bogomil-mihaylov-519199-unsplash

Words, words, words

Posted on by

bogomil-mihaylov-519199-unsplash

Ko tōu reo, ko tōku reo,

te tuakiri tangata.

Tīhei uriuri, tīhei nakonako.

Your voice and my voice are expressions of identity.

May our descendants live on and our hopes be fulfilled.

(Learning Languages Whakataukī, NZC 2007)

We language our world and ourselves into being. We have ideas. We think thoughts. We express these things to ourselves and to others using words. The words we choose to use say something about the person we are, and the way we perceive the world to be. So we may say that language shapes our culture, and shapes our identity.

Words, to perhaps use a construction metaphor, are the building blocks of stories. Words, strung together in sentences, held together with the mortar of grammar (and punctuation, if the words are written down), create worlds and the characters who inhabit these worlds. Some of these characters become ‘larger than life’: Māui, Harry Potter, Gollum… By the words we choose to use, and the stories we choose to tell, we convey important messages and ideas about who is important, what beliefs are valued, whose perspectives we honour. In this way, words and stories, and storytellers, have infinite power. Hana O’Regan spoke about this kaupapa at uLearn this year.

Let’s consider a couple of examples.

It is reasonably commonplace these days to speak of the ‘industrial model of education’. This phrase employs factory metaphors. We can see these ideas in words like ‘classes’, the ‘timetable’, and teaching ‘units’ to make sure students know all the necessary ‘nuts and bolts’. The overarching factory metaphor suggests that we see knowledge as ‘stuff’, and that education is about putting knowledge into people’s (empty) heads. And that this is best done by breaking knowledge down into small, manageable chunks, and telling people what they need to know, because we store knowledge in our own individual heads (see Gilbert, 2005).

When we say that we’d like to embrace ‘21st century’ or ‘future-focused’ teaching and learning, alongside unpacking what this means for us, we also need to examine the words we use to imagine and conceive of school and its purposes. Often we’ll find it very hard to move away from these words, as they are the signs that show us that we still think about education in this way. Finding new words, embracing new metaphors, telling new stories until these become ingrained, is a challenge.

Or perhaps this example:

We need teachers to come on board with our new initiative or strategy, or to adopt a new practice. Some teachers seem quick to embrace this innovation. When this happens, we sometimes say that they are the ‘early adopters’. This is a reference to the popularised research by Everett Rogers in the 1960s (see also the Diffusion of Innovation theory). ‘Early adopters’ we might find to be a comfortable phrase or label, but who is at the end of the scale? The ‘laggards’.

Can we use one term in isolation from the other? Who would choose to be known as the ‘laggard’? What do these words suggest about how we think of others – of our colleagues and peers?

When we tell stories, we generally speak from our own perspective, and because of this we tend to make ourselves the hero of this story. Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston explore this idea in their book Simple Habits for Complex Times. It can be useful to keep this in mind when a colleague does or says something that you struggle to comprehend. Garvey Berger and Johnston recommend asking yourself: “If I had just done what that person did, and I thought my actions were perfectly reasonable, what story might I be telling myself?” (p. 24). We can use language to practice respect and empathy. We can challenge ourselves to be imaginative and compassionate.

We could apply these ideas about words, language, and stories to many phrases we use in education:

And more. What springs to mind for you?

This is an invitation to reflect on your vocabulary choices and what stories they may have to tell about you and the way you see the world around you. How do you refer to your learners? What words do you use to describe them? How do you refer to your colleagues? What words do you use to describe them?

Language is a dense and thorny thicket. Making your way through this thicket is rife with dangers. You must pick carefully your path through. Be mindful; be present – lest your words bite like thorns on the vines.

We can tell this story another way though.

Language is a seed bursting with possibilities. Plant it carefully in rich soil. Give the seed kindness, love and attention. Nurture its shoots, and protect it from harm. Be mindful; be present – so that your words may inspire.

What words do you use? What stories do these help to tell?

