Category Archives: Education

A focus on vision and leadership for education

Great question: If the mandate is for innovation, how much should best practice drive that?

Posted on by
1

A great question posed by @gcouros, deserves an answer that required more than 140 characters.

Why is there a mandate for innovation?
At the heart of the word ‘innovation’ is ‘nova’ – making things new, systems, ideas and products. The history of humanity is ‘nova’ – products, ideas and processes that change and (mostly) improve our individual and collective lives.

It’s almost cliché to talk about the pace of change, yet this is a reality. Technological and scientific discoveries are changing our lives and making many aspects of what was considered normal, now to be defunct. Innovation is the open door to improving our lives, it takes knowledge and ideas and turns them into action.

In an age of uncertainty due to the financial crisis, the changing employment landscape and increasing number of new, and also obsolete markets, the key message is innovate or be quickly irrelevant. Unless school education embraces a culture of innovation school becomes mechanical and students are not given the tools to think differently about solutions for their world.

What’s the challenge with best practice?
The term ‘best practice’ is often used within the context of a methodology that can be applied and helps to achieve the desired outcomes. It is a reflective practice developed by an accumulation of past experiences and analysed data and can be a formulaic response. ‘Best practice’ looks to what has worked previously, but doesn’t necessarily bring solutions to future problems.

The challenge for educators is that there is immense data that has informed what is considered to be ‘best practice’ for how learning occurs. This information can provide knowledge to help inform the future, but alone is insufficient. Innovation can start with this knowledge, but then adds intuition within the context of a vision to ultimately achieve implementation.

So, how much should best practice drive innovation?
For our young people to be equipped for success in an unknown future, one that requires new solutions to new problems, then a best practice approach alone can only improve the current state of play.

As futurist Joel Barker stated, ‘we manage within paradigm and lead between paradigms’.  Best practice shapes management, how we do things and how can we improve what we do. Innovation, however, looks to the new paradigm and is inextricably linked to visionary leadership, intuition and risk.

Thanks for the question, George.

@anneknock

Reinventing professional learning at Making it Mobile, Auckland 2012 #mim2012

Posted on by
1

A brilliant bringing together of essential goals in education, matched to powerful methods of education for this age. It has opened up my mind to the means of unleashing creativity in children. (Participant)

Our team has just concluded hosting a two day workshop Making it Mobile, held in Auckland, at Albany Senior High School

What happens when you take 60 educators, turn traditional PD on its head and then let them loose to learn?

It’s engaging, inspiring and overwhelming.

What happens when professional learning looks like good students learning?

It becomes collaborative, creative, crowd-sourced and challenging.

What a buzz! Community of practice re-imagining the future! #mim2012

A few key principles that shaped our planning:

  • design principles in the development of content
  • presenting PD within a new paradigm
  • crowd sourcing professional learning
  • providing an open learning environment for adult learners
  • being highly relational in the approach

Anne says “We believe teacher learning should look like good student learning.” #mim2012

The result was two days of fast-paced learning with content input, on-the-shoulder guidance and “a buzz in the room [that] was palpable.”

@matonfender and @steve_collis are tweeting, obviously

The first day started with a keynote from @Stephen_h (Stephen Harris), principal at Northern Beaches Christian School and Director/Founder of Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning. He framed the opening session around the changing landscape of school education –  a profound learning culture, facilitated by technology, space and pedagogy that empowers and engages students.

Schools as a functional relational community as a base for learning  #mim2012

#mim2012 reinforcing teaching as inquiry to bring together to bring together thinking skills, differentiation and collaboration supported by ICT!

Love the genuine mix of student centred and sometime teacher lead learning landscapes at SCIL #mim2012

Don’t stay a teacher if you just want a comfortable job #mim2012

Interactive whiteboards? Like CDs – transition technology between records and itunes. IWBs – transition between whiteboards and #BYOD #mim2012

The remainder of the day practitioners scrolled through workshops led by @steve_collis, @matonfender, @ldeibe and @mosborne01

From SCIL

  • Lou Deibe – Learning Matrix
  • Steve Collis – Flipped Learning
  • Mark Burgess – Project-Based Learning

And from Albany Senior High School

  • Mark Osborne – with Unlimited Ideas

Learning matrix, what a great idea #mim2012

Creating a common language for PBL linking the scientific method, technology process and inquiry method #mim2012

#mim2012 designing an icon, quite enjoyed the process

icons need to be simple to visually de-clutter #mim2012

From battery hens to free range chickens – freedom of movement to the students @steve_collis #mim2012

if we relinquish control why is there not anarchy #mim2012

Edcanvas – great for gathering multimedia resources and sites for students #mim2012

On the second day, the theme was:

What will you build?’

