Archive

• Motivation and Mastery – The Problem with Grand Goals

  March 10, 2012 3:29 PM Comments Off on Motivation and Mastery – The Problem with Grand Goals

  Teacher engagement, which is the key to student engagement, is fueled by autonomy, mastery and purpose according to Daniel Pink’s review of the research on motivation.

  Fortunately, teaching offers abundant opportunity for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Clearly nurturing the development of young people is a significant purpose worthy of a teacher’s commitment and I believe most teachers feel that way about their work. Although some teachers in senior grades feel burdened by a bloated curriculum and boxed in by standardized testing, there is generally also a lot of autonomy. In fact, the “cellular” nature of teaching is so autonomous that it can tip over into an unhealthy isolationism, but at least there is lots of room for individuality. The fly in the ointment may be mastery—not because there is not a lot to master or because it cannot be mastered, but because there is so little consensus on what constitutes success. Is it high scores on tests within the disciplines, transferable thinking and communication skills, responsibility and citizenship, confidence and identity or all of these—and if these are all part of the grand goal then what takes priority?

  Opinions vary on how best to gauge student, and thus teacher, success—which leads to disagreement. This frustrates the quest for mastery and thus undermines motivation. Of course, there are many other reasons that teachers may feel frustrated, overwhelmed or under appreciated, but the shimmering mirage of a noble but nebulous vision is a significantly unsettling factor for at least two reasons. First, it can never be fully achieved (which is an invitation to guilt), and, second, both priority and success are continuously contested (which is an invitation to insecurity and defensiveness).

  In his classic 1975 book—Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study—Dan Lortie noted the challenge of finding valid, reliable and accepted indicators as a significant problem for the profession. He reported that a common response to this conundrum was for teachers to derive their pride and satisfaction primarily from strong personal relationships with their students. Many have subsequently decried this soft, indirect measure of success and urged teachers to use student achievement data as their touchstone instead. Few would disagree that hard data is important, but no hard measure(s) have yet been proposed that capture more than a thin slice of the goals of education. There is no comprehensive data set. Consequently, what is easy to measure is sometimes used. However, by mistaking precision for accuracy and availability for significance, one can settle on random bits of easily generated numerical data that diminish and distort the noble purposes of public education. All manner of misdirected energy and erroneous inference has ensued from this error.

  Finding valid and reliable measures that adequately reflect the complexity of human development is a worthy challenge that we must continue to pursue, but there is no solution on the horizon. Moreover, the most enduring and enabling outcomes for students seem to be precisely those that are the hardest to define and assess.

  So what might we do about this? Our aspirations for students are broad and inherently complex, but for developmental work we can choose to focus on a SMART subset (i.e., Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely). This makes it possible to collaborate with others, to have demonstrable success and thus to foster confidence and pride that motivate and energize. (One caveat must be noted however. The “Measurable” dimension of the familiar SMART acronym can narrow the range of objectives in ways that trivialize learning if it is taken to imply only test results and to exclude qualitative measures.)

  Focusing on specific aspects of the work at various times enables demonstrable success in developmental initiatives, which helps to sustain confidence and commitment in striving for a larger goal that can be discouragingly ethereal and elusive in its fullness.

  Previous Post in This Series: Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  Next Post in This Series: Motivation and Mastery – The Problem with Deferred Data

• What is the question?

  March 6, 2012 3:38 PM Comments Off on What is the question?

  Note: I wrote this a few nights ago but posted it this morning.

  It is Saturday night and it is my husband’s turn to be out with friends while I stay home with our baby. Life has changed and I’m contented (and yes, at times thrilled, overwhelmed, excited, terrified, and challenged) with this new reality. I have a glass of wine in one hand and a book I picked up at the library in the other: Hot Spots.

  About an hour ago I read a page about igniting questions, questions which cause an immediate combustion of creativity, curiosity, innovation, and commitment in a group of people. Despite me having read past that page my mind won’t leave it. I’m wondering about the question.

  We need a question here in BC, in my union (we are on strike), in my government (which is in the midst of legislating our contract). We need a question that will ignite those who care about education to work together in a flurry of mutually dependent innovation and collaboration. And we should all care about education.

  It is time to stop with the rhetoric. Rhetoric sells papers and wins elections but it does not serve education. It does not serve our students. It distracts from them – from that deeply personal, vulnerable, exciting and complex state of learning.

  Today my husband and I took our little girl to the Vancouver Aquarium, introducing her to the most amazing variety of marine life. I saw her learn, as I see her learn everyday because everyday she does something or sees something for the first time.

  Today I also saw something for the first time. A small boy with Tourette’s syndrome and Autism hit another child; his mother apologized for him explaining his challenges. The other mother, in what I imagine was a blind protectionist rage, spat out, “What did you do to make your kid have Tourette’s and Autism?!”

  Such cruelty. Ignorance. Fierceness. And I wonder about this mother’s education, this mother’s challenges. For the other mother, I felt so sad, and – although I have no right to feel anything on her behalf – I felt angry. I wonder what kind of experience she lives. And I see a situation which could have been different had there been less ignorance, more learning. And I see this scene as a microcosm of the larger world and the potential for education of quality and equity to shape it. 

  When we talk about education we are talking about people’s children: the most precious, most amazing, most important people. There is too much at stake for us to be playing politics.

  I don’t know what question will ignite us to engage with one another in a mindset of collaboration and committed curiosity, but I sure hope we ask it soon.

• Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  March 3, 2012 10:58 PM Comments Off on Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  The necessary precursor to high levels of student achievement is deep engagement in learning, and the teacher’s own engagement is the key to achieving that. Curriculum counts and technology can help, but it is teachers who inspire students, and enthusiastically engaged teachers do that best. 

  But what engages teachers? Another way to ask that question is, What motivates them? Daniel Pink (and before him Alfie Kohn) has told us that although traditional motivation theory—the carrot and stick approach—is widely accepted as “common sense,” research has shown it to be ineffective except for straightforward tasks that require application of well-understood processes to well-defined problems. Well, that certainly doesn’t describe teaching, which is a complex task that requires creative insight. So much for merit pay and Fraser Institute report cards!

  So what does motivate teachers? Its the same thing that motivates everyone else according to Pink’s summary of the research—autonomy, mastery and purpose. Respect, fair treatment and adequate compensation are necessary but not sufficient. In addition, people want to have reasonable control over what they do, to do it well and to feel that it is meaningful because it contributes to a larger purpose. This creates a virtuous circle of increasing vocation, contribution and fulfillment.

  In the case of teachers,however, there is another powerful factor—the intimate ongoing relationship they have with their students. When that relationship is healthy and when students respond positively to the teacher, the motivation derived from it overwhelms all other factors. Physical facilities and learning resources may be poor, politicians may play football with the system, and the circumstances of students’ lives may be disheartening but if the teacher’s relationship with those students is strong the bond motivates like no other factor. This, of course, can be good or bad—an issue to which I will return in my next post—but the strong connection teachers feel with their students creates a highly reciprocal relationship in terms of motivation.

  But where does this begin? Is student engagement the chicken or the egg? In some ways it doesn’t matter because once the cycle of mutual motivation begins it is self-sustaining, and it is probably the case that it can begin with either the teacher or the student. However, while there is a mutuality in this relationship the teacher is the adult and has the most power and thus bears the primary responsibility for initiating and developing it in constructive ways that serve the school’s purposes.

  So, if the student outcomes that we seek begin with student engagement and teacher engagement is its necessary counterpart then a good place to focus our attention is on the best ways to engage teachers. That’s the key to student engagement—not the whole story, of course, but the key to animating learning and realizing the potential benefits of all the other factors that can contribute. Without it, those factors, as beneficial as they may be, won’t get the job done.

  Previous Post in This Series: Engagement, Learning, Achievement – That’s The Necessary Order of Things

  Next Post in This Series: Motivation and Mastery – The Problem With Grand Goals

  
  

• 21st Century Learning Leadership Forum

  February 28, 2012 9:16 PM Comments Off on 21st Century Learning Leadership Forum

  In this CEA-supported event, thought leaders from across the world met to discuss leadership and change in education.

• Can we put new wine into old skins?

  January 13, 2012 6:52 PM Comments Off on Can we put new wine into old skins?

  Well, if the level of response to my last entry is any indication, there is a significant level of passion, knowledge and commitment surrounding the current conversation about assessment and its role in the modern school. And it’s not that talking about assessment for learning, of learning and even assessment as learning is bad or even misguided. In fact, these are practices that could allow us to view and respond to students and the work that they do in enriched and more informed ways. They have the potential of focusing our vision on individual students, their needs across a variety of dimensions, and how the programs that we offer can better meet those needs.

  A more robust appreciation of and dedication to authentic assessment practices may lead to educational transformation. But, I would argue that this will not happen until we address the conditions that are necessary to allow the ideas and ideals of 21st century approaches to assessment and evaluation to take root and flourish. And this is where our discussion needs to move.

  Ancient wisdom warns that you can’t put new wine into old wineskins. If you try, chances are the skins are going to burst, and you’re going to lose both skin and wine. The most reasonable explanation is that old wine skins are dry and liable to crack, especially as the new wine continues to ferment.