References

  • Garvey Berger, J., & Johnston, K. (2015). Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Gilbert, J. (2005). Catching the knowledge wave? The Knowledge Society and the future of education. Wellington: NZCER Press.
  • Title reference: 2.2.192 Hamlet

Image by Bogomil Mihaylov, CC0 

read more
Posted in
digital divide

Digital (insert word here!)

Posted on by

Today started with an interesting conversation with an amazing teacher friend of mine. Someone who’s extremely experienced and delivers powerful, meaningful learning opportunities. She ranted, ‘If I hear another ‘digital something’ my head will explode!’ I laughed and it made me think of how many digital somethings I experience in my day-to-day meanderings. Let me start by sharing just some of the current list encountered almost daily:
two worlds: digital device and notebook

  • Digital Fluency
  • Digital Technologies
  • Digital Generation
  • Digital Communication
  • Digital Citizenship
  • Digital Literacy
  • Digital Devices
  • (The) Digital Age
  • Digital Enablement
  • Digital Readiness

I really could go on. Each has a different meaning; each has importance, with some overlapping one another and many being misconstrued or misunderstood. It is important you understand that my teacher friend and I are not anti-digital anything. I, like her, highly value digital technology. It gives me the power to completely control my learning. I understand ubiquity on a level I could never have dreamed of just a decade ago. It enables me, empowers me, and supports me in almost everything I do. It’s specifically the word ‘digital’ that my colleague has begun to take issue with! It feels like it’s fallen foul of the buzzword trap that surrounds so many professions. Once a term becomes a buzzword it can lose purpose. It becomes something that’s thrown around because it sounds intelligent, cool, or current, rather than something that has meaning.

Digital Citizenship

Let’s take the subject and teaching around Citizenship as an example. Is it any different from Digital Citizenship?

“Is this digital citizenship or just plain citizenship? Building strong 21st Century citizens is of paramount importance whether we are living our lives offline or on, and we need to avoid using old-fashioned compartmentalised instruction in a connected world.” (Weston 2013)

As Marti Weston points out, we live in a connected world. Even our New Zealand Curriculum makes direct reference to this being key to the teaching and learning of our students as we strive to create ‘confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners.’ In an ever-connected world, in which many of today’s learners do not demarcate their lives into online and offline, we need to teach effective citizenship to their context, not ours. This includes the digital!

Digital Generation: native or at home?

teddies with digital device and penThen there are Digital Natives. Native as a noun is defined as ‘a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not.’ Today’s generation of learners wasn’t born online. It’s simply something they’ve never known a world without. I often refer to the concept of working memory and formation of early memories in relation to digital technologies. ‘Few adults can remember anything that happened to them before the age of three. Now, a new study has documented that it’s about age seven when our earliest memories begin to fade, a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia’ (Wood 2015). So, if we suggest that most adults remember very little prior to seven years old it could be argued that today’s 18-year-olds have no working memory of a world without the following:

  • Skype
  • Smart Phones
  • The App Store
  • The iPhone
  • Facebook
  • X-Box/Playstation
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Amazon

This list is non-exhaustive and, depending on their recall and upbringing, they may not remember the launch of things like Spotify or on-demand viewing services. Can you imagine what today’s primary aged student doesn’t know a world without?! And of course, I’ve missed the one incredibly obvious element that anyone under the age of 30 will have no recollection of not existing, the World Wide Web. For over a quarter of a century we’ve watched a generation grow and develop, surrounded by an ever-expanding digital universe. So, of course they’re home in a digital world; of course they’re digitally competent and able; it’s all they’ve ever known!

Digital Communication

This one might polarise some of you. There is a distinct difference between electronic communication and face-to-face communication. Of that there is absolutely no doubt. The ability to read someone’s expression and body language, hear the pitch and intonation in their voice, and make a connection just cannot be replicated without being face to face. But, I believe you can get pretty close. Approximately two years ago I started as a Digital Virtual Mentor (DVM) and I’ve been genuinely humbled to develop some fantastic relationships with people I’ve never met in person. I’m not suggesting we need to change the way we teach learners to interact, merely that we need to acknowledge a digital platform as one context they might experience.