What do I want to build? Answer is getting tougher with all the inspiring ideas #mim2012

Participants were encouraged to take the input from the previous day and build something. That ‘something’ may have been a project-based unit, a personalised learning matrix, using Edmodo or Edcanvas, planning for BYOD and a range of other practical ideas.

The Commons at Albany Senior High School became an open-space learning environment for educator-learners, with coaching from the SCIL team, pop-up training sessions and small groups planning great ideas for their students.

Participants were encouraged to host workshops on their areas of techie expertise – who says it’s the presenters who are the only ones to share?

The Twittersphere was abuzz with #mim2012 – sharing ideas and resources and convincing the laggards that there was more to this thing that what you had for breakfast.

The two days wrapped up with a promise to return in 2013.

We thought we were coming to use BYOD better, but have since realised we are changing our classroom practice. #mim2012

So many ideas for transformation. So happy to be involved with an innovative school #learningtransformation #mim2012

very thought-provoking couple of days #mim2012

Loving the work that I’ve been able to create after being inspired by a great deal of people at #mim2012 #crowd-sourcing = eavesdropping

Take a leap into the 21st century and change your pedagogical approach. Collaborate with the switched on educators from SCIL. (Participant)

An inspiring and thought-provoking range of workshops which really got my creative juices flowing. (Participant)

Would you like us to bring this workshop to your city?

@anneknock

scil.com.au

Leaders, Change school education in four easy steps (As if it were that simple!)

Posted on by
Reply

When it comes to rethinking school education I can be overwhelmed at the task and get stuck , or I can do something. The choice to take action is always the best course, but I need to be realistic about the change that is possible. I could look at our government education policy and give up at the complexity of bringing change, or I can start tweaking my own environment, increase influence and then maybe one day, feel that I can affect change in a much broader way.

Change that begins at a local level and grows outward has a much greater chance of sticking.

But how do we know the difference?

In my own life I filter ideas and passions into two categories, articulated by Stephen Covey:

  • Circle of Influence
  • Circle of Concern

 

It’s as simple as this diagram. Within the broader sphere of my passions and drivers in life, there are many things that need to change, be developed and to grow and there are also obstacles that should to be dismantled.

While, important, some elements of these are presently not within my sphere of influence, such:

  • national assessments
  • renewing teacher education
  • ubiquitous access to technology for all students.

I have opinions, if asked, and would love to one day be in a position that I can influence in these areas, so at the moment, they are in my ‘Circle of Concern’. In the meantime, I am focussing on growing my ‘Circle of Influence’. I have found that the areas where I can affect change are usually begins locally or within my network.

‘Leadership is Influence’.

The best way to grow lasting change is to grow your leadership.

I’m definitely not an expert on all schools and every context, but there are a few common areas in which to begin thinking about the future of school and education. Why? So that schools will engage, equip and inspire young people for a bright and purposeful future. The deeper you think about these, the less school of the future will look like school of the past, and the present.

This is what you need to do:

  1. Build vision for the future: Where are you going?

Then think about what of these look like in the context of the vision:

  1. Build capacity in the present: What do your people need to get there?
  1. Shape the learning:  What does the pedagogy need to look like?
  1. Shape the space: Where will learning take place? (Hint: think virtual as well as physical spaces)

So instead of being overwhelmed by the enormity of change and the complexity of today’s socio-political context, why not start locally in each of these areas.

What one thing is essential in a great school? Answer: High quality relationships (Just takes a bit of gardening)

Posted on by
3

Peter Drucker, management guru made a great statement:

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

We can have all the best plans and ideas in the world, but unless the culture of your school is in the right place, nothing is going to work for the long term. So what is at the heart of culture?

