An education-related blog which explores my thoughts on topics related to ICT, inquiry-based learning and relations between the two. I may also converse on life, the universe and everything if the mood takes me.
I hear a lot of questions from teachers about how they can develop learner agency and also how to foster an inquiry disposition in students. On the flipside, and surprisingly sometimes from the same teachers, I hear questions along the lines of: What should I call my reading groups? Our big topic next term is change. What should I do around this? We're doing inquiry next term, what are some topic ideas?
I find myself saying 3 words: "Ask the kids." and those who know me won't be surprised to hear that this is quickly followed (or sometimes preceded) by "What's your purpose?"
Before going further I'd like to say something about the teachers who are asking questions such as these. These teachers are learners (as are we all), they are asking questions that show they have a need to further develop their skills and understandings around learner agency and student inquiry and we should be supporting them on that journey.
Now let's look at those examples:
What should I call my reading groups?
Why are you giving them a name? How about supporting them to come up with something meaningful to them? How about having them get together and negotiate a name for themselves? Sure it will take a bit more class time but isn't 'Managing Self' a Key Competency you are trying to develop? Aren't things like being able to negotiate, make decisions and compromise, important skills that are best learned in authentic contexts? We won't develop agentic learners if we make all the decisions for them.
Our big topic next term is change. What should I do around this?
What's your purpose for having them learn about change? Which aspect (s) of change are you wanting them to learn about? E.g. 'Change can be permanent or temporary' is quite different to 'living things change over time' or "coping with changes in our lives', 'changes to the environment can be be caused by inanimate things like wind and water or animate things like people, plants and animals' or 'we can change our minds based on new evidence'. Does it matter what the context is so long as it meets the purpose? Why not share that purpose with them and ask them for some contexts that have meaning and relevance to them? How about giving them some provocations to stimulate their curiosity and seeing what questions arise?
We're doing inquiry next term, what are some topic ideas?
First up, you don't "do" inquiry. You use an inquiry approach or you inquire into a question, problem etc. I'd be asking what the purpose of the inquiry was? Once that is clear, Iook for some authentic contexts that you know are relevant to your learners. You could share some provocations to stimulate questions, then follow their lead into areas that meet the purpose but are relevant to them. Or straight out share the purpose with them and ask them to suggest some contexts.
So next time a teacher asks what they should name their maths group or what their inquiry topic should be, let's not jump in with an answer but instead support them to grow in their understanding of developing agentic learners with inquiring dispositions.
I'll just finish with this great sketchnote from the marvellous @sylviaduckworth.
Thanks to Leigh Hyne's recent blog post I viewed the video of an interview with the OECD’s Director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher. The video is an hour long but worth watching as there are many interesting points raised that are relevant to New Zealand (and indeed worldwide) education.
Schleicher was asked (35:39) what was the most important thing a teacher could do to prepare students for their future? His reply was to stop thinking about preparing students for jobs, jobs will look totally different in the future. In science, for example, we spend too much time on teaching content and too little time teaching students to design experiments and think like a scientist.
This fits really well with my views around the need for an inquiry approach and the use of authentic contexts for learning. Students need to do the work that would be done by those working in the discipline in the community, in science they need to do what scientists do, in art they need to do what artists do.
Schleicher went on to say that coding, for example, will look totally different when younger students leave school. This fits with my view that the coding itself is not the important part. The problem-solving and computational thinking will still be relevant, the ability to think logically, to break tasks down into parts and see patterns, to design solutions, to de-bug when things don't work and to re-design, these skills will still be useful and valuable. This is especially important to keep in mind as we consider the draft of the new Digital technologies area of the curriculum.
Schleicher believes that education systems need to have core values and everything that is in or added to the curriculum needs to be examined against those core values. This works at both a government level and an individual school level.