Take letter writing as another example. Now we have email (even that’s been around in some form or another for nearly five decades). How often have you heard a teacher complain of students not understanding etiquette in letters or using inappropriate language/acronyms in their communication? If we don’t teach our students certain levels of understanding within their context, how can we possibly chastise or judge them for not meeting our expectation? While working with learners and exploring communication, I came up with a simple graphic to show the level of formality within different types of communication.

formal and informal commsAlthough the graphic was clearly focused on online and digital device-based communication, I’m hoping it illustrates the point that when teaching strategies to communicate effectively, many of the lessons and etiquettes are applicable across both the real and digital worlds. I suppose we return to the William Zinsser (1998) quote, ‘Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you’re not a person who says ‘indeed’ or ‘moreover,’ or who calls someone an individual (‘he’s a fine individual’), please don’t write it’ (p. 27). It’s simply now understanding what and where ‘writing something’ is — it is most certainly not limited to pen and paper.

I believe it is fair to say that the word digital has evolved and changed quite significantly from its root word ‘digitus’ that became ‘digitalis’ meaning finger or toe! I suppose it could be argued that much of our digital technology today requires the use of a finger (or toe) to operate it, but even that has changed rapidly. Voice control and input, the ability to unlock your cell phone with your face, calling ‘Hey Siri’ from across the room and asking for a timer to be set, everything has moved on. Each learner of today is entering the world without an understanding of the digital technology prior to their existence. Adverts are a frustration and inconvenience to the Netflix generation. Taking longer than 10 minutes to respond is considered rude by the citizens of Snapchat.

So much of what we do involves digital that, at times, the non-digital feels almost abnormal. We don’t have a non-digital technologies curriculum learning area, it’s simply technology. There is no analogue generation (although googling that brings up all sorts of interesting reading), so why must we insist on having a digital one? If digital has become the norm, isn’t it time we stopped trying to demarcate the two worlds and understand that the current generation simply see them as one? If not, we’re at risk of teaching today’s learners through yesterday’s eyes.

 

References

Weston, M. (2013) Is It Digital Citizenship or Just Plain Citizenship? Retrieved on May 14, 2018, from https://mediatechparenting.net/2013/10/16/is-it-digital-citizenship-or-just-plain-citizenship/

Wood, J. (2015). What’s Your Earliest Memory? Psych Central. Retrieved on May 14, 2018, from https://psychcentral.com/news/2014/01/26/whats-your-earliest-memory/64982.ht

Zinsser, W. (1998). On Writing Well (6th ed.). New York, NY. Harper Perennial.

Image credits:

read more
Posted in
many streams

Should we review our curriculum?

Posted on by

braided river and many streams

The Minister has invited us to have our say on Education as many aspects are up for review. Should the New Zealand Curriculum be one of them?

There is ongoing debate about whether our curriculum really meets the aspirations of our tamariki to be active citizens now and in their future so that they are well prepared for the task of making this world the best they possibly can for all people. Much of this debate at a national level focuses on the dichotomy between a 21st century skills-based curriculum and a knowledge-based curriculum. For example, Frances Valentine, an advocate for 21st century skills, recently stated:

I have run out of patience. Not for these incredible young minds, but for the analogue, rigid system that continues to prepare them for a world that no longer exists….. Are we really that committed to the status quo that we are happy to pretend that the world isn’t a very different place than it was when we grew up?

At the same time Roger Partridge called 21 Century Learning snake oil at a researchED ‘Festival of Education’ conference:

There is only one problem with 21st-century learning; despite its seductive underpinnings, there is no scientific evidence it is equal, let alone superior, to more traditional, teacher-led instruction. And there is lots of evidence it fails children, particularly the disadvantaged. So 21st-century learning is seductive snake oil, not science. And it is dumbing down children’s learning, by limiting their exposure to the wealth of knowledge their parents gained at school a generation ago.

From an international perspective the OECD Education 2030 position paper adds to the debate as they suggest that curricula needs a broad set of goals that focus on individual and community wellbeing and that provides young people with a broad set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in action to be prepared for the complex future.