People and relationships working together.

As the word ‘culture’ implies, it requires ‘cultivating’, just like a garden, regular and specialised work that is daily, weekly, seasonally, annually. It requires weeding, fertilizing and pruning and sometimes even a complete makeover, then more weeding, fertilizing and pruning. Cultivating a beautiful or purposeful garden never stops and ensuring the right school culture is just the same.

High quality relationships are essential in a great school that supports today’s learning paradigm, one that engages young, passionate learners and at the same time motivates and inspires committed educators.

Over the past few weeks I have co-hosted a study tour of UK and Europe, that takes leaders on a literal and professional journey. We visited creative learning and play spaces, and study innovative pedagogical approaches.

 

 

 

 

From my observation the effectiveness of each element is strengthened or diminished when deliberate attention is paid to the quality of relationships within the school, which includes:

  • Student to adult
  • Adult to adult
  • School to stakeholder
  • Leadership to the entire community

‘All will Succeed’

This is the mission statement of a Essa Academy, new 11-16 school in the Greater Manchester area. Located in a demographic of extreme social need, generational unemployment and a multi-racial community, with 46 different languages.

 

 

 

The school is united by the mission ‘All will succeed’ – the overarching statement that guides practice and culture. This academy is a reinvention of a so-called ‘failing school’, now in a new building, with new leadership, governance and culture.

On arrival the atmosphere of warmth and friendliness pervaded. Relationships matter at this school. In the car park we were met, greeted and welcomed. The reception area leads to an open common space, this is everybody’s space, anytime it’s needed, not just the dinner room.

 

 

 

At the start we were having coffee and a chat in a large communal space. In the same locale a small class gathered around some tables with their teacher, nearby a couple of teachers were planning and a young student was having a serious meeting with a couple of adults. No one felt they needed to hide away for any of these meetings, it was a communal space, for the activities of the community.

As we heard from Abdul Chohan (@abdulchohan), one of the school’s directors and then talked with teachers and students, the pervading culture shouted out loud:

High quality relationships are a significant value at this school.

 
Our tour group finished the morning with a one-on-one with students, freedom to ask about the school and learning, their hopes and dreams. I took this opportunity to take a couple of photos, then started talking to Sandy, the teacher accompanying them. As we talked about the students and the school, the amazing culture, and as I watched these well-presented students articulately and confidently communicate with members of our group, Sandy said to me,

“I just love these kids, I love them to bits.”

How do we develop the culture that supports strategy? Put people first:

  • Articulate an inclusive and bold purpose – ‘All will succeed’
  • Technology used creatively supports the learning and working – Not the other way around
  • Share spaces – remove the barriers that support a ‘territorialist’ mindset
  • Enable ‘planned coincidences’ – places where people can connect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just like gardening, developing this culture takes time and work, it is modeled and reinforced from the leadership:

  • Daily – observing, admiring and appreciating: attention to formal and informal interactions and use of the spaces
  • Weekly – weeding: following through on structures that reinforce the vision and mission
  • Seasonally – pruning and fertilising: watching for shifts and making adjustments
  • Annually – assessing and observing the landscape: taking a health check, restating the vision and mission of the school

@anneknock

Essa Academy in the media:

The school where every teacher has an ipad and every student an ipod

Eton Masters visit Manchester for lesson in teaching by ipod

Travel as professional learning challenges thinking & grows leaders: 10 reasons why #SCILvision12

Posted on by
Reply

The SCIL Vision Tour 2012 group travelled together for almost two weeks. Most only met one another for the first time in a hotel lobby in Helsinki, tentatively shaking hands with new travel buddies and wondering what the next fortnight held in store. Then, as we hugged and said goodbye in another hotel lobby, this time in London, we were all grateful for the shared experiences.