  I think that we’re seeing evidence of this as we attempt to move our teachers, parents and administrators closer to implementing some beautifully crafted policy statements on assessment and evaluation. While the policy presents a rich new vision of the work of both students and educators, my fear is that our current school infrastructure is beginning to crack under the pressure; we stand to lose both the new vision and the integrity of our schools!

  So, practically speaking, what is holding educators back from fully embracing new approaches to assessment. What is holding us back from taking the time and space we need to make ongoing formative assessment part of our daily practice? What is holding us back from effectively separating the notions of assessment (gathering information about student learning) and evaluation (placing a reported value on the work that students do)?

  Ancient wisdom warns that you can’t put new wine into old wineskins. If you try, chances are the skins are going to burst, and you’re going to lose both skin and wine.

  I’m currently thinking of three aspects about the way we continue to “do school”. I passionately believe that if we were to re-examine our approach to these three things, we would create places and spaces that would allow us to more effectively integrate new approaches to our work.

  First, authentic assessment encourages to take a “longer” view of student progress. The current practice of moving students along a continuum based on a multitude of age-defined expectations calls into question our real commitment to the idea that student learning is a diverse and complex process. In order to make room for our new assessment policies, we need to challenge the assumption that if I am 10 years old, this is what I should know and be able to do…in March!

  A second aspect of school that needs to be seriously challenged–and this relates to the first–has to do with the way that we report student progress to parents and the rest of the system. The requirement to produce two or three time-bound reports has tradition on its side, but when that requirement also comes with the demand that a teacher will have covered a given percentage of the prescribed curriculum in time for each reporting period, the opportunity to “rest” with certain concepts and skills is removed. Both assessment and teaching practice lose their ability to respond if the “when” and “what” becoming defining principles.

  Finally, (!)  in order for us to truly embrace the vision of assessment “for” and “as” learning, we need to open up the learning spaces in our schools. Students and teachers need to have the elbow room to develop skills and explore content in many ways. The practice of dividing curriculum into compartments, especially at very young ages, fights against the integrative underpinnings of our new assessment approaches. The more we can create learning environments that enable conceptual connection and imaginative approaches to making those connections, the easier it will be to bring our desired assessment vision to life!

  We’re at an important point in terms of both policy and practice in public schooling. It’s fine to demand that educators begin to explore and integrate new ways of looking at how student work can allow us to do so much more than just assigning a mark. Unless we’re willing to take a look at the structures that enable these these ideas to ferment and mature, then there is a huge chance that we might lose the vision and the energy that has gone into this new way of thinking. Let’s make sure that our new wine is going into new, stronger wineskins. The future of the vintage AND the vessel are at stake!

• Spacing, Testing, and Feedback: Helping Students Overcome Forgetting

  January 5, 2012 9:12 PM Comments Off on Spacing, Testing, and Feedback: Helping Students Overcome Forgetting

  “I forgot.” 

  “I think we learned it last year, but …”

  As educators, how many times have we heard these excuses? Students forget a lot of what they’ve learned. That’s a fact.

  The phenomenon of forgetting – and how to prevent it – has been a hot research topic in psychology for over 100 years. A study from the 1920s demonstrated that two thirds of knowledge successfully remembered by students at the end of a course is forgotten just eight weeks later.[1]Most knowledge does not even last until a final exam; we forget up to 60 percent of learned information just an hour after learning takes place.[2] Furthermore, if the information being learned is counterintuitive – such as the fact that the wood on the back of a violin is the primary source of sound, rather than the strings – only 10 percent of that counterintuitive information is retained a mere 15 minutes after learning.[3]

  For many courses, especially those that are cumulative in nature like math and science, forgetting old content makes teaching new content difficult. These courses involve increasingly abstract skills and require students to have a solid knowledge base in order to be successful in later grades. Students really do have to master the multiplication table and the periodic table at an early age in order to move on to more complex problem solving in algebra and chemistry courses.

  To compensate for high rates of forgetting from grade to grade, teachers spend valuable class time re-teaching foundational material that likely was mastered years before but then forgotten.

  Spaced Learning

  So how can students’ forgetting be reduced? The spacing effect – a promising strategy from the field of cognitive psychology – might hold some of the answers.[4] Research has demonstrated that information is remembered two to three times better if study sessions are spaced in time rather than massed together. For example, learning a unit of classroom material in two 30-minute sessions, where the unit is learned and then reviewed a few days later, will result in greater retention of the material than overlearning the same unit in a single one-hour session. Notably, both scenarios use the same amount of classroom time, and there is no change in the total amount of curriculum content provided to students.

  Successfully implementing the spacing technique in a classroom requires an understanding of why it works. While there is no unified spacing theory yet, one account explains this effect in the following way: When our brain encodes information, it associates the information being learned with recently studied material and other contextual cues present in the learning environment (e.g., the instructor’s tone while lecturing, chalk colour, etc.).[5] If the same material is presented twice and those presentations are too close together (crammed), the second presentation is likely to have (a) the same contextual cues associated with it and (b) might not even get the attention it deserves, instead being deemed repetitive and boring.[6] Thus, when two study sessions are crammed together, time spent learning the second presentation might not be used to its full potential.

  In a spaced learning approach, however, students learn a set of material on two or more distinct occasions, thereby gaining additional mental routes/memory traces by which to access that information. The more memory traces the brain has leading to particular information, the easier it is to recall that information at a later time. Furthermore, it is desirable to present information in a way that ties current material with students’ prior knowledge – that is, by way of well-established mental routes. Similarly, it is desirable to present concepts in a slightly different manner at each learning occasion to encourage generation of additional mental routes. Presenting material in a different manner and on different occasions will not only strengthen the memory trace, it will also create connections with other pertinent information, thereby deepening the understanding of a concept.

  Presenting material in a different manner and on different occasions will not only strengthen the memory trace, it will also create connections with other pertinent information, thereby deepening the understanding of a concept.

  For instance, if students are taught a simple fact – light travels at approximately 300 million meters/second – they might find it hard to imagine just how fast that is or to remember this information as a stand-alone fact. But by presenting that information again, in a different manner, in a different context – for example, suggesting that if traveling at the speed of light, one could travel around the Earth seven times in just one second – the fact might become more memorable and also provide an alternative means of retrieving that information when needed. In other words, by connecting the speed of light information to previously learned material on the circumference of the Earth, students have a greater chance of retrieving the speed of light information and developing a deeper understanding of the material in a structure where new and old material are now integrated.

  A question that logically follows is: How much time should there be between learning episodes? Again, we can look at why spacing works. Another spacing theory postulates that the initial learning of the material is often superficial, based on simple features of the material that are slippery and difficult to maintain at one’s grasp. When presented with material a second time, the brain attempts to reconstruct the initial learning environment. The longer the delay between first and second learning episode, the more difficult and elaborate is the reconstruction process, and thus the more strongly remembered is the material that is being relearned.[7] The ideal delay between learning episodes is long enough to make relearning difficult, but not so long that the material has been forgotten. Our research suggests that for simple fact learning, delays of a week to a month between learning episodes are about right to reach an almost-forgotten state and thus maximally promote long-term retention;[8] however, this recommendation should be adjusted based on experience with the particular body of students and the difficulty of the material. Complex and difficult material might benefit from a somewhat shorter spacing interval.

  Spacing can be incorporated into curriculum in a number of ways, such as introducing cumulative tests and providing delayed homework assignments. For example, in an English class, students could learn the rules of punctuation for commas one week and apostrophes and semicolons in the following weeks. A homework assignment or test that asks students to find mistakes in a passage that incorporates all three types of punctuation will reinforce the later-learned rules, while also spacing out the earlier rules. Each time material is revisited, the student has an opportunity to add a new memory trace, making the material more memorable and more likely to be recalled in the future. Thus, repeated, cumulative tests and homework assignments are better learning tools than a single, discrete midterm or final exam. 

  Consistent weekly assignments and/or tests allow for continuous spaced review of already-learned topics. Depending on curriculum constraints, spacing can be introduced within a semester, within a week, or even within a single class. Even introducing a topic at the beginning of a class, and re-introducing it again at the end, will help students forget less. The more often a concept is reviewed, and the more this review is spaced over time, the better chance the concept has of being retained in later grades.

  The Testing Effect

  The testing effect is another research-based teaching strategy that is often used in conjunction with spacing to minimize students’ forgetting. Studies on the testing effect show that testing students on classroom material is a much more effective strategy than having students re-read or even be re-taught the same information. Actively recalling information from memory is a harder task than simply re-reading or listening to the information again. This forceful retrieval process aids in strengthening the memory trace, leading to deeper, more meaningful encoding. For instance, giving students a short quiz at the end of the class, on the topic learned during the class, will help students remember the information better than simply re-teaching the same topic. 

  Actively recalling information from memory is a harder task than simply re-reading or listening to the information again. This forceful retrieval process aids in strengthening the memory trace, leading to deeper, more meaningful encoding.

  In terms of specific testing techniques, it has been shown that short-answer tests lead to higher retention than multiple-choice tests.[9] Short-answer tests require students to recall rather than recognize a correct answer. In other words, students are forced to engage in a harder exercise that consequently will lead to strengthening of the memory trace for that particular information. Short-answer testing does not necessarily lead to additional grading; it can be done in an informal manner, through interactive in-class games, such as completing a crossword puzzle as a class at the end of the lesson or playing a trivia-type game. (For an easy way to compile crosswords, try free online puzzle makers).