Schools in New Zealand have to develop their own school curriculum and their core values need to be a the heart of this. This is not always the case. Most schools have worked on developing these sets of core values as part of developing their vision and mission statements but there are still some that have not applied these when developing their school curriculum. Schools that have done this well, Te Kowhai Primary for example, have seen the benefits for their students
Schleicher also talked about early childhood education (49:34) and how formalisation of learning is doing more harm than good and that we need to let children play and socialise, which proponents of play-based learning would be heartened to hear.
It was interesting to hear the question (51:47) from Mark Treadwell, a New Zealand educator, on how we overcome the lack of understanding around what is the difference between knowledge, an idea, a concept and a concept framework. There is a definite need to develop common understandings around what these terms mean as it impacts on both curriculum design and implementation.
Schleicher emphasised that we need to teach fewer things at greater depth, to get to the root of the discipline, to foster students' talents. Japan, for example took 30% of material out of their curriculum and it resulted in an increase in creative skills and creative problem solving. He remarked on the tendency of schools to prioritise the urgent over the important. Just having more learning time does not equate to better outcomes (Pisa data shows a negative correlation). He asserts that we need to help students find their passions, what they are good at, what is going to serve a social purpose.
You may have heard that the New Zealand Technology Curriculum has been revised to include two new strands: 'Computational thinking for digital technologies' and 'Designing and developing digital outcomes'. You may be wondering what this is all about, if you are a parent you may have some concerns about what this will mean for your child and if you're a teacher you may be wondering how you will fit this into your programme and why you would want to. Hopefully I have a few answers for you or at least some food for thought.
One question I've often heard asked is how we will fit this into an already busy curriculum. The Education Minister Nikki Kay, attempted to answer this in a segment on Q & A What she could also have said was that digital technologies, coding and computational thinking don't need to be separate subjects that are shoe-horned into the curriculum. They will become a means to an end, not the end itself.
The 'Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes' area for example, involves having a knowledge of devices, apps and programs so that we can choose the best tool for the task. It has students critically analysing various digital technologies and making informed decisions about the best digital technology (or in some cases non-digital technology) to achieve the desired outcome.
In real life most of us make decisions about use of technology all the time. Will we watch that movie on Netflix, our DVD player, on our ipad or phone? If we need to do a presentation to a group of people will we use Powerpoint, Google Slides, Prezi, Powtoon, make a video or use plain old cards with handwritten notes?
Students will "work through an iterative process
to design, develop, create, store, test and evaluate
digital content that meets its purpose. They will
recognise social and end-user considerations that are
relevant when developing digital content." This sort of process can be applied in any curriculum area.
The 'Computational thinking for digital technologies' area is probably the one that is the scariest for newcomers to the world of coding and computational thinking but most people understand this area a lot better than they think.
Algorithms sound scary but I would say that nearly all of you use these in one form another every week. Have you ever used a recipe, read a set of instructions for kitset furniture, done a Google search, decided the best route to get from A to B? If so you've made use of an algorithm which is just a set of step-by-step instructions to efficiently carry out a task.
Coding itself has become so much easier for beginners with block coding programs like Scratch and Tynker enabling even five year olds to code. Hour of Code is designed to get young people coding and has more resources being added all the time, it's a great place to start. Many of these early coding apps like Tynker now include the ability to see what your code would look like in more advanced coding languages like Python and Java, which scaffolds transition into these languages.
Students can use these coding apps to create stories, artwork and puzzles. As they go they are problem-solving, developing persistence, resilience and a growth mindset, they are developing their maths and literacy skills in authentic contexts. They aren't so much learning to code as they are coding to learn.
There are now a plethora of robots available that students can easily program. The hardest part is deciding which one to get as we are now spoilt for choice. Just watch a student program a robot to go through a maze and you can't deny the maths and key competencies that are being developed.