Building on the OECD Key Competencies (the DeSeCo project: Definition and Selection of Competencies), the OECD Education 2030 project has identified three further categories of competencies, the “Transformative Competencies”, that together address the growing need for young people to be innovative, responsible and aware:

  • Creating new value

  • Reconciling tensions and dilemmas

  • Taking responsibility. (page 5)

And, any Google search will show a great number of lists of what these knowledge, skills, and attitudes should be — everyone has an opinion.

Why polarise? Personally, I don’t think this dichotomy of skills versus knowledge is useful, as life and curriculum are more complex than that.

What is important for Aotearoa New Zealand?

A key aspect of any curriculum is a vision for young people that is owned by all stakeholders in ways that it makes sense both emotionally and intellectually. This was a factor in the high regard teachers and leaders had for the New Zealand Curriculum, as described in the evaluation two years after implementation. “In summary, implementing key practices related to The New Zealand Curriculum continues to be difficult. The New Zealand Curriculum is cherished but is challenging.” (Executive summary Sinnema, 2011)

Seven years on, researchers, education agencies, and schools are still grappling with what the implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum could look like. For example, NZCER has summarised the research effort to understand:

  • what key competencies are (their nature);
  • how they should be included in a local curriculum (their weaving together with other curriculum components); and
  • how they should impact the intended learning (their role).

In a related paper, Weaving a coherent curriculum, Rose Hipkin’s suggests that when teachers design rich tasks, they bring together concepts or big ideas (from one or more learning areas) and appropriate aspects of all the key competencies.

Rich tasks include a conceptual focus and a ‘doing’ focus that draws on aspects of all the key competencies. However, it is hard to focus the intended learning if we just say every key competency is in play. This is where the idea of capabilities can help. A ‘capability’ is demonstrated in action. It is what the student shows they can do—and is willing to do—as a result of their learning. Capabilities remix aspects of all the key competencies and weave them together with important knowledge and skills. (page 1)

Rose suggests that, while there are many important capabilities, a small number of really important ones that are valuable to all the learning areas and can be taught and practised are more likely to be kept in teachers’ “heads” as a guide for classroom actions and curriculum design. The capabilities suggested are:

  • making meaning in discipline-specific ways
  • perspective-taking
  • critical inquiry
  • taking action — living and contributing as active engaged citizens in the world.

To me, thinking about four interrelated capabilities sounds more do-able than trying to think about a list of key competencies and another list of learning objectives. It does mean deeply understanding these capabilities. How are we thinking about competencies, learning objectives, and capabilities in our context?

Another angle on what to teach in Aotearoa New Zealand has been whether te reo Māori should be compulsory in New Zealand schools. This was explored on a recent NR Insight programme. The audio also explored whether the teaching and learning about te Tiriti o Waitangi and Aotearoa New Zealand history should be compulsory. Some people thought yes and others no, with many voicing their concern that it would only make a difference if te Tiriti o Waitangi and Aotearoa New Zealand history was engaged with respectfully and with full knowledge of the stories. This is the conversation we can all participate in.

The question should we review our curriculum? may be right but the context may be wrong

We need to have conversations about what we should be teaching, and why, and speak up in favour for those learners and whānau who are least well-served by the current curriculum. I’d suggest that, instead of asking the question ‘Should we review our curriculum?’ at a national level, it would be better asked at the local level — Kāhui Ako, school, or classroom. And the answer is, Yes, if we are unsure whether our:

local curriculum reflects a vision for young people that is owned by all stakeholders in ways that it makes sense both emotionally and intellectually

vision for young people becomes a reality and actually leads to improved and equitable student outcomes.

Design and development processes

In Aotearoa New Zealand the following features of local curriculum design and implementation support the development of a vision owned by all, and a short time period between design and the desired outcomes:

  • bicultural — honouring a commitment to the te Tiriti o Waitangi
  • builds agency — teachers and community are empowered to use their professional knowledge, skills, and expertise to contribute to the local curriculum effectively
  • inclusive — recognising a range of stakeholders (young people and their whānau, iwi and hapū, teachers and educators, experts and researchers, local communities, professional associations and industries, including representatives of teachers’ unions and the business sector, and national, regional, and local government); their visions, ways of working, language, and culture
  • builds on what is known — is based on regional, national, and international research and evaluation
  • tests ideas in the implementation process and makes clear what is new (and what is new for whom, in order to know where the support needs to go), what language works, and any unintended consequences
  • incremental — focusing on the vision, framework, and position papers first, and the details second
  • reflects the emotional and intellectual requirements to engage in curriculum change
  • innovative — in the use of technology and social media during the design and implementing processes.