The details:

  • 13 days, starting in Helsinki and finishing in London
  • 10 people – 3 school principals, 4 senior leaders, 1 business person/entrepreneur and Stephen Harris and I, the tour leaders.
  • From 3 countries – Australia, New Zealand and Rwanda. Our colleague from Rwanda, also the business person/entrepreneur, joined us for the Europe week, seeking to gain ideas for growing the capacity of schools in his country.
  • Visiting 5 countries – Finland, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands and UK
  • Spending time in schools, universities, libraries, co-working spaces and a science centre

This is the third study tour that we have run at SCIL – we deliberately call it the ‘Vision Tour’, as the purpose has been to lift vision. Not every school we visited was an architectural wonder or was pedagogically innovative, but each had something unique to offer. An important part of the journey was the people we met along the way – passionate educators, who love young people and are seeking ways to make a difference in their lives. The most inspiring of these were in the Manchester-Hull region of the UK.

As professional development, this opportunity is unlike any other, here’s why:

  1. Vision is lifted when I take myself out of my familiar context
  2. Thinking is challenged when I analyse the different ways the world works
  3. Ideas are shaped and reshaped through robust dialogue with hosts and amongst travellers
  4. Radar is always ‘on’ to learn from every experience and interaction
  5. Gain understanding of how culture impacts strategy
  6. The people we meet – Leadership insights from international peers as they share their own journey
  7. Talk to students to hear about their learning
  8. Professional learning starts over breakfast and concludes after dinner
  9. Shared experiences connect and increase accountability
  10. Close bonds are formed amongst the group

We had many wonderful experiences as a group and look forward to our further connections. Toward the end of the tour, on our final flight back to London half the group went for lunch at a Manchester Airport restaurant. I walked past, just as they emerged and we headed toward the gate and heard one say, “That was the best conversation of the whole trip.”  And I missed it!

The 2012 Vision Tour took months of preparation and the two weeks seemed to fly, yet it was so rich. It reinforced the value of such a unique opportunity for professional learning.

We have our thinking caps on for 2013. Care to join us?

@anneknock

scil.com.au

The global Hub movement: How the ‘Third Place’ creates a working, social and communal space with purpose #scilvision12

Posted on by
Reply

The Third Place refers to a coworking space that creates a rich community of creative businesses, non-profits and start-ups. They generally have a unique culture where opportunity and idea sharing takes place. The concept of the Third Place emerged from a combination of the home office, flexible hours and results oriented work.

The concept of ‘working from home’, with its freedom and flexibility has morphed into the need for people to be co-located with other like-minded individuals. They have moved on from just taking up a table at the local cafe, to purpose-designed spaces where entrepreneurs and independent workers seek to be part of a community.

We visited the Westminster Hub, part of the global HUB network. Tim, one of the co-founders was kind enough to invite us in and show us around. Walking around we saw people working individually, in pairs and in groups. There is a place for gathering groups together – cave, campfire and watering hole.

The following week we were in Helsinki and found the local HUB community. A newer operation, but the principles and philosophy was the same.

We set out to create spaces that combine the best of a trusted community, innovation lab, business incubator and the comforts of home.

Community

Collaboration

Creativity

Co-locating

Comfortable

There are parallels with the design and fit out that can be translated to the design, fit out and use of open learning spaces.

Community: Is the space inviting and encourages people to connect?

Collaboration: How does the furniture and arrangement of the space facilitate connection and collaboration?

Creativity: Can ideas incubate?

Co-locating: Does each user need to be on the same task, working on the same outcome? They don’t have to be.

Comfortable: How do you like to work? Tables, sofas, open-spaces, closed spaces – provide choice

When people are passionate about what they do and motivated to achieve outcomes, no one is needed to ‘crack the whip’.

She stepped back and replied, “You’re not one of those schools-with-no-walls, are you?” Who gets it and who doesn’t.

Posted on by
1

We talk about our passions, they just come up in conversations. sometimes we don’t even realise.

On the weekend I briefly met a young woman in her 20s who turned out to be English teacher from an inner London Academy. Once she heard about my work and why I was in the UK she stepped back and replied, “You’re not one of those schools-with-no-walls, are you?”. To her, the prospect of open space, students owning their learning and no longer teaching from the front sounded like a nightmare.

As an observer of people I take note of responses when I talk about what I do and tell them about  Northern Beaches Christian School in Sydney. I anticipate reactions, quite often from non-educators: “I wish there was a school like that for [insert name/me].” From educators, It seems that they are polarised in the response, either love it or hate it.