Computational thinking might sound tricky but its what we use all the time when we solve problems or complete tasks and we use things like:
Decomposition: Breaking down data, processes, or problems into smaller parts
Pattern Recognition: Looking for patterns, similarities and trends in data
Abstraction: Focusing on the important, relevant info, ignoring the irrelevant
When things go wrong we need to de-bug to find out where we went wrong and how to correct the mistake. Being able to logically work through problems is an essential skill.
Lack of devices is another issue I hear mentioned by teachers but it needn't stop you. There are many activities that can be done without any devices. Sure you are going to need some devices eventually but lack of them should not prevent you getting started.In the Q & A segment the Minister was questioned about how we can prepare students for their future when we have no idea what that future will be. The following quotes sprang to mind:
"Our job as teachers is not to "prepare" kids for something; our job is to help kids learn to prepare themselves for anything."
PLD for teachers and education for the community are going to be essential and the Government is promising funding for this. If effectively targeted, this funding could go a long way towards making sure all teachers, not just a few specialists, can implement these new areas in their classrooms.
I've started compiling some resources to support this new strand, still a work in progress as details have just been released, but lots to get you started.To teachers I say give it go, start small if you want, but start.
"Don’t shortchange the future, because of fear in the present."
For those wanting to find out more you could attend one of the MoE consultation workshops or if you want ideas and resources for implementing this in your classroom I am facilitating a 2 day course on the new areas on Mon, August 14th and Mon, September 11th in Hamilton. More details or enrol here.
The revised curriculum is still in draft form and you can have your say here.
I'll finish with my favourite quote about technology:
"....Computers are not rescuing the school from a weak curriculum, any more than putting pianos in every classroom would rescue a flawed music program. Wonderful learning can occur without computers or even paper. But once the teachers and children are enfranchised as explorers, computers, like pianos, can serve as powerful amplifiers, extending the reach and depth of the learners."
Yes, it's true, I'm a genius! How do I know this? because Facebook told me so it must be true. Apparently my geniusness (my own word - because I'm a genius and allowed to make up words) is demonstrated in my ability to notice the missing number in this sequence and type it in the comments below. Or because I can think of a word that starts and ends with T, as apparently less than 10% of the population can do this. The thousands of people gleefully posting their word in the comments below are apparently also geniuses as are those who, like me, can find the number 1 in a sea of 7s or solve this puzzle that has the internet baffled.
Once my geniusness has been confirmed I could of course post an "Amen" for the poor sick child or the animal that has been cruelly mistreated, because I wouldn't be so heartless as to scroll past without liking, sharing and commenting. Because everyone knows that God will only save the child or animal if I post to Facebook and the post gets over 5000 likes. Or maybe I can win one of 500 BMWs or the 1000 Round the world trips in the competition by just liking and sharing the page, the one that was only created a few weeks ago. It is a shiny,new page so it must be legit, right? Joking aside, I am pretty sure that all the above are just "like farming" or setting me up for some sort of scam. But over and over I see them in my feed because a friend has liked, commented, shared or copied and pasted. So it is working for the scammers. Then there are the "copy and paste, don't share" posts". Thanks to Allanah King for sharing this article which confirmed for me the reasons why I never do this.
It's pretty simple to stop these scammers in their tracks. All we have to do is think for a minute before we like, share etc that post. Think about why they might be posting/asking you to do this and ask ourselves is it true/real? How can I find out? While you are at it apply the same questions to any "news" you see posted.
I was inspired to write this after reading a few posts from people I admire. Firstly Kath Murdoch's post 'Establishing a Culture of Inquiry Through Inquiry' caught my eye. In it she discussed some of the questions we might ask of students so that they are involved in designing the learning and developing a learning community in the classroom. Questions like "What do we need we find out about each other? How could we go about this?", "What should I (as your teacher) learn about you?" and my personal favourite, "What are you most curious about when you think about the year ahead?".