  When short on time, even a brief thought paper at the end of the class answering the question “What are the three most important things you’ve learned during today’s class?” can aid retention, by providing spaced retrieval practice and encouraging formation of connections between the entirety of the material from that day’s class. To reduce teacher workload (these might add up!), thought papers could be marked for completion only and count for a small portion of the grade. We have data that suggests that evaluating tests for completion rather than correctness takes the stress out of the test situation and leads to better experience with the course, at least in university students. 

  Feedback Techniques

  Feedback completes our trifecta of techniques that reduce forgetting, alongside spacing and testing. Providing feedback after an incorrect response increases students’ performance during the learning session and leads to a significant increase in long-term retention.[10]After all, an incorrect answer left uncorrected will never be properly learned.

  But does it matter when students are provided with feedback? The optimal timing varies depending on whether a new concept was successfully learned at the initial learning session (e.g., during a class lecture). A student who masters a concept at initial learning will benefit most from delayed feedback since delayed feedback is a form of spaced re-learning. For instance, if the results of a pop-quiz given at the end of class showed that students understood the material well, it will be better to return those quizzes to students later rather than sooner. When students receive marked quizzes, let’s say a week later, it will force them to return to the previously learned material, thus reaping the benefits of spaced review. In contrast, if students struggle with a concept during initial learning, they will benefit more if feedback is provided immediately. In this way, misunderstanding of the concept is fixed right away, before it has a chance of solidifying and turning into an enduring memory. 

  Putting it Together

  In an ideal world, with no external constraints or factors acting upon a classroom, where all students come on time and pay attention during class, and where teachers are paid for all the extra hours they put in, a lesson might look something like this:

  Mr. Smith is covering a unit on environmental geography. Today, his students will learn the process by which clouds form and the different types of clouds. Mr. Smith first introduces the concept of cloud formation. To keep his students’ attention, he speaks for not more than 15 minutes after which time students complete a short review activity related to cloud formation (e.g., Mr. Smith leads a two-minute Q&A session) to ensure his students have understood the concept. Next, Mr. Smith introduces different types of clouds followed by a short class cloud-categorization task. He completes the lesson of the day by reviewing, with the help of a short answer/fill-in-the blank/crossword quiz covering key concepts. A few items on the quiz are taken from a topic covered during the previous class. He finishes off the class by taking up the quiz. 

  We surely do not live in an ideal world, but we do live in a world of technology. Parts of this ideal scenario that cannot be completed in the classroom can be completed as short online homework assignments or self-check quizzes. For example, using an online survey engine for homework assignments that are marked for completion only is an easy way to incorporate spaced review sessions within any classroom. Summary tools of the survey engines also can act as a quick mid-point check for teachers to see which concepts are well-learned and which need more review in the classroom.

  Spacing, testing, and feedback are well-studied strategies in cognitive psychology that have received a great deal of empirical support over many decades. In fact, in a recent synthesis of over 800 studies investigating successful influences on student achievement, feedback and spacing ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, out of 49 teaching-related factors.[11] We believe that these strategies can considerably aid recall and help our students achieve greater academic success. We encourage you to provide your students with opportunities for spaced learning in your own classroom – expand mental routes, create new memory traces, and use all the environmental cues you can get your hands on to help your students forget forgetting! 

  How do you employ spacing, testing, and feedback techniques in your classroom? Let us know!

  For feedback and comments on this article, please e-mail ncepeda@yorku.ca

  EN BREF – Comment peut-on aider les élèves à mieux retenir? L’effet d’espacement – une stratégie prometteuse en psychologie cognitive – pourrait receler quelques réponses. Des recherches démontrent que l’information est de deux à trois fois mieux retenue si les séances d’études sont espacées dans le temps plutôt que massées ensemble. L’effet des tests est une autre stratégie d’enseignement fondée sur la recherche et souvent utilisée avec l’espacement pour atténuer les oublis. Il est plus difficile de se rappeler activement de l’information à partir de la mémoire que de la relire ou de la réécouter. Ce vigoureux processus de récupération renforce la trace mnésique, assurant un encodage plus profond et signifiant. Enfin, faire des commentaires opportuns après une mauvaise réponse rehausse le rendement des élèves pendant la séance d’apprentissage, augmentant considérablement la rétention à long terme.

  ---

  [1] Harold E. Jones, “Experimental Studies of College Teaching,” Archives of Psychology 68, no. 1 (1923): 1-71.

  [2] Hermann Ebbinghaus. Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (New York: Teacher’s College, Columbia University, 1885).

  [3] Carl E. Wieman and Katherine Perkins, “Transforming Physics Education,” Physics Today 58, no. 11 (2005): 36-41.

  [4] Nicholas J. Cepeda, Harold Pashler, Edward Vul, John T. Wixted, and Doug Rohrer, “Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis,” Psychological Bulletin 132, no. 3 (2006): 354-380.

  [5] Arthur M. Glenberg, “Component-Levels Theory of the Effects of Spacing of Repetitions on Recall and Recognition,” Memory & Cognition 7, no. 2 (1979): 95-112.

  [6] Frank N. Dempster, “The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research,” American Psychologist 43, no. 8 (1988): 627-634.

  [7] Samuel J. Thios, and Paul R. D’Agostino, “Effects of Repetition as a Function of Study-Phase Retrieval,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 15, no. 5 (1976): 529-536.

  [8] Nicholas J. Cepeda, Edward Vul, Doug Rohrer, John T. Wixted, and Harold Pashler, “Spacing Effects in Learning: A Temporal Ridgeline of Optimal Retention,” Psychological Science 19, no. 11 (2008): 1095-1102.

  [9] Andrew C. Butler, and Henry L. Roediger III, “Testing Improves Long-Term Retention in a Simulated Classroom Setting,” European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 19, no. 4 (2007): 514-527.

  [10] Harold Pashler, Nicholas J. Cepeda, John T. Wixted, and Doug Rohrer, “When Does Feedback Facilitate Learning of Words?,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31, no. 1 (2005): 3-8.

  [11] John A. C. Hattie. Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (New York: Routledge, 2009).

• Is the Sky the Limit to Educational Improvement?

  5:23 PM Comments Off on Is the Sky the Limit to Educational Improvement?

  The world is rapidly becoming a different place, and the challenges to individuals and societies imposed by globalization and modernization are widely acknowledged. Increasingly diverse and interconnected populations, rapid technological change in the workplace and in everyday life, and the instantaneous availability of vast amounts of information represent but a few of these new demands. In this globalized world, individuals and countries that invest heavily in education benefit socially and economically from that choice, and increasingly so. Among the 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries with the largest expansion of college education over the last decades, most still see rising earnings differentials for college graduates, suggesting that an increase in knowledge workers does not lead to a decrease in their pay as is the case for low-skilled workers.

  The other player in the globalization process is technological development, but this too depends on education, not just because tomorrow’s knowledge workers and innovators require high levels of education, but also because a highly-educated workforce is a pre-requisite for adopting and absorbing new technologies and increasing productivity. But education reaches well beyond the economic dimensions; it is the key to enable individuals to live in, and contribute to, a multi-faceted and sustainable world as active and responsible citizens and to appreciate and build on different values, beliefs, and cultures.

  In a purely quantitative sense, education has done rather well. With three exceptions, OECD countries have seen rapidly rising numbers of better qualified people, with an average increase of 40 percent in college graduation rates over the last decade. But in a fast-changing world, producing more of the same education will not suffice to address the challenges of the future.

  Changing Demands on Education Systems

  A generation ago, teachers could expect that what they taught would last for their students’ lifetime. Today, schools need to prepare students for more rapid economic and social change than ever before, for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve problems that we don’t yet know will arise. Education also has a key role to play to foster sustainable values.

  The dilemma for educators is that routine cognitive skills, the skills that are easiest to teach and easiest to test, are also the skills that are easiest to digitize, automate, and outsource. Educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge in novel situations.

  Take mathematics as an example. Traditionally mathematics is often taught in an abstract world, in ways that are removed from authentic contexts – for example, students are taught the techniques of arithmetic, then given lots of arithmetic computations to complete; or they are shown how to solve particular types of equations, then given lots of similar equations to solve. But to succeed today, students need to have an understanding of the fundamental concepts of mathematics, they need to be able to translate a new situation or problem they face into a form that exposes the relevance of mathematics, to make the problem amenable to mathematical treatment, to identify and use the relevant mathematical knowledge to solve the problem, and then to evaluate the solution in the original problem context.

  Or take literacy as another example. In the past, literacy was mainly about learning to read, a set of technical skills that individuals would acquire once for a lifetime in order to process an established body of coded knowledge. Today, literacy is about reading for learning, the capacity and motivation to identify, understand, interpret, create, and communicate knowledge, using written materials associated with varying situations in continuously changing contexts. In the past, it was sufficient to direct students to an encyclopedia to find the answer to a question, and they could generally rely on what they found to be true. Today, literacy is about managing non-linear information structures, building one’s own mental representation of information as one finds one’s own way through hypertext on the Internet, about dealing with ambiguity, interpreting and resolving conflicting pieces of information.

