Trying to meet the future by doing what we did in the past

Today I stumbled onto an RSA animate of a speech given by Sir Ken Robinson last year on changing paradigms in education. In this speech Robinson believes that in education we're trying to meet the future by doing what we did in the past.


This is because it's in the gene pool of education.


Public education is a product of The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The Enlightenment constructed a view of the mind, and as such the learner and also the curriculum. The Industrial Revolution provided an economic reason for public education. Our present model of schooling is modelled on the interest and the image of industrialism.


Robinson argues that models of learning (and therefore schooling) need to go in the opposite direction to standardisation; standardisation reflected in curriculum and testing. This doesn't imply a lowering of standards.


Below is the RSA animation to the talk (11mins 40 sec).

The full version of the original speech is below (55mins 20secs).

There are a number of questions that arise that perhaps require some divergent thinking!

• What are our new models of learning?
• How can education best meet the future?
• What leadership is needed?
• How can this change be brought about?
• What is needed to make this change last?

After all schools are remarkably resilient places in their present structure.

What would be a real revolution in education?

Here in Australia there is a show on the ABC called QandA, Adventures in Democracy.

The show’s format essentially is to have a panel of 5 people consisting of politicians, activists, community group representation moderated by a journalist. Questions are put to the panellists.

The ABC saw that recent show (Thursday 6th August 2009)

"was a special episode of Q&A in which the leaders of the present discussed the issues of the day with the leaders of tomorrow. The entire audience and three of the panel members were in the 16-25 age bracket….” (from transcript accessed 8th August 2009).

The panellists on the show were Julia Gillard (Deputy Prime Minister), Malcolm Turnbull (Leader of the Opposition), Sara Haghoodsti (climate change activist), Mitchell Grady (law student) and Linden Brownley (indigenous advocate).

The following question was put to the panel by Jono Leonard:

"I would like to ask a question in regard to the Labor party's 'Education revolution'. Should the government be focusing more of the $14.7 billion away from infrastructure and more towards productive means of education such as smaller class sizes, and better trained teachers? Shouldn't all teachers be 'superteachers'?"

The discussion was interesting, but at times I found a little irritating.

So what irritated me?

Reference to quality teachers, rather than quality of teaching. This resonated with a discussion I was part of at a recent forum I attended where it was noted that discussions around health care don’t focus on Quality Doctors; discussions about the legal system doesn’t focus on Quality Lawyers, Barristers and Judges.

In talking about quality teachers it is implied that there is a pervasive lack of quality teachers.

Greg Whitby recently tweeted about this:

Can any one explain what a quality teacher is? Mustn't all teachers be doing quality work or they shouldn't be teaching?

Statements from that panelists that the solution lies in “a) the curriculum; and b) having quality teachers to interpret and teach that curriculum” over simplifies the complexity of the work of teachers.

Further statements that “our numeracy rates are lowering. Our literacy standards are lowering. We're not going to fix that with a new gymnasium. We're going to fix that with better teachers teaching better curriculum” create a crisis that doesn’t exist by all accounts from international testing.

Such understandings can lead to attempts to teacher-proof the curriculum which lead us nowhere.

"Putting disinfectant right through the system"

Discussion moved into the publishing of schools' results publicly to allow for comparisons of "like schools". Publishing results to allow for comparisons of like-schools may well serve parent choice (though probably not those in disadvantaged communities). It does not however serve learning. The example of league tables in the UK and policies such as No child left behind in the US, that purported transparency and public accountability, have actually compounded the problem.

Julia Gillard, in response to a question in relation to disadvantage and publication of school performance data stated

“We can make a difference to that disadvantage if we focus on it.

That's what the transparency I was asked about [publishing performace data] is all about - putting disinfectant right through the system, every school, putting their results up so we can see where the problems are.”

An interesting analogy – “putting disinfectant right through the system.” Does it presuppose an infected system in need of cleansing, or at least prevention against possible infection?