Taryn Bond Clegg showed what inquiry in the first week might look like with her post 'What Does an Inquiry- based First week of School Look Like?', I loved that students were invited to post their questions first rather than being told what the teacher thought they needed to know and their questions were honoured. "If Mrs Griffin was the answer, what might the question be?" was a great way to value students' questions as well as helping the students get to know their teacher. Then this morning Leigh Hynes shared her post 'Okay - It's the First Week of School - What am I going to do with my students?', discussing how teachers in secondary schools might define their role through their actions, whilst developing strong relationships with their class and ensuring students understand the relevance of what they will be learning. In Secondary Schools, especially in the higher levels with the focus on achieving qualifications, it is very easy to lose sight of what really matters in a classroom in the rush to fit everything in.
So as you move through this first month of school here a a few questions to keep in mind:
How are you modelling and developing an inquiring disposition in the classroom?
How much agency do students have?
When deciding things like what groups will be called or how the furniture will be placed, have you asked the kids?
Do all students feel that they are accepted, welcomed and part of a learning community? How were students involved in that happening?
How well do you understand the purpose and relevance of what the students are learning?
How well do students understand the purpose and relevance of what they are learning?
Are you a role model in the classroom? Do your actions match what you are asking of students?
How well do you know the students in the class and how much do they know about you?
Who owns the learning?
How will parents/whānau be involved in the learning?
I could also ask how you will develop the 6Cs - Deep learning Competencies of Collaboration, Character, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Citizenship and Communication, but that's another post.
I was discussing the Olympics with some colleagues today, or more specifically I was discussing how important it is to know why you are asking students to complete a particular activity. I've talked about being clear about your purpose before in my posts Play, Passion and Purpose and again in UDL and Task Design.
What I hear a lot of is "That's a cool activity, I'll try that with my kids tomorrow" or "That's going to look great on the classroom wall and the kids will really enjoy doing it" or similar types of thinking. Topics like the Olympics, ANZAC Day, Easter and Christmas seem especially prone to this.
The very first question that needs to be asked about anything you are doing with students is "Why are you doing it?". The "why" helps us make decisions around other questions lile "How important is this?" "Is this activity the best use of valuable class time?" and "Is this the best activity for the purpose?".
Let's look at the example of Olympic artwork - just because this will look lovely on your wall is not a good reason to spend class time on it. Why are you doing it.? Ok, it might be developing some new art techniques (or it might not) but often that is not why teachers are choosing to do it. Surely art should have meaning and a purpose beyond pure decoration.
What if we used that time to look at something like the 'Olympic spirit and what it means to us' or 'How the Olympics have changed over time and whether it is for the better' or 'Should we still have the Olympics?' for example. What if we looked at how we could portray our thoughts on these matters using art? What if we looked at some examples of Olympic artworks and asked what the artist was trying to convey through their artwork? Or looked at how portrayal of the Olympics in art has changed over time and discussed why that might be? What if we then looked at the techniques etc that the artist used to get across that message? Wouldn't that lead to some artwork that we could proudly display on our classroom walls while being a meaningful use of precious class time?
Thanks @lynnesilcock for the inspiration for this post.
There is nothing more likely to get me to screaming point than an article about the supposed differences between androgogy and pedagogy. Why, you may ask? It may be helpful to start with a definition of both terms:
This is interesting because the pedagogy definition makes no mention of the age of the learner, although it has become more common to use this in reference to teaching children and young people, possibly because of its roots in the word paidagōgia meaning 'lead the child'.
The term andragogy appears to have come to the fore because people looked at descriptions of pedagogical practice and said "Hey! that's not how adults learn best". Well I have some news, its not how children learn best either.
Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
Adults are goal oriented
Adults are relevancy oriented
Adults are practical
Adult learners like to be respected
I look at that list and think, so if I made a one word substitution would it still be correct?
Learners are internally motivated and self-directed
Learners bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
Learners are goal oriented
Learners are relevancy oriented
Learners are practical
All learners like to be respected
Does it still hold true? I think it does. Sure there are degrees of each for all learners but that is true of adults and children alike. Surely we must look at the individual learner and not put them automatically into a category based on some magic age. I have seen incredibly self-directed and goal-oriented children and adults who are neither.