  Similarly, conventional approach of schools to problems was breaking them down into manageable bits and pieces, and then teaching students the techniques to solve them. But today individuals create value by synthesizing the disparate bits. This is about curiosity, open-mindedness, and making connections between ideas that previously seemed unrelated – which requires being familiar with and receptive to knowledge in other fields than our own.

  The world is also no longer divided into specialists and generalist. What counts are the “versatilists” who are able to apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences.

  The world is also no longer divided into specialists and generalist. What counts are the “versatilists” who are able to apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles. They are capable of not only of constantly adapting but also of constantly learning and growing, of positioning themselves and repositioning themselves in a fast changing world.

  Last but not least, in today’s schools, students typically learn individually, and at the end of the school year, schools certify their individual achievements. But the more interdependent the world becomes, the more important is the capacity of individuals to collaborate and orchestrate. In the flat world, everything that is our proprietary knowledge today will be a commodity available to everyone else tomorrow. As Thomas Friedman puts it, there is a shift from a world of stocks – with knowledge that is stacked up somewhere depreciating rapidly in value – to a world in which the enriching power of communication and collaborative flows is increasing.

  These kinds of competencies are the focus of OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and, since first results emerged in 2001, Canadian 15-year-olds have fared well against their counterparts internationally. At the same time, outcomes in Canada have remained mainly flat since 2001, while other countries have continued to raise quality and equity in learning outcomes. It is therefore important for Canada to look ahead.

  Responding to the Challenges

   

  Performance on international comparisons cannot be tied to money alone. Spending per student accounts for less than a quarter of the observed performance variation across countries on PISA. In contrast, the kind of spending choices countries make have far greater significance, with most of the high-performing nations now prioritising the quality of teachers over the size of classes.

  Looking beyond financial resources, PISA suggests that schools and countries where students work in a climate characterised by high performance expectations and the readiness to invest effort, good teacher-student relations, and high teacher morale tend to achieve better results. Many countries have pursued a shift in public and governmental concern away from the mere control over the resources and content of education towards a focus on outcomes. This has driven efforts to articulate the expectations that societies have in relation to learning outcomes and to translate these expectations into educational goals and standards. Ambitious educational standards have influenced many of the top performing education systems in important ways, helping them to establish rigorous, focused, and coherent content at all grade levels; reduce overlap in curricula across grades; reduce variation in implemented curricula across classrooms; facilitate co-ordination of various policy drivers ranging from curricula to teacher training; and reduce inequity in curricula across socio-economic groups.

  Coupled with this trend have been efforts to devolve responsibility to the frontline, enabling schools to become the drivers of educational improvement. In Finland strategic thinking and planning now takes place at every level of the system. Every school discusses what the national vision along with desired standards might mean for them, and every decision is made at the level of those most able to implement it in practice.

  In Finland every school discusses what the national vision along with desired standards might mean for them, and every decision is made at the level of those most able to implement it in practice.

  Second, many of the high performing systems also construct effective interventions at the level of the school, providing schools that do not yet succeed with effective support systems. Some countries go even further and intervene at the level of the individual student, developing processes and structures within the school that are able to identify whenever a student is starting to fall behind, and intervening to improve that student’s performance. And importantly, such personalization in these countries is in terms of flexible learning pathways through the education system rather than in terms of individualised goals or institutional tracking, which PISA shows to lower performance expectations for students and to provide easy ways out for teachers and schools to defer problems rather than solving them. Intervention and support do not mean applying pre-packaged interventions in mechanical sequence; instead, they are about diagnosing problems and tailoring solutions accordingly.

  Third, many high performing systems share a commitment to professionalized teaching in ways that imply that teachers are on a par with other professions in terms of diagnosis, the application of evidence-based practices, and professional pride. They pay great attention to how the pool is established from which they recruit their teachers; how they recruit; how they select their staff; the kind of initial training their recruits get before they present themselves for employment; how they mentor new recruits and induct them into their service; what kind of continuing training they get; how their compensation is structured; how they reward their best performers and how they improve the performance of those who are struggling; and how they provide opportunities for the best performers to acquire more status and responsibility.

  External accountability systems are an essential part of this, but they are not enough. Among OECD countries, we find countless tests and reforms that have resulted in giving schools more money or taking money away from them, developing greater prescription on school standards or less prescription, making classes larger or smaller, often without measurable effects.

  Instead, devolved decision-making needs to go hand in hand with intelligent accountability, and what this means is the move beyond approaches to external accountability towards building capacity and confidence for professional accountability in ways that encourage networks of schools to stimulate and spread innovation as well as collaborate to provide curriculum diversity, extended services, and professional support. Success with this will require multi-layered assessment systems that coherently extend from students, to schools, to regions and nations, and which do not operate in a vacuum but are part of a comprehensive set of instruments that extend to instructional material as well as to teacher training.

  Such assessments recognize that successful learning is as much about the process as it is about facts and figures, and they do not just produce school marks but try to provide a window into students’ understandings and the conceptual strategies a student uses to solve a problem, with dynamic task contexts in which prior actions may stimulate unpredictable reactions that in turn influence subsequent strategies and options. They do not take learning time away from students, but try to enhance the learning of students, of teachers, of school administrators and policymakers, through building frameworks for lateral accountability. That means generating information that can be acted upon and that provides productive and usable feedback for all intended users, so that teachers understand what the assessment reveals about students’ thinking, and school administrators and policymakers obtain the information they need to create better opportunities for student learning.

  Conclusion

  In the past, when economies only needed a small slice of well-educated workers, it was sufficient – and perhaps efficient – for governments to invest a large sum into a small elite to lead the country. But the social and economic cost of low educational performance has risen very substantially, and PISA shows that the best performing education systems now get all young people to leave school with strong foundation skills.

  When one could still assume that what is learned in school will last for a lifetime, teaching content and routine cognitive skills were at the centre of education. Today, where individuals can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitized or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, education systems need to enable people to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers can’t take over easily.

  That requires a very different calibre of teachers. When teaching was about explaining prefabricated content, school systems could tolerate low teacher quality. And when teacher quality was low, governments tended to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they want it done, using prescriptive methods of administrative control and accountability. What we see in the most advanced systems now is that making teaching a profession of high-level knowledge workers, not higher salaries, is what makes teaching so attractive in countries as different as Finland, Japan, or Singapore.

  People who see themselves as candidates for the professions are not attracted by schools organized like an assembly line, with teachers working as interchangeable widgets. That is why international comparisons show a very different work organization in high performing systems, with the status, professional autonomy, and the high-quality education that go with professional work, with effective systems of teacher evaluation, and with differentiated career paths for teachers.

  This is why high performing education systems tend to create a “knowledge rich” education system, in which teachers and school principals act as partners and have the authority to act, the necessary information to do so, and access to effective support systems to assist them in implementing change. What distinguishes the top-performer Finland is that it places the emphasis on building various ways in which networks of schools stimulate and spread innovation as well as collaborate to provide curriculum diversity, extended services, and professional support. It fosters strong approaches to leadership and a variety of system leadership roles that help to reduce between-school variation through system-wide networking and to build lateral accountability. It has moved from “hit and miss” policies to establishing universal high standards; from uniformity to embracing diversity; from a focus on provision to a focus on outcomes; from managing inputs and a bureaucratic approach to education towards devolving responsibilities and enabling outcomes; and from talking about equity to delivering equity. It is a system where schools no longer receive prefabricated wisdom but take initiatives on the basis of data and best practice.

  An investment in improvement will be worth it. A study carried out by the OECD in collaboration with Stanford University suggests that a modest goal of having Canada boost its average PISA scores by 25 points over the next 20 years – far less than the most rapidly improving education systems in the OECD achieved between 2000 and 2009 – could imply a gain of over five trillion Canadian dollars for the Canadian economy over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010.

  Addressing the challenges will become ever more important as the world’s best education systems – not simply improvement by national standards – increasingly become the yardstick to success. The world has become indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving to frailty, and ignorant to custom or practice. Success will go to those individuals and nations that are swift to adapt, slow to complain, and open to change. The task for educators and policymakers is to ensure that countries rise to this challenge.

  EN BREF – Les systèmes éducatifs contemporains doivent permettre aux gens de devenir des apprenants à vie, de gérer des modes complexes de réflexion et de maîtriser des façons complexes de travailler que les ordinateurs ne peuvent aisément prendre en charge. La tâche des éducateurs et des responsables de politiques consiste à s’assurer que les pays relèvent ce défi. Les systèmes d’éducation à haute performance comme ceux de la Finlande et de Singapour tendent à être « riches en connaissances ». Le personnel enseignant et les directions d’école y ont l’autorité et l’information nécessaire pour agir et ont accès à des systèmes efficaces de soutien qui les aident à apporter des changements. Il vaut la peine d’investir dans l’amélioration. D’après une étude menée par l’OCDE et l’Université Stanford, si le Canada réussit à rehausser la note moyenne au PISA de 25 points sur les 20 prochaines années, l’économie canadienne progresserait de plus de cinq billions de dollars pendant la vie de la génération née en 2010.

• Engagement, Learning, Achievement – That’s the Necessary Order of Things

  January 4, 2012 9:07 PM Comments Off on Engagement, Learning, Achievement – That’s the Necessary Order of Things

  I believe it is commonly understood that companies that focus on immediate profitability usually fade in the long term while those that focus on quality products and services generally flourish. Is it so hard, then, to understand that schools that focus on test scores are missing the boat? (And, of course, there is the matter of customer service – but that’s another blog.)