World's best school systems

The McKinsey Report (2007), How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top, studied 25 of the world's school systems, inlcuding 10 of the top performers. This study, conducted by Barber and Mourshed , identified that

“The experience of these top schools systems suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.”

This involves society, including politicians, appreciating the complex work of teachers and valuing that work and what it does contribute to society in terms that are broader than the predominant economic ones.

The issues are complex and require well thought out and whole system solutions. This, I think, requires smarter policies with a view to the long term and the future, not a short term political cycle.

It requires a view that says that our students need basic skills as well as skills and capabilities for an uncertain future. Our students need to understand oppression, patriarchy and discrimination to create a civil society – not just learn to spell these words; and indeed they can understand the concepts without necessarily being able to spell them!

They will require skills and capabilities to engage in and solve the problems they will face them: global warming, the water crisis, learning to live with diversity in a globalised world.

They also require teachers who can teach for uncertain futures. Teachers who understand learning and how today's world shapes how young people learn. Teachers that understands digital natives; but also understand that not all students use digital technology the same way or are in fact digital natives.

This requires time and space for teachers to learn. It has been argued by Professor Brian Caldwell that teachers should spend 20 days a year in professional learning.

The Australian Education Revolution, whilst well intentioned may not move us that much forward.

It seems to me that schooling, as presently experienced in disadvantaged communities, isn’t working well for those communities. Maybe there needs to be less emphasis on the business of schooling and being concerned with how to do school, and a stronger focus on learning and how learning is mediated, of which school maybe a part. This requires structural and institutional changes, not just “quality teachers”.

The Building Education Revolution doesn’t seem to be paying attention to creating spaces for learning, but rather seems to be replicating what has been – halls, gymnasiums, rooms for classes.

The Digital Education Revolution doesn’t appear to be paying much attention to emerging technologies. Laptops for every student may be superseded but more flexible, mobile technologies that can achieve the same. Maybe this is because those that design the policies don't engage with the technologies.

Understand learning

For me part of the solution lies in teachers better understanding learning and how to support the learning of a diverse group of students and engage them in learning. There is no one size fits all. The “cookie cutter” or “production-line” approach to schooling doesn’t serve us well today.

• What if the focus were on learning and not schooling?
  
• What if the profession of teaching were charged with the responsibility for ensuring the quality of teaching?
  
• What if every backbencher worked in spaces with teachers for a week every year?
• What if teachers had professional learning that focused on solving the complex problems of ensuring learning for all?

Great educational experiences depend on great teaching that takes place in great spaces (virtual and real), supported by great professional learning with great valuing of the complexity and significance of educators by the community.

I am left wondering, “What would be a real revolution in education?”

Images:

http://www.portablecontent.com/static/files/assets/5d49d0f2/teacherstech.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/4/4272852_fa4b4a45f4.jpg

http://cafnr.missouri.edu/images/news/iphone-radar.jpg

http://warwick.creativeblogs.net/files/2008/02/ss850258.JPG

A twenty-first century child

Recently I used the passage, I am Jarrod, at a recent presentation. Jarrod is one of my nephews.

The passage is an adaptation of one originally written by Hedley Beare that he uses in his book, Creating the Future school. Hedley uses Angelica in his passage, "I am the future's child". I have adapted the passage and have used it many times in presentations. The interest in others wanting a copy has prompted me to post it here.

Jarrod - a twenty-first century child

I am Jarrod and I am five and a half. I was born in the 21st century. On present life expectancies I will probably live until I am over 80. My children will see in the 22nd century. I was one of 3 out of every 100 babies that were born in a developed country. I am a Christian living in Australia. I will grow up in a non-Christian, non-European region of the world - the Asia-Pacific.

My world will be smaller. People will move about and communicate more easily across the globe. The main world language may not be English - it may well possibly be Mandarin. The world's population will explode and there will be several super-cities with over 8 million people in each. Several of these will be in Asia. These cities will bring with them increased poverty.