It makes me wonder what the magic age is when people suddenly become adults. Is is 16? 18? 21? 30? Do we wait till the day of their birthday before we suddenly shift to using a different teaching strategy with them?
It makes me want to scream when I read things like "Children have to follow a curriculum. Often, adults learn only what they feel they need to know." , "Children learn skills sequentially. Adults start with a problem and then work to find a solution." and "Children learn by doing, but active participation is more important among adults." (Full list here)
It makes me wonder about a schooling system that thinks the things in the Pedagogy list are okay. Where is the learner agency in this? Why can't young people do the things in the Andragogy column? Answer: because we haven't given them the opportunity.
As Tom Whitby puts it: "If we respected kids more as learners, they might be more self-directed and motivated in their learning. If they are allowed to participate in their learning, they might take more ownership. "
Thankfully the effective pedagogy section of the New Zealand curriculum looks more like the andragogy section of the Pedagogy vs Andragogy chart. Those who are advocating the type of thinking espoused in the chart should read this section of the curriculum. Let's look closely at the individual learner and let their needs be the basis rather than some set of rules based on an arbitrary age.
It's that time again, Connected Educator Month (get the starter kit) and I've joined the blogging challenge. My first challenge is to reflect on how my teaching practice has evolved over time. As I am no longer a classroom teacher I have taken the opportunity to reflect on my first year of teaching and compare aspects of that to today's classrooms. When I reflect back on my first year of teaching over 30 years ago there were a lot of ideas that were similar to those around now but have evolved. My first year was in what was then called an open plan classroom, which very superficially resembled today's Modern Learning Environments (MLEs). Two classrooms had a wall removed to turn them into one large space and two single cell classrooms were also part of the set up. Students were all brought together in the open space between two classrooms for introductions to units or any time we were wanting to deliver content or messages to the whole syndicate at once. This usually meant one or more teachers could be released to do other things like admin tasks or individual testing (although there wasn't much of the latter happening). The syndicate was comprised of what would now be called year 3 and 4 students and we cross-grouped for maths. This was partially on ability and partially on year level so there were two year 3 classes and two year 4 classes. This was the most restrictive subject as we taught from a text book (Modern School Mathematics), a double page a day. There was a teachers book which we used to introduce the day's topic then the students completed the exercises from their text book. The next day we moved on to the next pages whether they understood it or not. When I questioned this I was told there was a spiral curriculum and the subject would come round again. What they didn't seem to take into account was that when it came round it was a higher level, if they didn't get it the first time it was going to be harder to get the next time. For reading the students were ability grouped, and then within each class we grouped again. We used the School Journals and the old Ready to Read series of readers - Hungry Lambs, Boat Day, Sweet Porridge etc. and the NZEI book which supported these with the sight words, blends and comprehension questions relevant to each story. We didn't teach strategies like cross-checking cues or reading-on. We used a round robin approach with each child reading aloud a part of the book while the others in the group supposedly followed reading silently. I ran a reading task board which was like a reading tumble and did at least try to have activities with some relevance to the learning. In the afternoon the classes revolved around teachers with each of the four teachers specialising in an area - PE, Music, Art or Drama. We taught the same lesson 4 times to different classes for all these subjects. This certainly saved on planning time but there wasn't a lot of (or in most cases, any) adaptation for individual classes or students. Learning in Social Studies and Science was topic-based and thematic rather than cross-curricula. If the topic was Spring then we drew blossoms and glued cotton-wool on lambs, we sung Spring songs and read Spring poems. We counted daffodils and learnt about baby animals. We crowbarred Spring into every aspect of the curriculum. We had little idea of why we did most of these things, they certainly had little or nothing to do with the objectives of the unit. We cooperatively planned and then each teacher would teach a different aspect. So again the same lesson repeated 4 times with little or no adaptation. Back then I was already using a constructivist inquiry approach to Science which was the subject area I got to teach. Prior knowledge was determined and student questions were collected. We would hypothesise and test our hypotheses, then analyse our information and form conclusions. At times we even tried to find authentic contexts and help students see the relevance to their lives. It wasn't inquiry as I would see it today but it was a good start. What we failed to do however was the 'what next' step, the action as a result of the inquiry. Instead we would give them a test to see what they understood and move on to the next topic. So how does all this relate to teaching today? Well our open-plan classrooms were not a success, they