  Academic outcomes are only surrogate indicators for the ability to learn, which is the primary goal. They have some value in and of themselves, of course, but in a dynamic world where one can never know everything and knowledge is constantly evolving, it is the ability learn that really counts. I can’t remember who it was that said being educated in not a matter of arriving at a destination but of travelling with different eyes, but s/he was right.

  Therefore, we should focus our attention on student learning and let the achievement take care of itself. I suppose that’s just another way of saying, “don’t teach to the test,” which means we need to go further upstream in the educational enterprise in order to achieve success – and that brings us to engagement, the actual headwaters that should concern us. Without engagement, learning suffers and achievement drops.

  Does that mean that once engagement is achieved, learning follows naturally and achievement is assured? To a significant degree I think it does, and thus it is achieving engagement that should be our primary concern when thinking about everything from a lesson plan to the structure of a school system. (I’m talking about student engagement here but, of course, that is unlikely without teacher engagement so that’s yet another blog for another day.)

  However, this Little Bo Peep approach  (leave them alone and they will come home wagging achievement behind them) has its limitations. Passionately engaged students won’t necessarily become competent lifelong learners with a strong foundation of background knowledge and a broad repertoire of skills. Some scaffolding is required to ensure the foundations that will enable them to become independently capable. Students also need some direct instruction so that they master a necessary core of understandings and skills – the Protective Shepherd element, if you like – before they are given increased choice and responsibility.

  Notwithstanding this important caveat, a great deal of good could be done by shifting a significant part of our energy and attention from measuring achievement to stimulating engagement. At the very least it opens up a field of important generative questions that could help to reconsider the yin and yang of teacher-led and student-led action in schools.

  Next Post in This Series: Teacher Engagement is the Key to Student Engagement

  Afterthought – I’m sorry if the suggestion that students are like sheep put you off. Pigs are more intelligent but that get’s dicey too, doesn’t it. Metaphors have so much baggage!

• Is our focus on assessment taking away from our children’s education?

  January 2, 2012 5:43 PM Comments Off on Is our focus on assessment taking away from our children’s education?

  It has become clear to me that we’re spending way too much time focusing on assessment and evaluation. In fact, conversations about data driven decision-making, authentic assessment practices, design-down planning and testing protocols have now worked their way into the everyday vernacular of teachers and students, and have become such a strong plot line in the narrative of modern-day schooling, to the point where I fear that the very ideas and practices that are supposed to make our children’s education richer and more meaningful are actually having the opposite effect.
  (more…)

• Come and sit beside me and I’ll tell you what I think!

  December 22, 2011 10:24 AM Comments Off on Come and sit beside me and I’ll tell you what I think!

  My two year and half year old son seems to be innately attuned to the degree to which I am fully present to him. Whether it is early in the morning while I’m making breakfast for the family, or later in the day when dinner prep is in full swing, if Liam senses that I’m too wrapped up in what I’m doing, he will invite me to come and sit beside him. “Come and see what I’m doing, Daddy” is a favourite line, emphasized by his little hand pointing to an empty chair next to him. When I insist that I can see what he’s doing from where I am working, he will press the point further, “No Daddy, sit here.”

  When I first heard Liam invite me to sit beside him, I thought it was rather cute. When it became clear, however, that this was not a random suggestion, but a well-expressed desire, I started to think about it a little more deeply. In particular, I thought of what is entailed in the act of sitting beside someone. The relationship established by having someone next to you is one of interest and intimacy. (Think of your own growing up and your desire to sit next to a dinner guest instead of across the table from them.) Having someone sit right next to you ensures a type of shared perspective; they are able to look at the same object, for example, and see things in pretty much the same way as you see them.

  The word assessment is derived from the Latin verb, assidere, which means, quite literally, to sit beside. In Roman times, the assessor was connected with the taxation process and always sat beside the judge. Despite its ancient origins, it is a term that has taken over a good deal of our thinking about modern schooling. It is difficult to imagine opening up any classroom resource, attend any professional learning conference, or attend any faculty meeting without there being some mention of either assessment practice or policy.

  There has been a great deal written on the topic of assessment. There are books and articles on how to make it authentic, balanced and meaningful. There are workshops offered about the difference between assessment and evaluation. Software products have even been developed to make our job of assessing students more efficient. There are entire conferences devoted to assessment of and for learning. There are gurus!

  Over the next couple of weeks, I would like to dig into the assessment movement a little more and pose some questions that might allow us to explore it from some different angles. But, perhaps the best place to begin is with the original meaning of the word assessment and the idea of sitting beside our students. And this brings me back to my original story.

  If the purpose of assessment is to gather information about student understanding and proficiency, then it stands to reason that the closer we can get to the student in terms of their real understanding of an idea or concept, the better. My sense is, however, that many of our current approaches to assessment actually put a greater distance between student and teacher. In fact, it would seem that the higher the stakes on an assessment, the further we get from that idea of “sitting beside”.

  It is certainly impractical to sit down and chat with students every time we need to assess understanding, but I think that, as educators, we have to admit that a gap exists between what our students actually understand and are able to do, and what we actually end up reporting. This is not a new phenomenon, is it? In fact, it is likely as old as schools, themselves. Ironically, it is a phenomenon that has really only come to light as we have tried to develop more accurate, more equitable and more responsive methods of assessment and evaluation.

  So the questions I would like to leave you with are both simple and complex: What are the assessment strategies and tools that allow us to collect the most accurate picture of student understanding? Which methods of assessment actually widen the gap between student and teacher? Which come closest to allowing us to “sit beside” our students? Does any of this really matter when it comes to quality teaching and learning?

  I’ll offer some of my own thoughts in my next post, but I would love to get some initial reaction from you!

• Cdn EdWire – First Nations Schooling Inequities, PCAP Fallout, and Ongoing Bullying Dilemma

  December 15, 2011 10:06 PM Comments Off on Cdn EdWire – First Nations Schooling Inequities, PCAP Fallout, and Ongoing Bullying Dilemma

  FIRST NATIONS SCHOOLING INEQUITIES

  Just maybe, things will improve for schools on reserves – Postmedia

  Native students doing poorly at city high schools – Calgary Herald
  Nearly 13 per cent dropping out every year
  
  Need for native education upgrades too urgent to wait, former PM says – Globe and Mail

  Attawapiskat crisis offers a teaching moment for all – Western News

  Attawapiskat exposes urgent need for native education reforms – Globe and Mail

  PCAP RESULTS

  Boys at school: Is it the teaching or the tests? – Globe and Mail

  Reading skills fall in Quebec’s French schools – Montreal Gazette

  Shaken to the core…subjects – Winnipeg Free Press
  Manitoba kids lag behind nationally in math, science, reading

  Report card on schools reveals new struggles for boys – Globe and Mail

  Study puts Ontario Grade 8 students on top – Toronto Star

  Girls pulling ahead of boys in school, report shows – CBC
  Boys only outperformed girls in 1 of 4 math categories

  Assessment program hurts class time: union – Winnipeg Free Press

  Teachers want Alberta universities to revise handling of Grade 12 marks – Calgary Herald

  Boys’ poor results in reading feared to be spreading to math, science – Globe and Mail

  BULLYING

  The best defence against bullying – Globe and Mail

  Anti-bullying bill a front for ‘sex ed’ agenda, groups say – Toronto Star

   

  Young people need respect, protection for their sexual orientation – Montreal Gazette

  Students who bully could be expelled under new bill – Toronto Star

  Bullying’s rising toll of suicides has political leaders taking action – Globe and Mail

  INNOVATION

  ‘Right now, we build minds the same way we build cars’ – Globe and Mail

  Physicist’s crowd-sourcing philosophy gains traction in the classroom – Globe and Mail

  Technology: educational divider or equalizer? – Globe and Mail

  iPads are in, cursive is out (and other education trends) – Globe and Mail

  OTHER NEWS

  Social justice and diversity key subjects for new UBC program – Vancouver Sun
  Changes will better prepare teachers for work in classrooms: dean
  
  Should province set targets to boost kids’ love of reading? – Toronto Star

  Ontario kids can read well, but they don’t have to like it – Globe and Mail

  Only half of pupils like to read, survey finds – Toronto Star

  Alberta plans more consultations on Education Act – Edmonton Journal

  The face of education: is it too white? – Toronto Star

   

  Start school at 2, study urges – Toronto Star

  French will maintain favoured status in B.C. schools – Vancouver Sun

  Children should start school at two years old: study – Nat Post

  Quebec, PEI, Manitoba surge ahead on early childhood education– Globe and Mail

  Centre announced to integrate research, education for kids with autism – Canadian Press

  Schools put brakes on chocolate fundraisers – Globe and Mail

  INTERNATIONAL

  How NOT to reform American education – Big Think

  Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It? – NY Times

  Canada’s First Nations: a scandal where the victims are blamed – The Guardian
  The response of the Canadian government to the emergency in Attawapiskat shows why indigenous communities are in trouble

  EDUBLOG HIGHLIGHTS

  Are you a virus? – The Clever Sheep (Rodd Lucier)
  Recently, I had a chance to hear Ron Canuel from CEA speak about the need for change, and the barriers faced by change agents. In viewing the change agent as a virus, he observed that it is common for innovators to be attacked while followers prosper. Finding it easy to relate to Ron’s words, I’d like to extend the metaphor. Viruses often innovate in the relative safety of a closed door classroom. If you use attempt to use technology in unexpected ways, or if you use tools before they become the norm, you may be a virus. There are many innovators out there, but most, like viruses, are difficult to see. It is only through the sharing of stories, that they become visible…Read More

  The Canaries Are Choking – 21^st Century Learning Associates
  The results of the Canadian Education Association’s What Did You Do In School Today survey  should serve as a clarion call for action from educators, parents and governments. The CEA surveyed over 60,000 Canadian students to obtain their views on the level of their intellectual engagement in school. Less than half of all high school students surveyed reported that they felt intellectually engaged in school.