Where to next?

Think about your context:

  • Do you have a process for curriculum review?
  • Does any curriculum design and implementation process incorporate the eight features mentioned above?

If not, get involved and involve others in thinking about what should be reviewed and how to do it.

CORE support

If you are exploring the design of a local curriculum that reflects a vision for young people that is owned by all stakeholders in ways that it makes sense both emotionally and intellectually, it often helps to have a critical friend work with you. CORE can offer this support.

See our list of accredited facilitators for a critical friend to guide your process, our online courses for leaders of change, and the Education Positioning System (EPS) to understand what your community thinks.

 

References

Rosemary Hipkins (2017) Weaving a coherent curriculum: How the idea of ʻcapabilities’ can help found on NZCER website http://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/publications/weaving-coherent-curriculum-how-idea-capabilities-can-help

Leigh-Marama McLachlan (2018) Should Te Reo be compulsory in New Zealand schools? An audio recording played 29 July 2018 and found on the NR website NR Insight programme

Sue McDowell and Rosemary Hipkins (2018) How the key competencies evolved over time: Insights from the research (PDF, 2 MB) found on TKI curriculum page http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Key-competencies

OECD (1997) DeSeCo project: Definition and Selection of Competencies  found on the OECD website This project underpinned the NZC key competencies — see
Rosemary Hipkins (2018) How the key competencies were developed: The evidence base (PDF, 2 MB) found on TKI curriculum page http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Key-competencies

OECD (2018) The future of education and skills Education 2030 found on the OECD website

Roger Partridge (2018) 21 Century Snake Oil. Article published 9 June 2018 on The New Zealand Initiative website https://nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/21st-century-snake-oil/

Claire Sinnema (2011) Monitoring and evaluating curriculum implementation: Final evaluation report on the implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum 2008-2009 found on the Ministry of Education’s website Education Counts
Frances Valintine (2017) Future-focused? Who are we fooling? Opinion published October 20th 2017 on the Education Central website https://educationcentral.co.nz/opinion-frances-valintine-future-focused-who-are-we-fooling/

Image credits:

Braided river photo by Matt Lamers on Unsplash

read more
Posted in
team meeting

The ties that bind

Posted on by

Can Learning Circles strengthen Kāhui Ako?

learning circle
Tokomairiro Kāhui Ako’s Early Childhood, primary and secondary school teachers meet at Tokomairiro High School

Communities of Learning or Kāhui Ako bring together education providers who may have never met or shared a conversation with each other. So how can these teachers start talking together?

Harvard writers, Gratton and Erikson, in their Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams, tell us that it’s not an easy task to build new teams — the more experts we have in a group — the harder it is to build a community:

We found that the greater the proportion of experts a team had, the more likely it was to disintegrate into non-productive conflict or stalemate…

But they offer some hope…

Under the right conditions, large teams can achieve high levels of cooperation, but creating those conditions requires thoughtful, and sometimes significant, investments in the capacity for collaboration across the organization
(Gratton and Erikson, 2018)

So, what are the right conditions?

It might be useful to look at the Nordic countries where there is a long tradition of collaborative adult education and an established practice of lifelong learning through Learning Circles.

Sweden’s late Prime Minister, Olof Palme, often called Sweden ‘a study circle democracy’, which reflected the Swedish government’s policy around adult education. This national commitment currently sees nearly two million Swedish people annually benefitting from taking part in Learning Circles.

In small groups of 7–12 people, study groups share the knowledge and skills of their members or make use of external experts. They might be gaining new knowledge in a particular field or working to solve a problem. The most important factor at play here is that the focus for learning is decided by the participants themselves. Members choose a leader from the group, and the group’s activities are supported by a facilitator who is a representative of a learning organisation. The work of every group ends with an evaluation of results.