were very noisy, there were no breakout spaces and learner agency was almost non-existent. We talked about being student-centered but did very little to walk the talk. There was certainly no personalisation of learning going on, teachers, not students, had control of all aspects of the learning. Cultural responsiveness was virtually unheard of, other than a token Māori Culture group which was brought out on special occasions to perform waiata-ā-ringa and haka. The whole thing seemed designed to make it easier for the teachers, not to benefit the students. It wasn't long before the walls were going up again. Unfortunately I see the same mistakes being repeated in some (please note that it is only some) schools who are trying out the so-called MLEs. Walls are knocked down, new furniture (dare I say bean bags) is purchased and classes are thrown in together with little thought as to why they are doing it, and even less into thinking about the changes in practice that are needed to make this work.I see teacher-decided cross-grouping happening in some of these MLEs rather than flexible skill and strategy-based grouping tailored to the students needs. I still see thematic units happening in classrooms, often under the guise of inquiry, where teachers have little idea of the purpose of what they are teaching. Teaching a double page a day from the maths text book may have gone (thank goodness) but in some classes there is little more personalisation of learning happening now than there was then. Teachers still have firm control of the learning in these classrooms, and true student agency is hard to find.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
It is not all bad though. I also see lots of classrooms where the learner really is at the centre of everything that is done. Where students have control of the learning and teachers really understand the purpose of everything they teach. I see most teachers working a lot harder than we did 30 years ago. Personalising learning is more difficult and more time-consuming than teaching from a text book but the effort is worth it. I have also seen some some excellent examples of MLEs or ILEs (innovative learning environments) or whatever you choose to call them, where personalised learning and student agency are the key, and proven, research-based pedagogy is put before everything. I continue to hope that teachers will visit these classrooms, talk to the teachers and see past the physical spaces into the real changes that are needed to make our classrooms places students want to be, where they feel in control of their own authentic, rich and relevant learning.
Photos from Hobsinville Point Primary where supporting sound pedagogy has been the priority when designing learning spaces.
I listened to Lynne Silcock* last week talking about Universal Design for Learning (UDL). There are a few misconceptions around UDL with probably the most common one being that it is only for students with "special needs". The U in UDL however stands for universal, meaning it is for everyone. Lynne talked about two important aspects of this, firstly knowing your learners and secondly designing for the edges. Knowing your learner includes not only their academic abilities but also their cultural and home background, their interests, how they best access the curriculum etc. If we design for the middle, as most commonly happens, those at the lower levels will struggle and the higher levels will be bored. Designing for the edges means most, if not all learners will be able to complete the task. When designing tasks there are two questions to keep in mind, and readers of my blog will find no surprises here. We need to ask "What is the purpose of this activity?" and "Why is it important for these learners?". Hopefully your school will have a well-designed school curriculum (more on this in later post) which will mean they have consulted all stakeholders and established what is important for their learners. If this has been done then question of importance for the learners has already been answered. If not, before giving a task to students, ask yourself why it is important for them to know/do this. If you don't know the answer to this question either change the task, or if it is in your school curriculum, raise the question with your senior management. On a side note, if the answer is "because it is in the test", the next questions are "Why is it in the test?" and "Should it be in the test?". As for the purpose of the activity, this is something I have blogged about before and is something I feel very strongly about. In relation to UDL the purpose should guide the task design. Lynne gave an example of a task that hasn't been devised with UDL in mind, "Read this book about the Treaty of Waitangi and write an essay which outlines the main points." To make this more accessible this could be reworded as "Read this book and/or watch this video on the Treaty of Waitangi and create a presentation in your preferred format (eg. oral, dramatic, musical, Google Slide presentation, video etc.) that demonstrates your understanding of the main points'. Both achieve the same purpose but the second task allows a much wider range of students to access and complete the task and fulfill the purpose. Of course you could go further and develop this into a rich inquiry, but that is another story. For more resources on UDL check out my LWDT Support site and Pinterest board. *Lynne Silcock is a Learning With Digital Technologies (UDL focus) facilitator and an adviser at the Connected Learning Advisory Service I have been unable to find the original source of the cartoon which has been around for quite a while, if you know please tell me so I can attribute it, get permission or remove it.
