network'.

Watch the video above for a summary from Diane Mills, CORE's Blended e-Learning Regional Team Leader (Central North).

From the event an enthusiastic group of leaders are now connected using the Emerging Leaders Summit Facebook group.

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST for ELS 2013 and other national and regional F2F networking opportunities throughout the year.

If you attended the event what were your big takeaways?

SCRIPT



The dynamic and energizing Simon Breakspear lead New Zealand’s first Emerging Leaders’ Summit in March this year. Simon Breakspear, is a leading thinker on the future of learning based at Cambridge University, and he was joined by current NZ leaders in education: Cheryl Doig, Perry Rush, Mark Osborne, Carolyn Stuart, Juliette Hayes and Chris Jansen.

The summit provided an innovative ‘hands-on’ highly interactive and inspiring opportunity for those attending. The collaborative approach provided rich stories and diversity of thought, with plenty of ‘popcorn’ moments as Simon put it. These are ideas that continue to take hold well after they have been taken off the heat!

And this is borne out in the Emerging Leaders’ Facebook site with people commenting on the fact that as a result of the weekend they have acted on their learning and embarked on new qualifications, action research, and providing PD in new ways in their schools. Most impressive.

Those attending were challenged to consider five critical questions:


  • What must schooling deliver for students to prepare them for their future?
  • What is the nature of effective and meaningful student learning?
  • How can you design and create innovative 21st century learning environments?
  • How can you lead school change that results in ongoing improvements in teachers’ instructional practice?
  • How can you leverage your strengths, develop your capabilities and build a network in order to make a significant impact?




Key learning from the summit:

Schooling needs to be more personalized, engaging and relevant to students. Take the time to find out about the needs and aspirations for your particular learners. Encourage innovation and creativity, recognize that through failure comes growth. As Simon Breakspear says fail forward and fail quickly.

Cheryl Doig talked about Leadership in a global world being increasingly complex and the need for it to be adaptive, networked, ethical, contextual and self regulated.  

The value of rich Conversations, communication and open dialogue are hugely important in that they challenge, help grow solutions and allow for innovations This featured strongly in successful schools.

Mark Osborne spoke about the importance of providing opportunities in school through World Cafe or Ignite to allow people to step up and share their learning. Not just the leaders within school but for all.

Taking responsibility for your own ‘learning and leading’ journey and seeking out mentors to support you on the way was emphasized as key by Juliette Hayes for moving your career forward.


Participants shared their collective wisdom and experiences making for a rich and engaging summit that empowered people to see their next steps, definitely a conference not to be missed.



 

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Competing on the world stage—and disaffected youth

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exam-based system and disaffected youth

Competing on the world stage … will require intensive reforms …. Inflexible, exam-based school systems stifle creativity and channel top students into a handful of fields … parents are forced to spend extra money on private tutoring ….Vocational training is also lacking. The result is a skills gap: a chasm between the qualifications of graduates and what employers actually require.

No, not New Zealand, but Egypt.

I have picked the ‘eyes’ out of a Time magazine article on education in Egypt: Seeking Growth After the Arab Spring (subscription required to read full report). But what captured my interest was that here is a country with a struggling education system, yet quite a few of the statements ring true for New Zealand, a country which may be considered on the opposite side of the continuum from Egypt, educationally.

What are the similarities?

Our 'long tail’ of underachievers certainly matches Third World OECD statistics. We, too, have a heavy focus on assessment and standards. Sure, we don’t have an inflexible exam-based approach, but, arguably, assessment still drives learning rather than the other way around. And, as a high stakes investment, assessment-driven learning has less to do with equipping students for the 21st century, and more to do with league tables and the self-preservation of school status.

Many New Zealand parents feel that schools are not meeting their child’s needs and pay for outside tuition to help their children succeed. Successive governments have axed many vocational courses that provided alternatives for students. The result of all of this, as it is in Egypt and the rest of the world, is the growing problem of large numbers of disaffected youth.

The New Zealand Institute, in their article ‘More Ladders, Fewer Snakes’, address this concern suggesting that an ‘accelerated roll-out of e-learning to low decile schools and improving the school-to-work transition will materially reduce youth unemployment and resulting social issues.’

For New Zealand to continue to compete positively on a shifting world stage, schools need to look closely at their curriculum and ask the following questions:

  • Is it a whole school curriculum harnessing the best of technology and designed to meet the future learning needs of students within their catchment?
  • How are key competencies being embedded into subject areas?
  • Are schools teaching subjects or teaching students for lifelong learning?
  • What opportunities for creativity, problem solving and higher order thinking are students being given?
  • How do current assessment expectations contribute positively to students’ futures?

I wonder, too, about the extent to which school communities have an understanding of globalisation, 21st Century learning, and the need for rethinking the way schools deliver education today?

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