  These results underline the need to rethink public education in and for the 21st Century. The lack of intellectual engagement by students coupled with the calls from many economic and social leaders for public education to focus on imparting new 21st Century competencies in our youth using modern teaching methodologies, including the integration of information and communication technology with learning, should be heeded… Read More

   

   

• When is falling behind not inevitable, but unacceptable?

  December 8, 2011 6:01 PM Comments Off on When is falling behind not inevitable, but unacceptable?

  Canada’s educators can be proud of the achievement of Canadian kids in international achievement assessments like the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). Canadian students have consistently achieved top scores in reading, math and science literacy in PISA tests for a number of years. Such tests may not measure the different and important ways our kids are learning, such as how to be responsible citizens, talented artists and masters of dealing with life’s adversities. But tests like PISA capture some of the functional knowledge and skills that open, rather than limit, life opportunities. And when you think about the circumstances that support such strong academic achievement, tests like PISA, while seeming to capture only a limited picture of learning, also stand for much more.  To achieve high math, reading and science scores, kids need good teachers, well-conceived teaching and learning resources, secure homes, safe and supportive communities, encouragement, and the belief that education matters. Test scores that are internationally comparable, like PISA, tell us something about how well Canada is supporting its kids in these ways, relative to other countries; but not necessarily relative to what is possible.

  International tests of educational achievement like PISA report results as averages. Averages hide a great deal of important information. That’s why UNICEF went a step further and calculated the equality gap in educational achievement using PISA test scores[i]. In our study, The Children Left Behind, we developed a new way to measure the gap between the average child and the children struggling at the bottom of their societies (we don’t compare children at the bottom with those at the top). We applied this equality gap measure to 24 industrialized nations in three aspects of children’s lives – material well-being, physical health and educational achievement. We used PISA test scores to measure the equality gap in education, and found that not only do Canadian kids achieve top scores on average, but the gap between Canadian kids’ scores is also very small. Canada placed 3^rd among 24 countries in our measure of educational equality. Not only are our kids’ average scores in reading, math and science literacy comparatively very high; the degree of equality in academic achievement among students is also very high. The lower-achieving children in Canadian schools are less likely to fall a long way behind their peers than students in Austria, France or Belgium – where the educational equality gap is greatest. Our education system is doing relatively well for all kids, leaving fewer behind than in many other countries. It’s managing to do this without limiting the success of the highest achievers.

  But, counterintuitively, Canada landed a worrisome rating of 17^th out of 24 affluent countries in poverty or “material well-being” (using combined indicators of family income, housing living space and access to educational resources).  The equality gap in material well-being is very wide in Canada, far wider than average among industrialized nations. Whose company are we keeping at the bottom of the material equality scale? Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. The incongruity of this, considering our relative affluence and stable economic situation relative to these debt-threatened nations, is disconcerting.

  The equality gap in material well-being is very wide in Canada, far wider than average among industrialized nations. Whose company are we keeping at the bottom of the material equality scale? Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. The incongruity of this, considering our relative affluence and stable economic situation relative to these debt-threatened nations, is disconcerting.

  The strong link between a family’s socioeconomic circumstances and educational achievement is well established. That’s why it’s remarkable that Canada’s education system has produced relatively low educational inequality in contrast to other industrialized nations, where material equality is greater. Some of the dampening impacts of family poverty on a child’s educational achievement including living in insecure housing in unsafe neighbourhoods, frequent moves, poorer health and nutrition, lack of sleep and of parental time, and other disruptions and deprivations. Canada’s public education system does a comparatively good job at reducing the effects of poverty and disadvantage on academic performance.

  The different levels of inequality in educational outcomes among the countries we studied are not the result of any natural distribution of abilities, but of differences in policies which limit the extent to which some students fall behind. In Canada, it appears that education related policies weaken the link between socio-economic disadvantage and school achievement. But other policy choices are doing little to close the gap in material well-being, and that is no help to the potential of our education system. The most potent fact about children who fall significantly behind their peers in education is that they, on the whole, are from families at the bottom end of the socio-economic scale. Further actions to prevent children from falling behind in education must at some point face the question of socio-economic gradient.

  The growing income gap in Canada may soon begin to diminish the degree of equality our education system sustains. While children themselves pay the heaviest cost of inequality, society also pays through increased costs for remedial schooling, health services, welfare and the justice system, and the loss to economic competitiveness resulting from a large number of children failing to develop to their potential.

  The growing income gap in Canada may soon begin to diminish the degree of equality our education system sustains. While children themselves pay the heaviest cost of inequality, society also pays through increased costs for remedial schooling, health services, welfare and the justice system, and the loss to economic competitiveness resulting from a large number of children failing to develop to their potential. How much better could our education system work for more kids if the resources spent on compensating for poverty were freed up? More children at the bottom of the test scores would achieve higher, fewer would drop out, and there would be more resources to invest in all children in the system. Research by UNICEF and others suggest that societies that manage to reduce the material disparity gap also tend to have higher overall well-being: everyone benefits when inequality is kept low.

  Every level of government in Canada should establish a policy to ensure children have a first call on resources, to be prioritized when funds are invested and to be the last and least to face spending cuts. Broadly, maintaining Canada’s support for public education in an aging society where health costs are rising is necessary for the short- and long-term good of children and of our nation. In education policy, falling behind is significantly more likely when students from low socio-economic status attend schools in which the average socio-economic status is also low. Directing support and excellent teachers to these schools shows good results. Paying attention to the most vulnerable children with flexible approaches to education and additional supports is necessary. For example, a 2007 report by Toronto’s social planning council found a high and persistent level of homelessness among school children (3,000 per year live in homeless shelters in Toronto alone), but found that there are no government or school board policies to ensure the educational needs of these vulnerable children. The Government of Canada’s commitment to begin a new relationship with First Nations for children’s education is a welcome step.

  Whether in education, in health or in the level of family resources, some children will always fall behind the average. Canada is rich with experts who have insight on the measures that are needed across Canada and in specific communities to reduce the equity gaps for children in all aspects of their lives. For the rest of society, we have yet to decide: how far behind? Is there a point beyond which falling behind is not inevitable but unacceptable?

  Related Education Canada articles:

  • Bridging The North-South Divide in Teacher Education
  • African Journal: Schooling and Politics in Rural Kenyal

  ---

  [i] UNICEF’s Report Card 9: The children left behind, measures educational equity using the 2006 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reading, mathematics and science literacy scores. PISA administered reading, maths and science tests to representative samples of between 4,500 and 10,000 15-year-old students in each of 57 countries, including all of the countries featured in our report. The tests attempt to assess how well “education systems are preparing their students to become life-long learners and to play constructive roles as citizens in society.” More detailed information on the OECD 2006 PISA survey can be found at: www.oecd.org/pisa and in OECD (2007) PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, OECD, Paris.

• On Being Poor at School: Esoteric Hope?

  December 6, 2011 9:47 PM Comments Off on On Being Poor at School: Esoteric Hope?

  “First get off the streets, second get a job, third finish your education so you can get a career.  So it is like steps at a time.  It is like some people have those things already and they are lucky that they have those things already handed to them and they don’t have to start at the bottom and work their way up.  They don’t understand what that is like.  Starting at the bottom is…I am slowly getting there.  I’m not there, but I am slowly getting there”

  Max (pseudonym), a student who left school prior to graduation and is working to return

  Parents in the 1950’s were often heard quipping to sons and daughters:

  “Get a hair cut!” or “Get a real job!”

  Today our parental cries sound frantic and weighty:

  “Get an education!
  “Look at the cost of education!”
  “Watch our family income fall!”
  “Mind your growing debt!”
  “Keep working (at your less than adequate jobs)!”
  “Get more education! Try not to despair!, Fight like hell to get more education!”

  There is a larger social context to equity in education and to being poor at school these days and more and more young people are being pushed to the margins in it.  Yes, we have decades of evidence on the relationship between academic and life chances and living in a working poor or lower socio-economic status family.  Socio-economic gradients have been well mapped out in Canada and they are sticking with us.  But, it remains to be seen how growing income inequality in Canadian society will become further complicit and complicating in our embarrassing and dishonourable treatment of poor kids at school.  Are young people becoming the new underclass in Canada as the OECD suggests?  What is the experience of that marginalization?