I was inspired to write this post after reading the article "What Does Inquiry Look Like?" written by Stephanie on her Teaching the Teacher Blog. I totally agree with her premise that inquiry is by no means linear and i like the analogy to a painter's palette where you dip in and out of stages using the colours you want when you need them and maybe even ignoring some colours altogether. I also like her representation of inquiry in the real world as a Jackson Pollock Painting. I think however that she has missed an important point. I believe the key lies in knowing the purpose of the inquiry and that should be the guide. As I wrote in my post Play, Passion and Purpose, the purpose of the inquiry needs to be very clear to both teacher and students right from the start. When I see inquiries that have gone off the rails it is most often because the purpose was unclear or sometimes not known at all. If the purpose is the focus, then the inquiry simply proceeds to achieve that purpose dipping in and out of stages as the need arises and always checking in to see what else is needed to achieve that purpose. The more authentic this inquiry is and the more relevant it is to the students, the easier this will be.
In this inquiry, for example, the students in Fraser Quinn's class at Putaruru Primary wanted to make a ki-o-rahi field and set about doing just that. The students led the process under the guidance of their teacher and the purpose guided the inquiry from start to finish. This is what inquiry in the real world looks like.
Just read a blog post about a school district in Maryland that is using subject-specific teachers in primary schools. All sort of alarm bells went off for me and the more I read the louder they rang. The superintendent reports less stress for teachers. Apparently this was because it reduced teacher workload as they were now planning only two lessons a day instead of five. So much for personalisation of learning, apparently you can take the same lesson and teach it to several different classes without needing to make any changes to meet the needs of the learners in those classes. Now I can see how using teachers with specific subject area strengths for some sessions could work but I would see this happening on a needs basis. Students would be working on their inquiries and experts in areas of need could be brought in to provide specific, targeted help. Or in a modern learning environment where classes have more than one teacher there could be some specialisation, again based on student need. Putting subjects into silos in primary school is a backward step in my opinion, I would like to see more curriculum integration, not less. I believe in curriculum integration where inquiries naturally take in a number of curriculum areas and subject specialisation makes this difficult to happen. In fact it is one of the reasons a lot of high schools struggle with student inquiry. I am not saying it can't happen, there some high schools doing a wonderful job with this, but a lot of planning and collaboration between teachers is needed to make it successful.
“The
values, competencies, knowledge and skills that students need for addressing
real-life situations are rarely
confined to one part of the curriculum.
Wherever possible schools should aim to
design their curriculum so that learning crosses apparent boundaries.”
Was reminded of a favourite quote of mine, so sharing for those who haven't seen it before.
"....Computers are not rescuing the school from a weak curriculum, any more than putting pianos in every classroom would rescue a flawed music program. Wonderful learning can occur without computers or even paper. But once the teachers and children are enfranchised as explorers, computers, like pianos, can serve as powerful amplifiers, extending the reach and depth of the learners."