A little later on the same day over lunch I was sharing this story and telling some non-educator friends about what I believe about learning. They got it. Project Based Learning, flipped learning, choice, personalised approaches and comfortable surroundings made sense because they knew too many people who have been let down and alienated by conventional schooling.

Many of my peers, whose children are now adults, often tell of those who felt disconnected from school. They were either creative in the performing and visual arts, or were just not that conventional. My friends could see how the open and flexible spaces, focus on learning and the learner and the opportunity to develop an individual’s strengths would make a difference.

I am travelling alone at the moment so its easy and fascinating to eavesdrop conversations at restaurants while I stick my nose in a book. At the next table a father and daughter were discussing the preparation year for the final GCSE exams to come. After they talked about study and a whole range of things the dad said, “you need a strategy for the last 15 minutes of the paper. Work out how you will answer the multiple choice questions that you won’t get to, within the  limited time. Have a plan, just do A, B, B, C, C, C, D…” or something like that. Obviously, the purpose of the assessment was to maximise marks, and not show learning. This dad didn’t get it because the school system doesn’t get it (because maybe the government doesn’t get it).

Educators generally seem to be polarised on the subject. Whether it’s because open learning had (apparently) been tried and then failed in the 1970s or they are skeptical about opening up the spaces, giving freedom and embracing a different role. Just like the young teacher I met, monumental change just feels impossible.

On the other hand, there is a growing tribe of devotees to a new paradigm for school. Like us, they have seen young people switched onto learning, the significance of the high stakes relationships between the teacher and student and the quality of work that the student’s achieve. Assessment becomes a meaningful part of learning.

What would help the young English teacher change her paradigm?

  • Constantly challenging the conventional wisdom of what is a school
  • Shake-up pre-service teacher education
  • Provide meaningful, challenging and continuous in-service PD
  • Rethink assessment processes
  • Grow courageous leaders who are prepared to challenge the status quo
  • Commitment to doing both: meeting government standards and changing the paradigm
  • Provide conditions for teachers to work together, rather than in isolation

I explained to my new friend that this is a process. Obviously we can’t just push out the walls, throw in the kids and the teachers together and hope for the best. There must be support, encouragement, challenge and time. However, none of these things will work unless there is vision to show the way forward.

Coined the term ‘pedagogic nostalgia’ referring to those who long for how school was once. Let’s help them change.

Posted on by
Reply

We had a great time today talking learning, schools and education with some forward thinking principals from a rural area in our state. As I was talking I used the term ‘pedagogic nostalgia’, referring to the way many parents long for, either, the education they had or the one they dream of for their kids. There is a journey we need to take our parents on, to help them understand that their default ‘picture’ of school needs to change.

I remembered an opinion piece I was asked to write for our major daily, in the education section.

I’m not sure if I shared it here, but maybe we can help the community move from nostalgia to reality, for our kid’s sake.

———————————————————-

Learning to move with the times
Technology has opened the doors to a whole new world of educational experiences.

My son attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts. He would leave early or come home late depending on whether he had stage band, concert band, string ensemble, orchestra or choir. During his time there, he had so many opportunities: he enjoyed school, he had teachers who understood creative types and he had friends who were passionate about school.

I was grateful for this opportunity for my son, especially as he now pursues a career in music. As an educator, I wondered, ”What if every young person had this opportunity? What if there were a school for every interest and passion of every young person?” Of course, this is impossible but what if every school were a place where the spark of learning could be ignited inside each student?

My son’s story is in contrast with that of the comedian Eddie Perfect’s experience and those of other well-known Australians, as told in Don’t Peak at High School: From Bullied to A-list, edited by Fiona Scott-Norman.

Perfect recalls, ”I was always creative and wanted to be successful and do something unique but none of that was ever recognised at school. . . . It worries me. I think high school is getting so career focused. They want to form you and then send you off in a particular direction.”

This sense of disengagement is felt by young people when their passions and interests do not necessarily line up with what the broader community might value as part of a school education.

Now, technology can make any school a specialist school. It requires key ingredients such as flexible school design, personalised curriculum, equipped, passionate and supported professionals, vision-led leadership and a parent community that accepts school today needs to look and feel quite different from their experiences.