This enthusiasm for learning together is not surprising given the government policy on developing a love for learning. The Swedish government sees the practice of self-directed learning as essential to a healthy democracy because it:

  • supports equality and an understanding of the perspectives of others
  • starts from the individual’s voluntary, personalised search for knowledge
  • is characterised by shared values and cooperation
  • aims to strengthen individuals’ ability to gain agency and influence in their own lives and be able, together with others, to change society in accordance with their values and ideals.

Where did the idea come from?

The Swedes were by no means the first to popularise the learning circle as a mechanism for capturing the collective wisdom of the group.

The method has been central to many indigenous cultures for millennia. Early talking circles were often seen as wisdom circles, serving as more than just a place for talking together. Indigenous peoples in North America have always seen Circles as a way of life — they embody a philosophy, principles, and values that apply whether people are sitting in a circle or not.

Clearly, this powerful community process has merit, surviving over time and reaching across the cultures of the world. Civic organisations, neighbourhood communities, trade unions, churches, and social justice groups have used, and are using, learning circles to empower their members to share, make choices, and take action.

In the 1980s, The Quality Circle was a term used to describe the same practice in corporate settings. In Quality Circles, the hierarchical boundaries between workers and managers were flattened to encourage participatory management and shared team leadership.

Originally associated with Japanese management and manufacturing techniques developed in Japan after World War II, the business Quality Circle was based on the ideas of W. Edwards Deming. The goal was to encourage everyone to develop a strong sense of ownership over the process and products of their company — and the practice continues in many socially responsible businesses today.

It seems that no matter what the name — study circles, peer learning circles, talking circles, or dialogue-to-change programmes, the principles remain the same — they are spaces where learning is collaborative, participation is democratic, there’s respect for every voice, and participants learn from the collective wisdom of the group.

Back home in our Kāhui Ako, could this work?

Last year, the Lead Principal of the Tokomairiro Kāhui Ako, Tania McNamara, thought it might work, saying:

We know what we’re trying to do in terms of student learning – but we need a method to bring people together in a way that really engages everyone.

After seeing the potential of Learning Circles, Tania visited all the schools and centres in the Kāhui Ako and listened to leaders and teachers talk about their interests and passions. Getting a big-picture view of educators across the spectrum — in ECE, primary and secondary education centres — she was able to identify strong common themes of teacher interest and expertise.

The most interesting and exciting thing about mapping the educators’ passions in this way was the discovery that there were areas of common interest running across all these educators. This made for diverse, cross-level interest groups who might be able to share knowledge and collaborate in a genuine way.

The Tokomairiro Research Pods were formed with the focus areas including work on cultural responsiveness, co-teaching and collaborating in innovative learning environments, developing learner agency, integration of digital technologies, and passion for learning.

Tokomairiro Kāhui Ako is trialing the idea of Learning Circles — called Research Pods — by arranging for groups to meet together twice a term.

The initial buzz and enthusiasm as teachers make personal connections across areas of interest bodes well for this simple initiative.

To be continued…the next chapter is in process.

 

learning circle in education
Research Pod meetings at Tokomairiro Kāhui Ako

Sometimes the most important thing you get from the network isn’t an idea but the inspiration or courage to try something new
#innovatormindset George Couros

 

References:

Andrews, C. (1992). Study Circles: Schools For Life. Context Institute. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic33/andrews/

Bjerkaker, S. (2014). Changing Communities. The Study Circle – For Learning and democracy. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814045534

Dennis, L., (2010).Talking Circles: An Indigenous-centred method of determining public policy, programming and practice. (2010). https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/handle/1828/8304

Gratton, L., & Erickson, T. (2018). Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams. https://hbr.org/2007/11/eight-ways-to-build-collaborative-teams

Larsson, S., & Nordvall, H. (2010). Study Circles in Sweden: An Overview with a Bibliography of International Literature.
http://swepub.kb.se/bib/swepub:oai:DiVA.org:liu-57887?tab2=abs&language=en

Suda, L. (2018). Learning Circles: Democratic Pools of Knowledge.
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED457363

 

Photo credits:

All photos by the author.