The environment will concern me. Global warming, food production and sustainability will be problems to be addressed.

Technology and its use will continue to grow and shape the world. I will be faced with moral and ethical issues around human reproduction, genetic engineering, aged care and health, the use of technology to improve the quality of life for some at a cost to others.

Commodities will no longer be materials, like production. The new commodities will be non-material, such as technical skills, brain-power and know-how. I will be a creator of ideas and solutions and an empathiser ina conceptual age.

I was learning before I started school and learning wont stop when I finish school; and I continue to learn outside of the school day.

I am not a blank slate nor an empty vessel waiting to be filled. I have ideas. I create. I problem-solve. I am learning about my world and the people in it. I am learning about myself, about the space around me, about objects. I am wired to learn. I want to learn. Each day I am learning more, building on what I already know. I use my will, my ingenuity, my effort and my expertise to learn. I am learning language and I am thinking. I am solving problems and I am applying what I know in my world. I want to show others what I have learnt. I am asking questions.

I will learn as much from TV, through the internet and through social networking as I will learn in school. I will have absorbed, and have started to absorb a US frame of reference on the world, with its values and culture. World-wide more people will be Moslem than Christian. Confucian characteristics will shape the Asian economies. I will need to learn to live comfortably in a multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-faith world.

I will need to know what I stand for. I will look to school for my values and beliefs. I am uncertain about the future and holding onto the past won't help me.

Digital technologies will change my access to information. Technology will become smaller, more mobile and more flexible than computers. I won't need a teacher to provide me with information. Knowledge will no longer be managed as subjects and classes with teachers as gate-keepers. Knowledge will be a web of interconnections. The curriculum will be influenced by national and international concerns. My teachers are important to me because they tell me how to deal with the future - the long, long future.

I will see the world differently.

Do you know what to teach me?

Do you know what I need to learn?

Do you know how to teach me?

Do you know how I learn?

I am Jarrod. I am 5. And I am in one of your classrooms now.

Wired to Learn

It's a long weekend here in Australia and I spent part of the weekend with my family in Canberra. My nephew, Hamish (aged 1) was there and a delight to watch. 

He was fascinated by a Newton's Cradle.

I, in turn, was fascinated as to how a 1-year old, with limited motor skills, would manipulate the Newton's Cradle to create the kinetic energy effect that caught his eye.

The video captures the ingenuity of a 1-year old.

We are truly wired to learn!

Innovating to Learn, Learning to Innovate

I started reading a recent OECD publication, Innovating to Learn, Learning to Innovate. The publication is connected to a project, Innovative Learning Environments which has grown out of Schooling for Tomorrow project.

The Innovative Learning Environments project is grappling with the question:

How can today’s schools be transformed so as to become environments of teaching and learning that makes individuals lifelong learners and prepare them for the 21st Century?

The project recognises a shift between the two projects

From SCHOOLING to LEARNING, and

From FUTURES THINKING to INNOVATION.

In the first chapter, The search for Innovative Learning Environments, Francisco Benavides, Hanna Dumont and David Istance put forward an argument that schools should be reinvented rather than reformed.

"… reforms have ultimately come up against a wall, or rather a ceiling, beyond which further progress seems impossible, leading increasing numbers of school administrators and educators to wonder whether schools do not need to be reformed but to be reinvented."
Schooling for Tomorrow. OECD, 2006. pp.187-188.

They identify a reform agenda based on knowledge creation rather than transmission arguing that reinvention requires 3 key pillars:

1. Robust research on learning and teaching
2. Consideration of innovative learning experiences and environments, and
3. The broader educational and non-educational trends that set the context for the immediate and longer-term future.

In a later chapter, Research-based Innovation by Carl Bereiter and MarleneScardamalia the term fruitfulness is introduced as an approach to identifying approaches that are worth developing as new directions because of the promise they hold to make significant leaps forward beyond current outcomes.

The common approach in education is to use "effect size". This may be useful in identifying high yield strategies and "best" practice, but doesn't identify possible successful innovations. Fruitfulness does.