  Socio-economic gradients have been well mapped out in Canada and they are sticking with us.  But, it remains to be seen how growing income inequality in Canadian society will become further complicit and complicating in our embarrassing and dishonourable treatment of poor kids at school.  Are young people becoming the new underclass in Canada as the OECD suggests?  What is the experience of that marginalization?

  We must continue to map out and assess these trends and their impacts on children and youth across the country, by region, by social class, and by cultural status.  But, we will not be able to tell how they matter for kids, families, and schools without making visible what it is like to be poor in school each day. What does being poor in school tell us about how these trends are made, how they reproduce inequity and how kids, families and educators are negotiating and fighting back?

  It is at the very time that liberal arts are under siege in public education that a humanities-infused conversation is urgently required. We need to take stock of the esoteric character of being a young person by way of infusing research and practice with a space for exploring experience.  To do this requires engagement with the humanities/arts more fully in our visual or storied research and diarize the rabid trends in inequity. Why does socioeconomic status fall off the practice and policy table of inclusion so readily when it is the most pervasive form of inequity?  How do those trends in inequity feel in the “daily hassles” of impoverished youth at school?   Will some hope, direction and awe arise from the mouths of shared esoteric experience…?
  

  I guess one of the things that I have become aware of is…the lives of quiet desperation that more of them lead, that we’re completely oblivious to. The single parent, no food, the abuse, the rape, the sexual assault, the issues with the justice system, the significant drug abuse that we’re, we miss as teachers.   But even last year [they were] in all the regular classes. And so most of them were written as you know, they didn’t do the work and they didn’t attend. Not, why were they disengaged?  And we never asked that… But now there’s still many of those kids within the school – And they survive and they – or they hide. Or they hide and they’re, they’re marginalized and they exist and they’re the ones I think who’ve had a negative…experience in grade school… 

  Jody (pseudonym), an educator

  Related Publications:

  Kate Tilleczek’s recent book Approaching Youth Studies:  Being, Becoming, Belonging with Oxford University Press addressed these issues and a forthcoming book Youth, education and marginality: Local and global expressions (WLU Press) gathers together young people, academics and educators to address equity in education through art and research.

  Related Education Canada articles:

  • Why Leave School? Ask Those Who Do
  • Marginalized Youth in Contemporary Educational Contexts: A Tranquil Invitation to a Rebellious Celebration
  • Including the Excluded: De-Marginalizing Immigrant/Refugee and Racialized Students

• Ways and Means

  3:44 PM Comments Off on Ways and Means

  In my last blog, I pontificated (don’t all bloggers pontificate?) that it is time to move beyond the school orthodoxy of successes/failures, winners/losers to a more benign atmosphere for learning. Alas, easy to say but very difficult to realize. The difficulty resides in the stubborn fact that public schooling reflects the values of the surrounding community where success, typically, is judged in terms of credentials, income and material display.

  A recent column by Jeffery Simpson in the Globe and Mail lays out some shocking details about income inequality in Canada. Though the problem is worse in the U.S., it is nevertheless severe in Canada. Nearly a third of Canadians are rated, according to Simpson, as “concerned” about income inequality, more concerned than they are about crime, immigration, environment and climate change.

  That large segment of Canadians upset about income inequality largely explains the Occupy Movement now fizzling before the harsh winds of winter. Yet there is no discernible political drift to radical political solutions such as confiscatory income tax on incomes over, say, $300,000. Most of us are satisfied with the free market system for determining the price of toothpaste and the salaries of the high-flyer executives who run the corporations. The market is neither good nor bad. It is the “unseen hand on the tiller”, say the stand-pat majority. But income inequality most assuredly goes to the heart of the equity-in-education issue, the issue that comes out the spout as unfairness.

  It is not fair that children of privilege can be readily moved to a private school or a special public school while underprivileged children cannot. It is not fair that children who are hungry or lacking dental care or skill with the language are doomed to do poorly in certain aspects of standardized testing. It is not fair that advantaged students receive higher scores on tests and exams just because of the circumstances of their birth. These unfair elements of the system are toxic in their effects on some children caught in the age-grade achievement orthodoxy. When unfairness at school is discussed at home over the supper table, usually in anger, the student will exaggerate it in thinking about his/her difficulties at school.

  Short of a socio-economic-political revolution, there is only a slim hope of a major change in the scene of inequality in education. But the inequity hydra can be strangled in lots of practical ways without any major political upheaval. The unfairness of universal standardized testing could easily be replaced by randomized testing only for system wide diagnostic purposes. The unfairness of invidious comparisons of schools based on universal test results could be resolved. The competition among teachers for official commendation based on test results could and should be ended.

  Short of a socio-economic-political revolution, there is only a slim hope of a major change in the scene of inequality in education. But the inequity hydra can be strangled in lots of practical ways without any major political upheaval. The unfairness of universal standardized testing could easily be replaced by randomized testing only for system wide diagnostic purposes. The unfairness of invidious comparisons of schools based on universal test results could be resolved. The competition among teachers for official commendation based on test results could and should be ended.

  The unfairness of assessing individual progress in school within the framework of a class of 30 kids moving lock step through the grades can be confronted, though with some difficulty. That is a structural feature, historic and therefore ingrained. But step-by-step modification is feasible. Individualized learning facilitated by the computer and the World Wide Web is already happening but needs lots more official support. Repealing compulsory attendance laws and mandatory textbook use would help. More than any of these, encouraging teachers to move up to a higher level of professional autonomy would kick-start learning for the 21st century in manifold ways, a style of learning that, one hopes, would bring greater equity in a world searching for peace and harmony.

• PCAP 2010 – Are we asking the right questions?

  December 5, 2011 6:31 PM Comments Off on PCAP 2010 – Are we asking the right questions?

  The Report on the 2010 Pan-Canadian Assessment of Mathematics, Science, and Reading (PCAP) landed on our staffroom table this week. The overall results were very good news, but as is usually the case when these system wide testing results are released, the media sifted through the mounds of data to focus the public’s attention on some bad news. This time around, it was, among other things, the growing performance gap between boys and girls, particularly in reading.

  CEA by no means takes the issue of increasing gender performance gaps lightly, but varying literacy rates and gender issues are hardly new in education, and the public needs to understand that there are many male students who are excelling in their studies and many girls who are not. In his Education Canada article, Failing Boys, Beyond Crisis, Moral Panic, and Limiting Stereotypes, University of Western Ontario’s Wayne Martino explains the dangers associated with constantly reinforcing and exaggerating gender differences.

  As typically happens with the media dissection of the PISA scores, negative headlines send some Ministries of Education searching for someone to blame, such as the case in Quebec with decreased reading scores and in Manitoba with overall lower scores.  But what about the often-heard comment by Math teachers that one of the biggest challenges they face is students having difficulty reading and understanding written problems – yet reading test scores in Quebec were down, but Quebec Math scores ranked amongst the top in Canada?

  As I have stated in the past, we don’t use singular measures or a “test” to diagnose a medical issue. When a person coughs, we don’t jump to the conclusion that the person has a serious lung disease. We insist on multiple tests to ensure a proper diagnosis. In education, however, one test does the trick and shows all the problems and weaknesses. It is long overdue that when it comes to diagnosing challenges, strengths, and weaknesses in education, we move away from the overly simplistic and incorrect “One test says it all” mindset. Parents, educators, and students deserve better than this.

  As Jodene Dunleavy articulated in her Education Canada article, Ranking Our Responses to PISA 2009 :

  “I’d like to put some of the blame for public reaction to PISA scores on the OECD, itself. It’s easy to feel intimidated by the volume of figures and explanations that flow from each assessment. But this alone cannot explain the overwhelming amount of attention paid to a single, league-style table ranking the 65 participating countries on combined reading, mathematic, and scientific literacy scores. Witnessing how results get taken up in the public domain, it is hard not to feel that the PISA country rankings have become the Olympics of the education world.”

  So around our water cooler, many questions about PCAP arose: Are we asking the right questions on these performance assessments of school systems?  PCAP, just like PISA, is measuring how well students are doing in math, reading, and science, but it doesn’t attempt to take approaches to learning, student engagement, and teaching environments into account in comparing provinces.

  It’s encouraging that there is considerable debate in Europe about the need to have PISA measure creativity, but what else should we be measuring? What about measuring student engagement? Equity? And a breakdown by subpopulation groups, not just boy and girls?

  We think more could and should be measured.  Do you think so?

• The Indian Act – Three Simples Pages Say it All!

  December 1, 2011 9:38 PM Comments Off on The Indian Act – Three Simples Pages Say it All!

  Three simple pages say it all!  That’s the length, in its entirety, of the sections in the Indian Act that govern education on reserves for First Nations. Contrast this to the over 150 pages of the provincially-controlled Public Schools Act and Education Administration Act in Manitoba. From this perspective alone, is it any wonder that the most pressing social crisis facing our nation today is the inequitable state of education between students in our First Nations communities and those in mainstream Canada?

  Where the Indian Act is silent, the Public Schools Act legislates critical issues such as minimum teaching days, board governance, and teacher certification. It also holds government accountable and gives parents guaranteed rights.  Even in its limited capacity, there are no such mechanisms in place for First Nations parents, thus rendering the Indian Act all but irrelevant.