The kindergarten child of 2011 was born in 2006. If her parents were 30 when she was born, they probably left school about 1994. So much of our world has changed since then. Technology and the internet have shifted the game and the school life this kindergarten child has begun should prepare her for a world to come, rather than a world that has been.While not playing down the importance of literacy and numeracy, young people are now taught practical skills as they need them, rather than learning everything ”just in case”.

So the essential skills of the 21st century schools include collaboration, problem-solving, analytical thinking, creativity and resilience. These skills can be more effectively taught and modelled in a school that should look and feel significantly different from the experience of one teacher and 30 students locked in a room all day learning from texts that will need to be reprinted in a couple of years.

Outside the school gate, our young people experience a dynamic, innovative and creative world, yet so often it is a foreign environment. Many educators are now passionate about transforming schools; they are questioning the relevance of the accepted processes of assessment and delivery of content. They are not seeking to transform schools to make their job better or easier; they believe if they are to engage young people as learners then schools must be radically different.

Nostalgia often paints a picture of the school that parents may seek for their children. This picture can be informed by happy memories or the sense that ”it didn’t do me any harm”, to which I want to reply, ”how do you know*”.

———————————————————-
* this part was changed by the editor to: “maybe it did”. I preferred the original.

Artichokes & the reflections of learning for purpose: Learning sticks when it fits

Posted on by
Reply

“Lifelong learner”, I first recall hearing the term 15 years ago, the importance of having a commitment to learning for life. It resonated. This idea has led us to think more broadly about learning, beyond job skills and job readiness to embracing the philosophy that learning is an essential element of an enriched life.

Last week we ran a two-day workshop for educators. The pace was relaxed and self-directed and the participants were passionate. We had ‘experts’ on hand as reference and the participants could dip in and out as they required. They were free to grab a coffee, check email and stop for lunch as they needed to. After some input sessions on the first day, the participants could then direct their own learning path for the second day. They had the opportunity to develop new ideas to take back to their own school. The learners drove the agenda.

In whatever categories we may fit – as student, employee, leader, curious-amateur, passionate enthusiast – the learning sticks when it fits, both us and the context. I have been reflecting on myself as a learner over this weekend.

I am a vegetable enthusiast, not a vegetarian. I find the variety, colour, shapes and flavours of vegetable provide so much opportunity for culinary creativity. As I walked through my fruit and vegetable market yesterday I noticed the artichokes – “2 for $5”. I don’t even know if that was a good deal, nor whether they were just $2.50 anyway. Nevertheless, on a whim I bought two, of course. Globe artichokes must be one of the weirdest looking vegetables. Not to be confused with Jerusalem Artichokes, which are a member of the tuber family, they are green and purple and a member of the thistle family. This is what Stephanie Alexander says in The Cooks Companion:

Artichokes have a reputation of being tricky to prepare and fiddly to eat. As a result, many food lovers have yet to tackle the boiled artichoke. The flavour is quite unlike anything else.

Prior to my whim in the fruit and vegetable market I hadn’t read what Stephanie wrote – but I that was exactly how I felt. I came home, looked at the two thistles and worked out, my *personal learning plan. (*By the way, at the time I didn’t think I was going to write about cooking artichokes, but it is interesting to reflect on how I tackled the problem.)

My first reference was Stephanie Alexander’s weighty tome, with the by-line “The complete book of ingredients for the Australian kitchen”. This is a classic, about 7cm/3 inches thick. The first edition, written in 1996 is arranged by chapters based on ingredients – more than 100. The book is great on detail for each ingredient – varieties, seasons, selection, storage, preparation and recipes. My favourite part in each chapter is “[Ingredient] goes with…” listing all the things that work and enabling me to be creative with whatever I have on hand.