Learning the Dance - Learning in today's world

Today a friend of mine shared this YouTube clip with me:



Jonas, the young man in the clip, is the son of a work colleague of my friend. Notice his raised eye brow in the video! (It's very cute!)

What Jonas' Numa Numa Video brought home to me is the connective power of YouTube, even for our children.

I first came across Numa Numa in the middle of this year when I stumbled across a YouTube clip, "An anthropological introduction to YouTube", on Michael Wesch's site, Digital Ethnography. About 2 minutes into the clip Wesch introduces the Numa Numa phenomena.

Numa Numa was a 2003 pop song from a Maldovan group, O-Zone. The song became popular in Italy and Japan.

In December 2004 Gary Brolsma looked down a video cam and performed the song in his bedroom.

YouTube was registered in Febuary 2005 and by April that year anyone with a web cam could easily upload a video to the world wide web.

Gary version of Numa Numa is here:



People around the world joined in Gary's joy by learning the dance - including the raised eye brow, and lip synching the words. Now a YouTube search for Numa Numa shows results for 1,200,000!

Michael Wesch draws on Douglas Wolk in reflecting that the phenomena is not a parody of Brolsma but rather, through YouTube, a new cultural order is able to be created. Wesch sees that the Numa Numa phenomena is a celebration of new forms of empowerment, new forms of community and new forms of unimaginable possibilities.

Watching Jonas in his rendition of Numa Numa I'd have to agree. He is joining in spreading the happiness, with real audiences, connecting with others. This is part of Jonas' world, and should be part of how he learns.

The metaphor of "Learning the Dance" is a powerful one for me. As an educator I need to learn the dance that is learning today, and be a part of that dance that is learning in today's world - the world of Jonas.

Michael Wesch's video is below (including list of timing for sections in the 55 minute video):

0:00 Introduction, YouTube's Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What's on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and "networked individualism" (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is ("context collapse")
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube's Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKg...
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV's "The Message" and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

Designs on Learning (3) - Re-thinking the learning process

I came across this YouTube clip from the Ordrup School in Gentofte, Denmark. In the clip the Chairman of the School Board reflects on the fact that the school was a product of the old society, in which classrooms where seen to be production units where teachers pushed the knowledge and wisdom out to the students. The school redesigned the learning spaces to support an approach to learning that reflects a contemporary society and how we young people engage in that society.
The challenge is to first rethink the learning process and the consequent design of the learning spaces.

Rethinking the Learning Process
Recently I was visiting a school where the principal and his leadership team were keen to explore what is possible for the learning spaces and for learning.
The conversation covered a wide area of thinking. Three key things seemed to emerge:

1. Personalising the learning for students
2. Ensuring deep learning
3. Teacher learning to support innovation and transformation of practice to personalise the learning for deep learning.

The school was left with an interesting challenge through which to explore key concepts and to engage students, staff and the broader community. The challenge was to explore what might be possible.

What might schools look like if they didn't look like traditional schools?

What would learning look like if it didn't look like it presently does?

How might students respond to this?

What might they design?

Shaping Learning in the 21st Century - Teachers Leading Innovation: Key shifts and enabling factors (2)

The ACE presentation was well attended and I have received some very affirming comments from particiapnts. The powerpoint show is available as a box.net share file located in the right hand column.

Below are a couple of comments:

"I was at your ACE presentation at our school on the 23/6. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt very energised after it in terms of our own projects. ...We are fortunate in being a laptop school that has really good technology access and innovation. However, I think that your presentation provided that overarching paradigm that is sometimes lost in our everyday practice."

"Thank you for presenting such a thought provoking and complex issue for your seminar last night. I am not sure how you fitted it all in, in seventy five minutes but you did. It should be the start of a great conversation at many schools. I would love to have had the opportunity to work with you in a school setting."

"The first part of Andrew's talk with audience participation stimulated thinking. I think it is also time for strategy implementation."