This is my reflection on my learning from the Ulearn 2014 conference. In my previous post I talked about my thoughts around the first keynote from Yoram Harpaz. Here are some of the other highlights for me. Tom Barratt talked about fostering questions and how our reactions to them can either encourage them or close them down. This fits well with the idea of fostering an inquiry disposition. We all know how many questions pre-schoolers ask but by the time they reach upper primary school many of them have stopped. We need to make sure nothing we say or do contributes to this but instead makes questions and wonderings an expected part of what goes on in classrooms. As Tom put it, we need to "encourage students to be resilient questioners of the world." Yoram Harpaz spoke about how education is always in crisis because we expect to achieve too much. This leads to us always looking for saviours. Teaching thinking was the saviour for a while, currently it is digital technology. He didn't seem to have a high opinion of digital technology but that is another story. He talked about the three elements of thinking:
thinking skills
thinking dispositions
thinking for understanding
To find out more about his thoughts on this read his paper 'Back to Knowledge: The Ironic Path of Teaching Thinking". Just as he believed we must choose one ideology, he believed we had to choose one way to teach thinking and he believed that was by teaching thinking for understanding. Part of his reasoning was that we can only think well in areas we understand therefore teaching for understanding should be the focus which does make sense to me.
However, even though I agree that teaching for understanding is really important and is one of the main reasons I believe in an inquiry approach to teaching, I still think there is a place for explicit teaching of skills in context. Teaching dispositions is also important, although probably the hardest of the three to develop. In my opinion the skills and dispositions support the development of understanding, just as when we teach reading we teach that meaning is essential but there are skills and strategies that need to be used and we foster the love of reading.
In my next post I will talk about my thoughts around the breakouts from Lane Clark and Mike Scaddan.
October is Connected Educator month and so I have set myself a challenge to write a blog post at least once a week during October. I'm starting with a post that I think is very apt - talking about about social media as PLD. Online communities are great sources of information and support and in recent times have reached a sort of tipping point where the numbers of educators involved has taken them into the realms of more mainstream PLD. Where once it was rare to find teachers who tweeted or were involved in online communities, it is now becoming almost the norm.
It won't be long before the unconnected teacher is the exception rather than the rule. More and more teachers are realising that it is not only their students who need to be capable, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.
So why are these online communities gaining popularity? Well for a start they are virtually free, other than the cost of the data and the device to access them. And let's face it, most people already have an internet-capable device.
Secondly, you will be interacting with educators from a wide range of backgrounds from diverse communities. You can just lurk and read what others have to say or take the next step and make a contribution, ask for help or even answer someone else's question.
How connected are you? You can take this survey to find out. I was 2 points off being a Web Celeb, maybe blogging a little more frequently will bump me up. What will you do this month to bump up your score and help you become a more connected educator?
My challenge to you in Connected Educator month is to sign up and attend at least one event. The great thing is that you don't even need to leave home to do it. Then join at least one online community, whether it be Twitter (suggested educators to follow - I am @jkellow), the VLN or an education-related Facebook group like my Inquiry group, Edudemic, Edutopia, TED Talks or Te@chthought. Or follow some educators on Pinterest and start your own Pinterest boards, get the Pin it extension for your browser and start pinning sites that interest you to your boards. You can check out my boards here and see what is possible. Or maybe you could start your own blog. Many teachers already have a class blog and this is a good place to start but you could also start a personal blog to reflect on your teaching or share your own learning with others. You might even get some feedback. 7 Reasons Why Teachers Should Blog.You could also follow some of your favourite educational bloggers. See the sidebar for some of my favourites or to follow this blog. 52 Educational Bloggers to Follow While you are at it, why not get your school connected if it isn't already. Lots of schools are now using Facebook and Twitter to connect with parents. Creating a Dynamic Facebook Page for your School
So go on, dip your toes in the water, take the plunge and make new connections. You'll soon find out which ones work for you.
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