While the depth of detail in Stephanie’s book is immense, it is a ‘text’ book, in the true sense. I needed a visual to be able to know what to do. Where to next? YouTube, of course. I watched a few videos on preparing, cooking and serving artichokes. Then to Google for a few recipe ideas and finally, once I had a picture of what to do, I returned to The Cook’s Companion. Then to work. I decided to cook each one differently – one baked, one boiled – to look at the difference. The baked had garlic cloves secreted inside along with lemon and oil, before wrapping tightly in aluminium foil. The boiled, was just boiled for 15 minutes. I served them with vinaigrette, explained to spouse how to eat and we enjoyed the somewhat messy experience. 

On reflection, what did I observe about my learning process?

  • Passion drove the need to learn
  • Authentic learning occurred when there was meaning/purpose
  • Know how I learn to maximise the outcome
  • Self-directed and self-paced meant I could process the information in my own time
  • Relied on a trusted reference for information
  • Check other untested sources against the trusted reference
  • Dive in. What’s the worst that can happen?
  • Reflect and evaluate
  • A sense of fulfilment from enjoying the process and achieving the goal.

 

 

It’s critical that we have a professional learning environment that encourages educators to be lifelong learners. The terms passion projects, problem-based learning and flipped learning apply within the professional learning context. The learning sticks when it fits. So what do we do about the  one-size-fits-all PD that is presented to educators, serving a growth industry through the necessary, but narrowly focused PD regulatory frameworks that exist within many jurisdictions? @anneknock

 

 

 

 

Are governments just polishing the chrome on the 1965 vehicle, when we need to design a new hybrid model?

Posted on by
Reply

Over the past few years ‘education’ in the media followed politicians announcing large-scale projects.

The Australian Government’s 2009 GFC stimulus package, ‘Building the Education Revolution’, was more of a building program and the 2007 ‘Digital Education Revolution’ (Year 9 1:1 laptop program) was an election promise that seemed to misunderstand the future technology needs for schools and students.

In my opinion, neither of these programs thought deeply about the future and preparing young people. This week in my state, due to funding announcements, schools, education and teachers are, once again, hot topics.

In the minds of politicians it seems that despite everything happening in the world around us, a veil of nostalgia covers the eyes of our policy-makers, they see school education as it was and this then reinforces how it should be.

As result, when it comes to the public debate, the discourse doesn’t seems to be generated by ideas around what do our kids really need to succeed into their future, but about to PISA rankings and funding models. It’s the cart before the horse.

PISA rankings – Much of what we read from the US about the testing regime and its inherent problems stemmed from a noble-sounding policy – No Child Left Behind. Sounds good, but how do you determine achievement of the goals? Teaching to the test, testing and more testing.

If Australia’s ability to compete in the markets in our region is dependent on our PISA ranking in reading, maths and sciences, we are destined to head down the same track.

There are a number of other essential skills that young people need. What is the measure for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial activity?

Funding models – At the core of equity in education is the provision of adequate funds to do the job. Unlike many other countries, non-government schools in Australia, representing faiths, ideologies and cultures, attract proportional government funds. These come from the both the state and federal coffers and are, at the time of writing, under significant review.

I am an advocate for equitable funding, but I believe we are coming at this from the wrong angle. It seems, whenever we talk about education reform in this country, the debate immediately moves to funding.

What if we identified the elements of a good education that a child today needs, determine what funding is required, and then carve up the pie.

Start with the child and design a new future.

Design-thinking doesn’t just tinker with the current model, provide add-ons or paint it a new colour. It looks at the problem from a fresh perspective, frames and reframe the burning question, arranged and rearranges the elements, develops models and then refines them.

At the moment the politicians and regulatory authorities are painting and polishing the old model. Our state minister for education asked in a news article over the weekend, ‘Why are kids listening to their iPod and not their teacher’ – the reality in 2012 is that maybe they are doing both.

Wholesale change is unsettling, but necessary. Many of us feel that we are actually designing a new hybrid vehicle for education, while our politicians are polishing the 1965 Kingswood/Edsel/Vauxhall. For example: Why are we still measuring the delivery of a high school courses by calculating the hours taught? This focusses on the teacher/teaching, rather than the learner/learning.

The only way to re-invent, rethink and renew is to come at the problem from a new perspective. We must envision what doesn’t yet exist and reframe the problem. If we keep polishing the chrome on the old vehicle we will increasingly alienate and disengage young people from that wonderful world of learning.

@anneknock