"Congratulations on an excellent thought provoking lecture."

The death of education ... the dawn of learning

This is a wonderful and inspiring clip (sponsored by the Pearson Foundation for CosN) that is doing the rounds at the moment.
It opens up thinking about what is and what could be and should be in education, schooling and learning.

At the 2008 ICSEI conference, Susan Rona, a Hungarian-born Canadian who has worked on a project to achieve basic educational opportunities for the Roma (gypsy) children in four countries in Central Europe, put forward the proposition that education is important, but also put the question as to whether school is important.

Stephen Heppell was stronger in the clip in saying, "It's the death of education but the dawn of learning; and that makes me very happy!"

Imagine if schools were the "nearly now spaces".
Imagine if we did view schools as community sytems rather than a classroom systems.
Imagine if teachers had opportunities for global connecting.

Redesigning Learning

The redesign of learning spaces is linked to rethinking and redesigning schools. This clip from Teachers.tv, System Redesign - How to Transform Your School is an excellent resource for opening up the thinking and conversations about redesigning the system of schooling. I'd be interested in others responses to the clip.

There has for a long time been a sense that there is a lack of congruence between school buildings/learning spaces, teachers/teaching and learners/learning.

A former colleague and mentor of mine, Kate Clancy (an outstanding educator and now Principal of Santa Sabina College, Strathfield, Australia) has, for many years, described this problem as learning taking place in 19th Century schools, with 20th Century teachers and 21st Century learners.

The video clip is a nice synthesis of some of the current thinking around redesigning. It draws upon some recent work from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, an organisation I was fortunate enough to visit in 2006 to examine innovation. iNet is the international network that evolved from SSAT. It connects nicely with the concept of Next Practice – an area I am particularly interested in exploring further with schools.

What if … ? questions can open up thinking beyond current practice and shape new practices.

I was recently in a school that has established a strong working partnership at the leadership level with it’s neighbouring primary schools and the secondary school. The possibilities are endless for redesigning learning by exploring some of the "What ifs?".

What if …

• There was shared leadership across the schools to improve numeracy for all students

• Stage 3 and Stage 4 teachers worked together to address transition in investigating, planning, implementing and evaluating programmes

• Teaching expertise were shared within and between the schools and was made available to other teachers and to the students

• The network of neighbouring schools saw themselves as a learning precinct with shared responsibilities to the communities they served.

The list could go on!

What difference can we make: Teachers innovating and building professional knowledge

I had the opportunity to present to a group of Primary Assistant Principals in the Southern region of Sydney. The presentation was essentially a repeat of a presentation I did as part of the seminar series at Australian Catholic University.
The group seemed to respond well to the concepts being put forward.
The significant ones for me seerm to be:

• slow learning to go deep - not just for students but for teachers
• teacher-led development work that provides a framework for teachers engaging in school improvement at the classroom level
• Disciplined innovation that provides a scaffold for engaging in innovation
• The focus in school review and improvement should be on improvement, not measuring.

At the heart for me is a desire that Teaching be seen to be The Learning Profession. Again this notion of courageous leadership and the courage to lead seem to be strong at the moment.

I am interested to see where the thinking and conversations develop and how. My goal in presenting is not so much to provide answers, but rather to open up and stimulate thinking.

More and more I am getting a sense of asking the questions about do we desire things to be like, what should things be like in education and what can I do about it? How can I contribute my expertise to achieving the desired outcomes of the profession?

There needs to be conversations about what is desirable and for whom.

No Virginia; Lifelong learning isn't jargon!

I have had an interesting day today at DEMOS.

One point of the discussion was about lifelong learning. What emerged from the conversation about lifelong learning was that it is an important concept to understand as it serves to redefine schools and schooling. Unless we understand the place of formal school learning within the context of lifelong learning there can be a risk of formal school learning being decontextualised and irrelevant. Alongside this is the risk that schools don't support student learning in meeting their needs and aspirations.