 

CORE’s Expert Partners can assist you to:

  • Develop robust and quality achievement challenges and plans that will accelerate student achievement
  • Strengthen evidence gathering practices.
  • Define problems; undertake evidence-informed action planning.

 

read more
Posted in
I am still learning

Finding the joy in learning. Harnessing the power of ‘What if…’

Posted on by

I am still learningI cannot believe that I have just spent the last four hours learning a new skill, so engrossed that I was totally oblivious to the passage of time. My goal was to become familiar with a new (for me) digital tool to share with teachers. I saw its potential to increase the engagement of students in their learning, allowing them to easily demonstrate their learning, to deepen their learning in a wide range of curriculum areas and key competencies. As an extra bonus, the end product looked cool to boot! I had spent most of the day fully focussed, going off on tangents to add to my kete of skills, exploring, being curious, failing, succeeding, failing again, pushing myself to go beyond just a basic level of competency by asking myself, “What if I…”, “How can I…”, “Where can I find more out about…”. I ended up with a skill set I could apply in my role as a facilitator AND with a product that I had created of which I was very proud. I would be able to share my creation and my learning on a wider global platform as well as share it with others as part of my facilitator practices (Learn, Create, Share1).

I can almost hear you saying, “nice story, but what has this got to do with anything?” It led on to my wondering, what if more of the learning within schools could be like this? What would need to change?

I know many schools are moving towards, or already include this style of learning with extended periods of time via project/problem-based learning, genius hour, inquiry learning, etc., but what if all students at all levels could feel as engaged and as excited about their learning as I did about mine today? Today, I experienced being lost in the joy of learning that is too frequently denied many of our students.

The OECD report on The Nature of Learning2 (2010) may have come out a while ago, but we still need to be cognisant of its seven principles of learning (pg 6-7). On reflection, many of those principles applied to me today:

  1. Learners at the centre — I was motivated to construct my own learning pathways and was actively exploring as I had a clear and authentic purpose for this learning.
  2. The social nature of learning — I may not have been working collaboratively with others at the time, but my purpose was to share the outcomes of my learning with others so that they were then empowered to create learning opportunities for their students, in a tuakana/teina way.
  3. Emotions are integral to learning — throughout my learning I developed a sense of achievement, encouraging me to explore further via a feedback loop of failure and success, to be proud of my final product. I became increasingly motivated to be curious and to persevere.
  4. Recognising individual differences — I was able to direct and manage my own learning based on my learning needs, abilities, and motivation. I had the freedom along with the support to explore, and I had options to refer to when I encountered difficulties.
  5. Stretching all students — not being satisfied with a basic level of mastery and asking, “how can I make this better?” pushed me to stretch my skills as did the final expectation of having to share my learning with an audience.
  6. Assessment for learning — I was clear on the ‘why’ of this learning. Achieving mastery as various stages provided formative feedback — I can do this, so what can I do next? Summative assessment came when I was successfully able to teach others, who were then able to teach their students, who in turn … (a cascade effect of learning/teaching).
  7. Building horizontal connections — learning for an authentic purpose allowed others to make connections to a range of learning areas, especially when I asked them, “how can this tool be used to support the pedagogy and learning within your context?”

We often forget that, as a teacher, we should also be a learner, and it is important to remember that the principles of how we all learn, which are condensed within the OECD report The Nature of Learning, apply to all teachers/kaiāko as much as it does to our ākonga.

“Understanding the fundamentals of how we learn allows us to address more effectively the conditions in which successful learning can occur.” (OECD, 2010, p3)

My challenge to you, then, is to find ways that you can (re)discover the joy of learning for yourself and for your learners and to not underestimate the power of “What if?”

References

 

Image Credits
Michelangelo quote: J. Young, CC0, adapted from image by Marcus53 on Pixabay under CC0.

1 “Learn, create, share — Manaiakalani.” http://www.manaiakalani.org/our-story/learn-create-share

2 “The Nature of Learning – OECD.org.” http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/50300814.pdf.

read more
Posted in