  Compounding this problem is a lack of adequate funding for on-reserve schools that receive between $2,000 and $3,000 LESS per student than their provincial counterparts. In some cases, schools in remote communities suffer with $9,000 less per student.  The fall-out includes:

  • Higher pupil-teacher ratios;
  • Lower pay and less benefits for teachers;
  • Limited ability to keep up with curricular advances;
  • Lack of ICT advances, and;
  • Overcrowded schools.

  Is it any wonder that our students, our communities, and our country are suffering both socially and economically?  The truth is there’s a price to be paid – both socially and economically – if we all fail to address and correct these educational inequities.  Just look at on-reserve graduation rates, which are as low as 29% in some areas of Canada. It’s a statistic that would cause an uproar were it to happen in mainstream Canadian schools. 

  Is it any wonder that our students, our communities, and our country are suffering both socially and economically?  The truth is there’s a price to be paid – both socially and economically – if we all fail to address and correct these educational inequities.  Just look at on-reserve graduation rates, which are as low as 29% in some areas of Canada. It’s a statistic that would cause an uproar were it to happen in mainstream Canadian schools.  From a financial perspective, the Canadian Council on Learning estimates the 10-year cost of high school attrition on-reserve exceeds 1 billion dollars with an estimated cost to Canada of $4,750 per year for every student who drops out of high school.

  The first step in addressing educational inequities is to acknowledge that this is a Canadian issue, not just a First Nations issue.

  The first step in addressing educational inequities is to acknowledge that this is a Canadian issue, not just a First Nations issue.  Other steps for consideration include:

  • Encouraging First Nations Education Directors to become full members of provincial associations, as the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents has done.  This has had a lasting beneficial impact on capacity building (at the same time recognizing First Nations control of First Nations education).
  • Fostering relationships between First Nations people, school boards, and governments in order to build trust and encourage staff to tackle some of the most challenging issues.  If a Board is afraid to act based on fear of being labelled or of making mistakes, the poor outcomes of First Nations learners will continue.

  Now’s the time for action because, sadly, if we do not begin to deal with this problem, we will relegate generations of students to disadvantage, furthering the mess of residential schools and harming Canada’s economy.

  Related Education Canada article:

  • If Reindeer Could Fly: Dreams and Real Solutions for Aboriginal Children

• Restoring Our Schools: The Quest for Equity in the United States

  November 23, 2011 3:41 PM Comments Off on Restoring Our Schools: The Quest for Equity in the United States

  A visit to Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore finds fourth and fifth graders eagerly displaying the science projects they have designed and conducted in an “experience, investigate, and create” cycle that is repeated throughout the year. Students study plants, animals, and insects in the school’s eco-garden; they run their own recycling centre; they write and edit scripts for the Internet radio program they produce; and they use handheld computers to play games and create mathematical models. Teachers, meanwhile, engage in research sponsored by the government to evaluate and continually improve their teaching.

  Contrast the picture of this typical school in Singapore with the description of a California school, from a lawsuit filed recently on behalf of low-income students of colour in schools like it throughout the state:

  At Luther Burbank, students cannot take textbooks home for homework in any core subject because their teachers have enough textbooks for use in class only… One dead rodent has remained, decomposing, in a corner in the gymnasium since the beginning of the school year…. The school library is rarely open, has no librarian…the latest version of the encyclopedia in the library was published in approximately 1988…. Classrooms do not have computers…. The school no longer offers any art classes…. Eleven of the 35 teachers at Luther Burbank have not yet obtained full, non-emergency teaching credentials, and 17 of the 35 teachers only began teaching at Luther Burbank this school year.

  Certainly not all schools in the United States look like this, but what distinguishes high-achieving nations like Singapore from the United States is that the high quality of education in Singapore is replicated systemically throughout the entire nation. And Singapore is not alone. Canada and many nations in Asia and Europe are pouring resources into forward-looking systems that educate all their citizens to much higher levels—and the gap between the United States and these high-achieving nations is growing.

  Canada and many nations in Asia and Europe are pouring resources into forward-looking systems that educate all their citizens to much higher levels—and the gap between the United States and these high-achieving nations is growing.

  Inequality has an enormous influence on U.S. performance, far more than most nations. The impact of socio-economic factors on variance in U.S. student performance in Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 results is 16.8%—almost double of that in Canada. In Canada, the majority of students attend “mixed” schools, rather than highly advantaged or disadvantaged, and there is greater equity of access to resources within and across schools.

  For a brief period in the mid-1970s, when the United States worked to reduce poverty, desegregate schools, and enhance funding in poor districts, the United States saw achievement gaps close substantially. To regain lost ground, the United States must make strong investments in children’s welfare—adequate healthcare, housing and food security — so that children can come to school each day ready to learn, and level the playing field in schools.

  In education, the United States must roll back the theory of reform developed during the Regan years that focused on outcomes rather than inputs – that is, high-stakes testing without investing. Instead, investments must be made in high-quality preschool to close achievement gaps that already exist when children enter kindergarten; equitably funded schools that provide quality educators and learning materials; a system that ensures that teachers and leaders in every community are extremely well prepared and are supported to be effective on the job; standards, curricula, and assessments focused on 21st century learning goals; and schools organized for in-depth student and teacher learning and equipped to address children’s social needs.

  Achieving these conditions will require as much federal attention to opportunity-to-learn standards as to assessments of academic progress, and greater equalization of federal funding across states. It will require incentives for states to provide comparable funding to students across districts. Finally, an equitable and high-achieving system will need to address the supply of well-prepared educators—the most fundamental of all resources—by building an infrastructure that ensures high-quality preparation for all educators and ensures that well-trained teachers are available to all students in all communities.

  Related Education Canada articles:

  • Restoring Our Schools: The Quest for Equity in the United States
  • Achieving Equity Through Innovation: A Canada-U.S. Dialogue
  • Ethical Leadership in Public Education: Living an Ethic of Criticality

• Investing in human development

  November 22, 2011 8:31 PM Comments Off on Investing in human development

  It is odd that the mantra of ‘raising the bar and closing the gap’, is a policy imperative in Canada, yet claims made about overall improvement (raising the bar) are generally not accompanied by any assessment of whether we’re closing the gap. The important census work of the Toronto District School Board would suggest that we have not^[1]. The achievement hierarchy is the same as it was some forty years ago.
  (more…)

• The time is Now: Excellence and Equity for All

  3:43 PM Comments Off on The time is Now: Excellence and Equity for All

  In 2009, The Ontario Ministry of Education published its new strategy on equity, entitled: (more…)

• Equity: After the Poetry Comes the Prose

  12:23 AM Comments Off on Equity: After the Poetry Comes the Prose

  I think everyone is in favour of equity, right? But what does that mean? Rather than just wax eloquent about ideals perhaps we should talk about what inequity we will not tolerate. Specifically, what inequity in educational outcomes is unacceptable and what are we prepared to do to eliminate it?

  Only in Lake Wobegon are the children all above average, so there is no inherent inequity in differences in educational achievement. Some students simply do school better than others. That is an issue to be sure but its not the big issue. The bigger issues is systemic inequity. When a particular group of students (by gender, wealth, ethnicity etc.) consistently lag behind, something more than human diversity is at play – something inequitable in the school system, and perhaps in society as well. But even in these cases, there are always counter-examples of students who excel, which means that the inequity is more insidious than overt. This creates a plausible deniability to the inequity and makes it easy to blame the victim.

  If a student from a dysfunctional home that is captured in a cycle of abuse is poorly mannered at school, occasionally violent with other students and inattentive to his studies is that his fault or ours? If it is, at least in part, a social problem rather than merely an individual character flaw, then how far are we prepared to go to fix it? Of course, in this case the response would necessarily have to include elements beyond the school so perhaps that is too complex for starters.

  How about those students who just don’t do well in the standardized and passive, compliance-focussed environment of a school? One example would be students whom we have come to label with ADHD. For the most part, their difference becomes a dysfunction primarily because school requires behaviour of which they are less capable than other students. This leads to all sorts of problems, often including lower academic achievement. Is that their problem or ours?

  If we are committed to equity then we are committed to eliminating inequity, and that means be willing to change the way schools function and the way we behave in order to eliminate, or at least minimize, it. Equity does not result from equality. Treating everyone the same – no matter how kindly and encouraging that may be – perpetuates, and often exacerbates, inequity. Only when we are prepared to redistribute resources, including our own time and attention, to differentially address the characteristics and needs of any group of students who are not succeeding under current conditions will we be able to increase equity in student experience and achievement in schools.

   In issues of equity, if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem and excuses don’t change that.

IDEAS TO SUPPORT EDUCATORS : Subscribe to the EdCan e-Newsletter

Quality research, reports, and professional learning opportunities.

Subscribe with your information: Veuillez indiquer les informations suivantes :

Language Preference Langue de correspondance EnglishFrançais EnglishFrançais

Organization: Organisation : Public educational institution Établissement d'enseignement publique Private educational institution Établissement d'enseignement privé University Université College Cégep Ministries Ministères Federation or professional association Fédération ou association professionnel Union Syndicat Non-profit organization Organisation sans but lucratif Educational organization Organisation en éducation Other Autre I am interested inJe suis intéressé-e aux Research-Informed Tools and ResourcesOutils et ressources fondés sur la recherche Workplace Wellbeing StrategiesStratégies sur le bien-être au travail

CloseFermer

Leave this field empty if you're human: