Archive

• Technology in Education: Research Says!!

  March 24, 2011 7:35 PM Comments Off on Technology in Education: Research Says!!

  “Where’s the supportive research to demonstrate that technology increases student achievement?”

  “Why do you pursue providing a 1:1 laptop environment for your students and teachers when you get the same results without technology? Where’s the evidence that it works?”

  “Research in this field says that there is little to no positive impact on learning. So, why are you continuing the initiative?” 

  In 2003, when I was the Director General for the Eastern Townships School Board, my team had anticipated such queries and comments about our decision to provide a free, wireless Apple laptop computer to all students from Grades 3-11, as well as to all teachers. It was my first real introduction to the “techno-critiques”. In particular, media and policymakers raised the question of supportive research. At first, I was pleased by the implication that school and classroom practices were research- and evidence-based. But I knew that this was not the predominant reality in public education.

  In contrast to this reality, our team had done its homework and investigated research into technology in the classroom. A large amount of research existed in this field; however, almost all was focused on the impact of desktop computers and the infamous “school computer room”. Such research did not address our concerns, since the provision of technology in an anytime-anywhere, one-to-one (1:1) context was unique.

  Since then, research has begun to focus on 1:1 initiatives, as well as on the growing use of mobile devices, iPads, and other related products. The results have been mixed – but in my numerous discussions with credible educational researchers, one prevailing theme has emerged: it is almost impossible to isolate one specific approach or tool in a classroom and determine its effectiveness. So how do we know what we’re measuring? 20th century skills? 21st Century skills as defined by The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)? Changes in teaching practice with the use of technology? Or are we really measuring the effects of increased student motivation and an inquiry-based curriculum?

  In other words, the activities in a classroom represent a multitude of behaviours and interventions, including personal dynamics, classroom management and size, classroom ergonomics, students’ academic and socio-economic profile, etc. When technology is introduced into the classroom, it becomes one of the many classroom instruments within the grasp of educators and students, and credible researchers have indicated that isolating the impact of technology from the “human factor” in the classroom is a formidable challenge.

  In January 2010, The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment (JTLA) published “The End of Techno-Critique: The Naked Truth about 1:1 Initiatives and Educational Change.” I cite this research since it was the first time in my experience that researchers attempted to fully understand precisely what the real expectation was of technology use in the classroom. In a society that has become focused on accountability and results, technology used in a traditional manner or context will simply generate traditional results, and it could easily be argued that it has failed to live up to expectations. Larry Cuban best described this issue when he wrote that the use of technology was “oversold” and “underutilized”.[1]

  The JTLA article suggested that researchers are focusing on the trees rather than the forest. It reviewed a number of research studies on technology in the classroom, including a meta-analysis of previous research, and concluded that perhaps their greatest potential is “the creation of new-paradigm schools that are self organizing.” As this article describes, creating a change “dynamic” in the classroom, where students become increasingly engaged in their learning, participating in the design of teaching strategies and assessments, does generate the elusive increase in student achievement. Further research into how this change occurs needs to focus on the outcomes that best serve the needs of students and on how classrooms can be best designed to support this endeavour.

  Once again, citing the JTLA, “By missing the forest, techno-critics have diverted attention from the real problem of improving the totality of education for all students. So when a 1:1 initiative fails to deliver the much-hyped results, it is much simpler to start sawing on a tree than it is to cut down the forest and start replanting. But then, like so many problems in changing venerable institutions, it too often is easier simply to protect the status quo and blame the innovation or the innovator.”

  The children of our world are significantly engaged in the use of technology, especially outside the school. If education is meant to prepare these children for their world, use of technology must become the norm in our classrooms and schools.

  ---

  [1] Larry Cuban, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (Harvard Univeristy Press, 2001).

• Necessary Disruption (Part 3: Preserving Relationships As The Core Benefit)

  March 21, 2011 6:12 AM Comments Off on Necessary Disruption (Part 3: Preserving Relationships As The Core Benefit)

  Canadian schools have increased graduation rates over the past two decades at the same time that they have become more inclusive.  By international standards our public schools score very highly.  However, the world outside of school continues to change rapidly and fundamentally.  To maintain, and ideally increase, their effectiveness, schools need to keep pace, but teachers are, for the most part, working as hard and as smart as they can, and taxpayers, for the most part, seem disinclined to any increases.  Since there is no more to be had on either front, what we need is different.

  So what could change and, just as importantly, what is it that must not?  In considering this question one must focus on the core benefit that schools provide rather than the services they deliver.

  Let’s start with what is not the core benefit.  It is not providing content knowledge.  And it is not even developing technical skills such as writing, mathematics or scientific inquiry.  Ways to acquire knowledge and develop skills are now, or soon will be, freely available via the internet.  Of course one can argue that not all students have equal access to, or are equally able to benefit from, such instruction, but that is also true of traditional classroom practices.  Internet instruction is expanding rapidly and access is becoming ubiquitous, so at a minimum one can foresee large numbers of students obtaining a significant degree of their learning quite independently of schools in the near future.  Of course they still have to come to school to write the test and get their credentials, but that is easily changed and it may well happen if schools stand pat and let competing avenues and technologies for learning pass them by.

  What then is the core benefit that schools provide?  I believe this rests in human relationships, particularly in the student-teacher relationship but also in the social fabric of the school community.  This is the wellspring of the safety, support, stimulation, challenge and example that students require in order to thrive in their academic, intellectual and human development.

  You can get a great lecture on the internet, probably better than any to be had in most schools, but technology cannot provide a caring, purposeful relationship with someone who encourages, probes, extends and acknowledges learning.  It is within such a relationship that assessment occurs and guidance is provided.  I am not talking about testing.  There is nothing core about that.  Summative evaluation is simple.  It can be done easily, and probably better, by a computer, but formative assessment is a different matter altogether.  That is a teacher’s domain.  Computer algorithms cannot replicate the dynamic observation, inquiry, feedback, direction and nurturing support that a teacher can provide.  Some students may be able to succeed academically, and even intellectually, without that, but most will not and none will do as well in its absence.

  In addition to the teacher’s vital role in facilitation and support, the school community as a whole provides an essential foundation for both learning and growth.  Within a school there is not only friendship but also membership, and that membership – school spirit if you like – provides an important anchor for young people.  It is in public schools that society is forged, its values and behaviours inculcated.  In communion with others, students grow beyond their family and out of their childhood to become independent adults and citizens.  It is the experience of community that bonds students to their school, not the curriculum. 

  The relationships from which the core benefits of schooling arise must be preserved but many of the traditional practices could just as easily be done in other, perhaps better, ways.  Specifically, methods of instruction and evaluation need to be deconstructed and reconsidered.  Lectures, assignments and tests can come from many sources.  It need not be done the way it is today and changing that may create the different conditions within which the essential benefits of schools can be preserved while the outer trappings evolve along with society as a whole.

  There are, of course, significant implications for the daily duties and professional identity of teachers if the means of content delivery, skill development and evaluation change, but they are not the fundamental processes that require a teacher.  My Masters Degree in Physics prepared me well to be a Physics teacher, but eventually I realized that what my students needed was a Teacher of physics.  The former can be done by a computer but the latter requires a professional and it is this professional essence that must be preserved as the techniques and processes of schooling change.  

• Inclusive Education: Lessons from Quebec’s English Sector

  March 14, 2011 8:24 PM Comments Off on Inclusive Education: Lessons from Quebec’s English Sector

  The English sector school boards in Quebec have had a long experience in the education of students with special needs in a variety of settings – from the early days of closed classes in special schools to inclusion in a regular class within a neighbourhood school. This evolution has occurred as a result of the experiences that many of us had in the early years of special education. To those of us who started teaching in special education classes, this process of change reflected the fact that – more often than not ­– the closed class structure did not meet the needs of the students for whom the experience was designed. This is borne out by other educators in Canada.

  Gordon Porter, a long-time advocate for inclusive education, states that “ traditional special education, typically carried out by specialist teachers and in isolation from

  other children in special classes or special schools, has failed in several ways. First, it has failed to produce results. Students who experience segregated special education are not prepared for fulfilling lives in their communities when their education is finished. Research in Canada has indicated that they do less well than similar children who go to regular schools.…A segregated school program does not prepare young people to be part of the community and society when they become adults. Growing up and interacting with their peers does that.”[1]  

  That is not to say, however, that every student can make the most of an integrated setting all the time; depending on the specific situation, some students require a second option at some point in their education. But those of us who began teaching in the early 70s know what it was like when students were taken out of their home schools and placed in special schools or special classes with inexperienced and untrained teachers. We were those teachers.

  In order to understand this evolution, it is important to go back the 40 years it took us to reach the place where we find ourselves in 2011.

  Connecting to Our Students

  In 1971, I was assigned to teach in a special education class for students with a variety of learning and behaviour difficulties – students who had been removed from their classes in regular high schools and placed in a high school for those identified with special needs.

  All of these students had been placed in the school because they did not “fit” into a regular high school program, mostly for social reasons. Many came from impossible home situations. Some came with severe mental health problems. For some, this was the first educational placement following long-term hospitalization in a psychiatric ward. At the beginning, daily crises were the rule of the school, as students clashed with each other and with us, over any request or instruction they received. 

  We worked hard at trying to connect with our students. But they had failed in the regular school system and were removed from the general population to be placed in a special school, and they resented it far more than we realized.

  This point was driven home to me by one of my students when we were on an overnight field trip. While she was a very difficult student in the school, she was particularly well behaved on this trip. At one point, I asked her, “Why is your behaviour so different here from what it is at school?” Without even thinking, she said, “The school is a mental school, we’re supposed to act mental there.”

  It was a turning point in my thinking—we had been treating our students as special needs students, instead of thinking of them as students with needs. We were dealing with their individual behaviours and forgetting to look at them as, first and foremost, needy children. Their needs, we were learning, were far greater than the need for academic achievement.

  Dewey writes about placing a strong emphasis on the subjective quality of students’ experiences and the necessity for the teacher to understand their past in order to design an effective sequence of liberating educational experiences to allow them to fulfill their potential as members of society.[2] From our students we learned that their pasts had been traumatic and that many lived in marginal situations on a daily basis. To many, school was their safe haven for a few hours a day.

  These students taught me that no matter what their challenges were, they were people first – with fears and issues like any other student. They needed to be listened to and we needed to care for them, because when they felt secure and they trusted us, they would learn. Interestingly enough, we did not know the theoretical basis for our actions at the time, but today we know that the development of a relationship with a student is one of the most powerful educational building blocks.[3]

  Heller argues that, “Education should be about helping students become humane, caring individuals, capable of dealing with complex issues that the world presents. We can model humane behaviour for our students without sacrificing standards of learning or behaviour.”[4]

  Many of my colleagues, in those early years of special education, began their careers as I did, in closed special education classes. We soon learned that somehow this organizational approach did not really meet the needs of the majority of our students; there had to be a better way. We learned intuitively that attachment to our students was important. We had to help them feel secure and gain their trust before we could teach them.[5]

  Why Engagement Works

  What we sensed intuitively then is backed by evidence now. We have a lot more information available to us today than we had in 1971, or even in 1991, about how students learn. Brain-based research has shown us much about how the brain learns and what we can do to engage students in their learning.[6] Often students who are thought to have some learning difficulty or a behaviour issue are simply disconnected from learning in school. We have learned since then that not all needy students have special needs; many are simply turned off by schools and either act out, or opt out of learning.

  We know that when students’ learning styles and preferences are taken into account – when we ask not “How smart are they?” but “How are they smart?” – they learn. When we teach to their strengths, they learn.[7]

  We understand that between 35 and 50 percent of the population learns best by doing, as tactile-kinesthetic learners, and only 18 percent of the student population learns best by listening.[8]Why then do we continue to teach in an auditory style, when we know that our classroom lectures have little carry-over to long-term learning?

  Schools and classes that have experienced success have taken into account current research into learning styles and preferences. They have understood that students learn best when they are actively discussing, practicing by doing, and teaching others. They learn least when they are sitting passively in a classroom hearing about new concepts.[9]

  If we were to implement learning situations that engaged all students, that showed them the purpose of their efforts and captured their interest in understanding the world a little better, then many of the so-called behaviour problems would be non-existent. Students with identified special needs, as well as those who opt out for other reasons, would learn well along with their peers. Many of our schools and teachers now understand this, and their exemplary practices reflect a commitment to both engagement and integration.

  Witness examples of teaching and learning in the robotics program at the English Montreal School Board’s (EMSB) Coronation School, where inner city students took their inventions to the world stage and won recognition in Germany and Japan; where a principal and the staff focused on a vision of inclusion and brought the behaviour issues down in the school from multiple episodes to none in eight years; where a principal refused to let anyone “trash talk” about students in the staff room; where a former graduate, now in a public high school at EMSB, has been courted by the greatest minds in oncology in Montreal, because he, at the age of 16, may be onto a cure for cancer.[10]

  Witness Grade 5 and 6 classes at St. Mary’s School in Longueuil (Riverside School Board) where the teachers and students have embraced project-based learning through the ArtsSmarts approach, where the curriculum is taught through the arts with the support of local artists, and all students in this inclusive setting are engaged in creating a classroom from recycled materials that will serve their needs as learners in the 21st century; where it is difficult to identify the students who have special needs because they are all actively engaged in creating a new learning environment for learning their languages and their mathematics.[11]

  Witness a school project at Métis Beach School in Métis-sur-Mer (Eastern Shores School Board) where the Grade 5 to Grade 11 students are involved in creating their own social videos, with their teachers and a young film company, exploring issues that they confront in adolescence – bullying, divorce, stalking, etc.[12]

  Witness a secondary school extra-curricular program, “The Flat”, at Centennial Regional High School in Greenfield Park (Riverside School Board) – based on the discovered talents of the students in visual arts, hip-hop, and rap – that grew out of a graffiti project to bring the arts legitimately onto the inside walls of the school. This project has been singularly responsible for keeping the marginal students in school and helping showcase their talents to the rest of the school and school board.[13]

  Witness Western Quebec School Board’s Environmental Awareness and Outdoor Skills Program, which takes students beyond the four walls of the classroom and keeps them in school because they want to learn, all the while developing stewardship and a future generation of responsible and informed citizens who not only value the environment, but also will take action to conserve and protect it.[14]

  Why Engagement Works:

  Conditions for Success in the English-Sector Schools

  Quebec’s Education Act and its special education policy[15] have supported the integration of the student into the regular class, given certain conditions. Ten years later, a period of reflection is underway, looking back on the successes and the challenges that have arisen.

  Within the English-sector school boards, about 85 percent of the student population is integrated into regular classes, and schools are continually searching for means to provide greater success for their students.

  Professional development for teachers and staff is critical to this success. In Quebec’s English sector, there is an understanding that the following elements are crucial:

  • a culture of professional learning for administrators, teachers, and other educational personnel
  • an understanding of learning styles and differentiated instruction when working with diverse learners
  • an acceptance that life-long learning applies as much to educational professionals as it does to students
  • an understanding that every student is an individual with needs that must be addressed in the best way possible
  • an understanding that education is a team sport and that it takes a group of committed educators to figure out what will work for a student
  • an understanding that there is no magic in working with students who have special needs, that it takes hard work, frustrating moments, and successes in little steps
  • an understanding that the option of letting a student go without trying everything within our power is unacceptable

  The improvement of the graduation rate to over 80 percent in most English sector school boards has grown out of a culture committed to providing whatever it takes to keep students in school and to help them achieve their full potential, of school administrators taking their lunch hours to circulate in the hallways to connect with students, of teachers – in addition to their heavy classroom teaching loads – volunteering extra hours to coach teams and to help students in extracurricular activities, of parents volunteering to help wherever they can in schools, and of students feeling that school is a place for them to be because it has meaning to them.

  There is still much to learn and much to be done to address the 20 to 30 percent of the student population not succeeding, particularly among the boys, whose graduation rate lags behind that of the girls in most Quebec school boards by about 10 percent. Things are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Some classrooms are still relying on the lecture method as the sole means of transmitting knowledge. But more often than not, administrators and teachers are focusing in on what needs to change in order for all students to achieve success.

  Inclusion is for life, not just for a class or a term or a year. In order to prepare our students with special needs to live within society as contributing adults, and in order to prepare society to accept them as an integral part of the community, we need to structure our educational organization to best serve all students. 

  Those of us who have been around long enough can see the majority of our students from the closed classes of the 70s reaching middle age without much connection to their communities – sitting at home as 50-year-olds, dependent on society for their support. We see our students from the last two decades, who were included in regular schools for most of their education, as young adults able to function within society, holding down jobs, working as volunteers, taking public transportation, and contributing to their communities. They are an integral part of their communities and accepted as such by the peers with whom they went to school.

  We continuously strive to meet the needs of all of our students where they are best served, and where they can become contributing members of society. The best place for this to happen is in the mainstream – of school and of life. Other options are a poor second choice.

  EN BREF – Si nous instaurions des situations d’apprentissage qui intéressent tous les élèves, qui leur indiquent le but de leurs efforts et qui les incitent à comprendre un peu mieux le monde, beaucoup de problèmes de comportement et d’apprentissage disparaîtraient. Les élèves qui ont des besoins particuliers déterminés pourraient bien apprendre parmi leurs pairs. Un grand nombre de nos écoles et enseignants le comprennent maintenant. Pour préparer nos élèves ayant des besoins particuliers à évoluer dans notre société en tant qu’adultes à part entière, et pour préparer la société à les accepter comme faisant partie intégrante de la collectivité, nous devons structurer nos organisations d’éducation de façon à encadrer optimalement tous les élèves. Dans les commissions scolaires anglophones du Québec, environ 85 pour cent des élèves ayant des besoins particuliers sont intégrés dans les classes ordinaires et deviennent des membres à part entière de leurs collectivités, contrairement aux élèves des classes séparées des années 1970, qui sont maintenant d’âge moyen et qui demeurent socialement isolés.

  ---

  [1] G. Porter, “Making Canadian Schools Inclusive: A Call to Action,” Education Canada 48, no. 2: 64.

  [2] J. Dewey, Experience and Education: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition. (West Lafayette, Indiana: Kappa Delta Pi, 1998). From the original 1938 text.

  [3] M. Fullan, “The Change Leader,” Educational Leadership: Beyond Instructional Leadership 59, no. 8 (2002): 16–20; D. Goleman, Leadership: Social Intelligence Is Essential, 2008. Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.danielgoleman. info/blog/2008/02/28/leadership-social intelligence-is-essential.

  [4] D. Heller, “The Power of Gentleness,” Leadership: Beyond Instructional Leadership 59, no. 8 (2002): 76–79; 77.

  [5] G. Neufeld and Gabor Mate, Hold onto your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2004).

  [6] D. A. Sousa, How the Brain Learns, 3^rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006).

  [7] H. Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1983).

  [8] A. M. Beninghof, Engage ALL Students Through Differentiation (Peterborough, N.H.: Crystal Springs, 2006).

  [9] Sousa.

  [10] D. Wood, Six Steps to Student Success. Presentation with Carol Marriott and Julie Hobbs for New Frontiers School Board Administrators, Howick, QC, November 16, 2009.

  [11] J. Hobbs, Class visit to St. Mary’s Cycle 3 Immersion class. February 3, 2010.

  [12] J. Hobbs, C. Marriott, D. Wood. School visit to Métis Beach School. April 30, 2010.

  [13] C. Marriott, Presentation to ArtsSmarts Exchange Symposium, Toronto, ON. Dec. 1, 2009 (In absentia).

  [14] A. Earwaker, Environmental Awareness and Outdoor Skills Program. (Western Quebec School Board, Aylmer, QC, 2009; DVD format).

  [15] Adapting Our Schools to the Needs of All Students, Policy on Special Education, Ministère de l’Éducation, 1999.

• Hands On vs. Hands Up: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Building in High School

  5:47 PM Comments Off on Hands On vs. Hands Up: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Building in High School

  In a landscape in which learners can be creators of ideas, it is vital for high schools to become technology-enabled learning environments that are sharply focused on knowledge building, idea improvement, and collaboratively creating community knowledge. Most students use personal connectivity for socializing and play, not for knowledge building, exploring problems, or building on each other’s ideas.

  To learn well in a participatory, digital world, students need to be academically and intellectually engaged in rigorous and complex work – work that is meaningful enough for them to give their hearts over to it, work that motivates them to explore ideas and persist in developing explanations and solutions. Today’s youth deserve to be engaged in technology-enabled learning environments and intellectually demanding school experiences that prepare them to move into ever-changing and complex social, economic, political, and cultural contexts.

  Shifting from Interactive to Participatory Learning Designs

  Our world has seen huge changes in the media and technology landscape in the last 50 years. Broadcast media was a one-way street; early interactive media supported one-to-one, and increasingly, many-to-many conversations; later interactive technologies, such as the Internet, offered support for groups, for simultaneous conversations, for media and information sharing, and for knowledge building in community; today, advancements in digital technology and social media have led to the largest increase in connective and expressive capability in human history.

  Participatory learning designs begin with the premise that these digital and social technologies have changed how people of all ages learn, collaborate, play, socialize, access resources and services, and connect. They enable learners to participate in local and online communities to share ideas, peer review each other’s expressions and creations, build on each other’s work, work collaboratively to improve ideas, and design, develop, implement, assess, and discuss their strategies, solutions, goals, and ideas.

  The technological infrastructure and network designs used in most high schools – built on broadcast media and information delivery assumptions about knowledge flow – are not serving students well. Professionals and outside experts create a firewall by selecting information and ideas, and metering out content in small, manageable, and simplified chunks. Participatory technologies, social media and knowledge building pedagogy disrupt that firewall.

  • Audience/learners can talk to each other, build and share information together, and publish ideas and expressions online to a global community.
  • Knowledge is created and shared by learners and by teachers.
  • Information comes from many diverse sources, cultures, and locations.
  • There is immediate access to current information and knowledge.
  • An already huge knowledge base grows at an exponential rate.

  The widely-held perception that students know more than teachers about current technology is both true and false. It is true that creating original content and publishing information on wikis, blogs, and social media sites is empowering many young people, and some learners do highly complex things with computers, networks, and gaming systems. But most students use personal connectivity for socializing and play, not for knowledge building, exploring compelling science or mathematics problems, improving and building on each other’s ideas, or writing persuasive arguments. Young people need engaged teachers more than ever to make the leap from digital technology as play to digital technology as a tool for knowledge creation.

  Learning Environments in the 21st Century

  Knowledge building is arguably the most important skill requirement for the 21st century. The ability to work collaboratively to improve ideas is essential, and pervasive technology makes collaborative knowledge building increasingly possible. In a landscape in which learners can be creators rather than mere consumers of messages and ideas, it is vital for high schools to become technology-enabled learning environments that are sharply focused on knowledge building, or idea improvement, and collaboratively creating community knowledge to share and improve ideas that matter to the world. ¹

  In other words, high schools should be less and less about crafting a single message for individuals to consume, and more and more about convening groups of learners with diverse strengths, expertise, and skills around shared interests, to work on common goals, to create ideas, and to build and cultivate community knowledge. The challenge is to reconcile current teacher-driven content delivery approaches with knowledge building requirements and the expectations of today’s high school learners.

  The question is not whether this is the technology and media environment we want; it is the environment we have – global, social, ubiquitous, and inexpensive. The question, instead, is how can we change the way we do high school to make best use of this technology landscape? Mentoring and preparing students for the world in which they live is the role of high school, and today’s students live in a participatory digital world.

  The abundance of resources, networks, and relationships easily accessible online is challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.² Lecturing and testing must give way to collaborative and challenging knowledge building, work that leverages technology for critical thinking, disciplined inquiry, and global participation. Collaborative online social learning offers more opportunities for students to find and join diverse communities where they can benefit from culture-building and distributed cognitive apprenticeship. It goes beyond providing access to traditional course materials to creating participatory learning environments that develop competencies like visual literacy and scientific reasoning. In a participatory digital world, the ability to assess the credibility of information and integrity of connections is vital.

  Technology and Student Engagement in High School

  A team of researchers (including the authors) recently completed a two-year, Alberta-wide study of the relationship between technology and high school success in 23 school jurisdictions.³ While we observed some innovative and engaged teaching and learning practices, student engagement in learning and knowledge building was low. In most of the classrooms, we found little evidence of students completing authentic tasks or of rigorous and complex work being designed for and required of high school students. The predominant use of technology we saw in these classrooms was watching or listening to the teacher present material to the entire class.

  A disconnect existed between teachers, who reported high confidence with the technology and enthusiasm about its use, and students, who reported that the bulk of classroom time is spent at their own desks, silently watching the teacher use presentation technology to deliver content. We know that the use of computers is more effective when the students are in “control” of the learning; yet, it is fairly evident that the technology is not in the hands of students in many secondary school classrooms. Why is the majority of classroom time in high school devoted to teacher-directed, whole group instruction rather than the student-directed, interactive, peer-to-peer interaction associated with higher levels of student engagement? Educational researchers focusing on the connections among student engagement, the learning environment, and teaching practices have identified a number of factors that impact student engagement: (i) the types of instructional practices teachers enact; (ii) the authenticity and complexity of work students are invited to do; (iii) the types of technologies utilized in learning; and (iv) the amount and type of feedback students receive while they are learning.⁴ We observed academic engagement, active participation in information play (i.e. answering questions, paying attention, doing seat work), in less than 50 percent of the classrooms visited, and the percentage dropped as the lesson proceeded. Intellectual engagement, a serious, passionate commitment to investigate complex problems, issues, questions and ideas within a collaborative knowledge building environment, was observed in very few high school classrooms.

  Best Practice: Hands On Versus Hands Up

  We saw technology being used by a Social Studies teacher to engage high school students in lively debate and the exchange of ideas, to support the active social construction of knowledge, and to democratize the classroom.

  During the first half of the class, students were engaged in discussion and debate about historical and modern engagements in war. The teacher used a handful of online videos, interactive models, and graphic resources displayed on an interactive whiteboard to engage students with historical events and modern interpretations. Links between lives lost in past wars and casualties in the present war in Afghanistan spurred active debate about Canada’s role in the international community. While the students sat at their desks, the teacher kept the momentum up with his interactive and engaging rapport, using a dozen good questions to engage every student in discussion and in providing feedback using clickers. Students were encouraged to explore concepts and defend their answers using historical sources and a clear rationale. At least 90 percent of students were engaged via interactive discussion with peers, asking questions, contributing to group activities using clickers, discussing key concepts, and helping peers use the technology. The teacher held the class in the palm of his hand – the students clearly trusted their teacher and knew that their ideas, opinions, and contributions mattered.

  During the second half of the class, the teacher shifted from whole class discussion to an inquiry project. He digitally displayed the project description, relevant online sources and videos, and used an interactive, online Prezi (concept map) as part of his invitation to explore topics. Several online examples of student work from previous years were available to students. He outlined a clear set of steps and group roles and reviewed expectations and standards for completing work using a prepared assessment rubric. He made clear connections to curriculum and identified a range of physical, analog, and digital resources to support research and interpretation of historical events.

  An active class discussion arose about the range of technology to use, preferred topics and group configurations based on shared interests, and the time students had to complete the task. The teacher encouraged students to use a range of technologies, from online research, to various presentation and graphical design tools for presentation and peer review, to online publishing and sharing completed projects.

  In four teams, students started to discuss and research over 50 historical and modern day events related to war in order to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate possible causes and implications, relationships, and combinations of events. The goal was to create new knowledge and understandings related to winning strategies in war.

  During the final third of class, 100 percent of students were engaged in collaborative peer groups bent on determining who holds the winning hand in war.

  The Design of Great Learning Tasks

  It is unsurprising that high school teaching is not significantly changed or improved by merely dropping technology into classrooms. We observed few examples like the one described above. Teachers need support to design inquiry-based tasks and assessments that integrate digital technology into one or more disciplines of study. They need to harness their enthusiasm about technology to the design and support of knowledge building work that cultivates genuine engagement with learning.

  Great inquiry-based learning tasks – with or without technology – are authentic to the discipline; involve active and participatory student groupings and interactions; are academically rigorous; connect learners to resources and communities beyond the school; provide for elaborated communication and expression; and use assessment of and for learning. Rigorous, technology-enabled learning experiences contain all the components necessary for a strong inquiry: rich, authentic problems/issues/questions to investigate; clear learning outcomes; curricular integration; learning tasks; appropriate use of technology; ways of working and knowing that experts within the disciplines use to build knowledge; and timely assessments with clear criteria to make students’ thinking visible to both students and teachers. In inquiry-based, technology rich learning environments, assessment makes up a large part of the high school day.

  Leadership for Inquiry With Technology

  In “Inspiring Education”, Alberta Education asks important questions about the role of publicly funded education in the 21st century. How do we help youth make successful transitions to adulthood? How do we help them to become life-long learners who contribute to healthy, inclusive communities and thriving economies?⁵ Ramping up teaching with an interactive whiteboard won’t motivate students to use their minds well or to stay in school – especially if all they are expected to do is sit still, watch, and listen. Interesting and challenging knowledge building work will engage both students and teachers in technology-enabled learning environments.

  If we really want our children to face the challenges of the future with confidence and skill, we must teach them not only that they can acquire current knowledge, but also that they can help shape what their society comes to accept as knowledge.⁶ Participatory digital technologies and new social media landscapes, combined with engaged teaching and designs for learning, offer new opportunities for knowledge building and interconnected relationships.

  Today’s youth will inherit a global, socially connected, and media rich world. The competencies they require to live well differ from those even ten years ago. As our participatory digital world accelerates, high schools cannot afford to stand still.

   

  EN BREF – Dans un contexte où les apprenants peuvent être des créateurs d’idées, il est vital que les écoles secondaires deviennent des environnements d’apprentissage technohabilités privilégiant la constitution de savoirs, l’amélioration d’idées et la création en collaboration de connaissances communautaires. La plupart des élèves utilisent la connectivité personnelle pour socialiser et se divertir, et non pour obtenir des connaissances, explorer des problèmes ou s’enrichir les idées les uns des autres. Ils ont plus que jamais besoin de solides enseignants pour passer de la technologie numérique ludique à la technologie numérique comme source de création de savoirs. Pour que nos enfants puissent vraiment relever avec assurance et compétence les défis de l’avenir, nous devons leur enseigner qu’ils peuvent non seulement acquérir des connaissances courantes, mais aussi contribuer à déterminer ce que leur société viendra à accepter comme étant des savoirs. Les technologies numériques participatives et les nouveaux médias sociaux, conjugués à un enseignement mobilisé et à des conceptions d’apprentissage, offrent de nouvelles possibilités de constitution de connaissances et de relations interconnectées.

  ---

  1 M. Jacobsen, “A Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology on Knowledge Building,” Editorial, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 36, no. 1 (2010). www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/issue/view/70

  2 L. Johnson, A. Levine, R. Smith, and S. Stone, The 2010 Horizon Report (Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium, 2010). www.nmc.org/publications/horizon

  3 J. Daniels, S. Friesen, M. Jacobsen, and S. Varnhagen, Technology and High School Success Research: Final Report (A Research Report for Alberta Education, 2010).

  4 M. Jacobsen, S. Friesen, and C. Saar, “Teaching and Learning in a One‐to‐One Mobile Computing Environment: A Research Report on the Personalized Learning Initiative At Calgary Science School.” Report delivered to the Board of the Calgary Science School, March 2010; J. D. Willms, S. Friesen, and P. Milton, What Did You Do in School Today? Transforming Classrooms through Social, Academic and Intellectual engagement, First National Report (Toronto, ON: Canadian Education Association, 2009). www.cea-ace.ca/publication/what-did-you-do-school-today-transforming-classrooms-through-social-academic-and-intelle

  5 Alberta Education, “Inspiring Education: A Dialogue With Albertans,” Steering Committee Report, 2010. www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/

  6 P. Clifford and S. Friesen, “A Curious Plan: Managing on the Twelfth,” Harvard Educational Review, 63, no, 3 (1993): 339-358.

• Necessary Disruption (Part 2: Preparing Engaged Citizens)

  March 13, 2011 11:58 PM Comments Off on Necessary Disruption (Part 2: Preparing Engaged Citizens)

  In my last blog I argued that because there is an explosive rate of scientific discovery and technological innovation outside of schools but only incremental adaptation inside, the need for more abrupt (aka disruptive) change is growing.  In this installment I want to add another reason for urgent innovation: escalating social and political complexity.

  Citizenship demands more of us these days.  Our communities have become more diverse than ever before along any dimension you care to mention – ethnicity, language, religious belief or lack thereof, family structure and so on.  Much of what we took to be common is now clearly pluralistic.  In part this is because we acknowledge differences that have always existed but were once denied, and in part it is because increased global mobility and Canada’s dependence on immigration have brought many new citizens to all parts of the country.  The result is a much richer mosaic with increased potential for both synergy and conflict.

  Both the positive and negative potential of diversity in our communities is exacerbated by increased global interdependence along any dimension you care to mention – economics, politics, environment, health, security and so on.  Our fate is inextricably interwoven with many others, arguably all others, and that makes the issues that we face as citizens, both local and global, more complex than ever before – calling not only for greater knowledge, but also for greater wisdom.

  Enabling students to thrive in and contribute to this diverse and densely connected socio-political environment requires much more than traditional academic knowledge.  Students also need the communication skill, creativity and critical thinking to apply their ‘book learning’ and evaluate new information they receive in order to solve unique problems in the world.  Moreover, this problem solving increasingly occurs in multidisciplinary teams so collaborative ability and inclinations are essential.  And the problems themselves are set in, or at least linked to, a global context of competing interests and thus require inter-cultural understanding and ethical decision-making.

  These “soft skills,” which animate the “hard skills,”  have been termed 21st Century Skills, not because they are new but because in the new millennium they have changed from being desirable to being essential.  Employers require them of course because they are fundamental to the knowledge work that is now the primary generator of wealth, but these same skills are also critical foundations for democracy and global harmony.  Thus,  both the private and public ends of education require that schools complement the academic learning and intellectual development which has been their traditional focus with renewed attention to ‘higher order thinking’ ( in reference to Bloom’s taxonomy).

  Of course, this has always been a stated goal.  To quote the School Act in BC, for example, the purpose of public schools is to enable all students “to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.”  However, the reality is that the focus of public attention has been almost exclusively placed on academics – the so-called 3 R’s – and individual benefits as they pertain to employment.  Moreover, assessment and the standards that are applied to them have been largely confined to knowledge acquisition and some algorithmic skill sets.  Now, however – not in an imagined future, but right now in our lived reality – this has to change in order to sustain economic vitality and, more importantly, to sustain a “healthy, democratic and pluralistic society.”

  So, like rapid technological innovation, escalating social and political complexity requires schools to change in order to keep pace with, and adequately prepare students for, a future which is already upon us.  This is a reflection not of schools‘ failures but of the highly dynamic nature of modern life.  Standing pat is not an option in schools any more than it is in other spheres, so once again one must ask:  What is it about current structures and processes that needs to be disrupted in order for schools to free themselves from some of their current limitations and keep pace with the  change that is occurring all around them? … to be continued

• Michele Jacobsen: Hands On vs. Hands Up: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Building in High School

  March 11, 2011 9:42 PM Comments Off on Michele Jacobsen: Hands On vs. Hands Up: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Building in High School

  A presentation by Michele Jacobsen of the University of Calgary at CEA’s 2010 colloquium on equity.

• Necessary Disruption (Part 1: Keeping Pace With Technical Innovation)

  March 6, 2011 11:05 PM Comments Off on Necessary Disruption (Part 1: Keeping Pace With Technical Innovation)

  Surely there is no more oft-used or ill-defined slogan than “21st Century Learning.”  I suppose it evoked the notion of learning for the world as it was becoming when used in the 1990’s but now that we have traversed Y2K without incident and are 10% through the new century I am not sure why we still say it or what it is supposed to mean.  I do know, however, that there is good reason to feel some urgency about innovation in schooling practices.

  Yes, Canada’s public schools are demonstrably excellent by international standards, and generally far removed from the sorry state of much of the American system, but the world is changing very rapidly and if schools don’t match that rate of evolution they will inevitably lose both relevance and effectiveness.  Outside of school we see things like robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetic engineering that are true game changers.  Inside of school we see incremental improvements at best in curriculum, instruction and organization.  This won’t do.  Its not only that good can be the enemy of great, but that complacency can kill you in a rapidly evolving context.

  The world’s best typewriters became antiques overnight when keyboards arrived and every draughtsman has had to go digital.  You can’t keep up with the kinds of changes that abound in society just by improving what you are already doing.  Sometimes you have to change in order to survive.  Henry Ford is reported to have said, “If I had asked what people wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

  Abrupt change, which Clayton Christensen has termed “disruptive innovation,” is challenging for many reasons, not the least of which is that initially the innovation is more work and often less productive, and also because it upsets the prevalent social order in an organization, but unless one makes the change and suffers through the ensuing implementation dip in order to learn a new way, there is no possibility of significant improvement from the current plateau.  Eventually even “sharpening the saw” is not good enough – you have to trade the thing in for a chain saw.

  So where might such disruptive innovation be necessary in public education?  The popular response, of course, is technology – and for good reason because there is a lot of potential there.  However, while a technology-infused future seems promising, a technologically-focussed future is not the answer.  Technology is the horse, not the cart – or perhaps I should say the booster not the payload – or, to be thoroughly modern, the codec not the video.  So, “technology” does not really answer the question since that conversation is primarily about means rather than ends. 

  What is it about current structures and processes that needs to be disrupted in order for schools to free themselves from some of their current limitations and keep pace with the change that is occurring all around them? … to be continued

• Learning Beyond Schooling

  February 28, 2011 7:00 PM Comments Off on Learning Beyond Schooling

  Schooling is an effective way to promote learning and personal growth, but its not the only means to this end and sometimes its not the best means.  Even when schooling is an effective way to achieve the private and public outcomes that society intends through its education system, connections beyond the classroom provide significant additional benefit.  Unfortunately, they are often only an occasional afterthought.  Perhaps its time that they moved from optional extras to core components of public education.

   As long ago as 1971 (in the previous millenium), Ivan Illich commented in Deschooling Society that, “The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.”  Today computer technology makes such a change not only possible but inevitable.  The question is not whether the change will occur but when and under whose guidance.

   Web 2.0 applications like social networks and wikis do not, in my opinion, yet fully represent the sort of ‘educational webs’ that Illich suggested so long ago, but they certainly do illustrate the potential for such enabling and democratizing mechanisms.  Indeed, we are seeing the emergence of private and commercial webs of variable quality – which may eventually lead, through some Darwinian process, to useful educational applications but may equally well produce a plethora of drivel that confuses, and even malicious networks that misinform and mislead.

   It would be much better for the school system to develop new educational webs, or utilize existing webs in purposeful ways, that expand its reach and improve its effectiveness rather than wait for others to develop networks that displace or overwhelm it.  This would be in addition to the instructional applications of ICT within the regular school structure, which can also be powerful and which I presume will continue to emerge, and would be distinguished by students’ independent use of such networks to connect to, communicate with and participate in the world beyond the school.

   One function of such webs might be to expand on the “pen pal” connections that now exist between schools and classes by enabling individual students with particular passions to find and converse with others more independently.  Such webs might also include non-students with similar interests, whether professionals or hobbyists.  This, of course, raises issues of credibility and safety but let’s just put such legitimate questions in the parking lot for the moment while we try to peer outside the box.

   Structured and supported, but autonomous, connections beyond the classroom could benefit not only ‘learning’ but also the ‘caring’ and ‘sharing’ that Illich mentions.  Personal engagement with others on issues of common interest would, of course, inevitably fuel traditional learning but the primary benefit might not be academic.  To thrive in the richly interconnected and rapidly changing world in which our children already live, they need “soft” skills such as communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking that cannot be developed as effectively within the classroom as beyond it.  They also need to transcend egocentricity and cultural embeddedness to appreciate their interdependence with the rest of humanity.

   Perhaps the many social networking mechanisms that already exist make it unnecessary to reinvent the wheel in the form of ‘educational webs’ if we take responsibility for helping student learn to use them constructively and effectively in ways that promote learning and growth.  Perhaps, but at a minimum schools then need to seize on these mechanisms and take charge of their use as core learning strategies for connection, communication and collaboration in relation to learning objectives and not just for information retrieval.  The potential should not be left to chance and while it may be driven by student interest and energy it should be steered by educators to maximize its intentional benefits and minimize the distraction of unfocussed busyness. 

   The purpose of schooling is not to be good at schooling but to be enabled as a constructive participant in the world beyond and after the school.  We only stayed inside previously because we had no alternative.  Now we do but our habits continue to confine us.  Or perhaps its fear, or confusion, or complacency.  Funding is a real constraint, but it does not prevent significant change, as many educators are demonstrating, and too often its simply an excuse.  The future is now and the future is learning, not schooling.

• The Spirit of Innovation in Education

  February 22, 2011 10:34 AM Comments Off on The Spirit of Innovation in Education

  I guess I’ve always enjoyed looking for different ways of doing things. One day when I was eight, my parents sent me outside to play. Later, they found me in the backyard trying to build a rocket ship. When I was nine, I tried to design a system that would transport mail from our kitchen safely to an office desk that I had claimed in the basement. By the time I was eleven and twelve, I could often be found in my bedroom working on my own “television” programs using a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a magnajector unit.

  
  

  Even my dating life reflected a desire to be creative and innovative. Once, in an effort to make an interesting impression on one particular young lady, I sat down and created a brochure of “date” possibilities. All that Leanne needed to do was choose one option, and call me with her decision. The phone rang the next day, and we were off to the city that Friday night for dinner and a horse-drawn buggy ride through the streets of Toronto!

  
  

  In a sense it was a spirit of innovation that drew me to the teaching profession. I had always remembered those teachers that tried to make learning come alive by taking different approaches, and I thought that I might be able to do the same. For close to thirty years now, I’ve taken that spirit with me into the professional roles to which I’ve been assigned. I’ve always believed that innovation was at the heart of good teaching; in order for me to be effective, I needed to be constantly looking at things from the perspective of an innovator.

  
  

  But this view is currently being challenged in many jurisdictions these days, and it’s being challenged in my own practice. Ben Levin, among others, argues that if we’re serious about the issues of equity in public education, then it’s not innovation that needs to drive our work, but improvement. Levin argues that, while discovery and research continue to be important, we have an excellent body of “best practices”—things we know work. Real improvement—across the board—will come, he argues, if we put our efforts and resources into the effective implementation of these practices.

  
  

  Initially, this came as a blow to my own spirit, but I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about the argument and the point is a fair one. A good deal of time and money have been put into pilot projects that never seemed to go anywhere. I know that I have worked on teams for months to create documents and resources for teachers that are, alas, sitting on shelves in schools and classrooms across the district. You may have had similar experiences.

  
  

  So, I wanted to spend some time exploring the question of innovation and its role in public education a little more. Can innovation and improvement exist side-by-side, or do we need to dedicate ourselves to one or the other? I hope that you will participate in that exploration!

  
  

  The next two Teaching Out Loud podcasts are dedicated to the theme of innovation. In The Spirit of Innovation in Canadian Classrooms, you’ll meet three Canadian educators who are passionate about the innovations in which they are currently involved.

  
  

  David Wees lives in British Columbia and teaches at Stratford Hall in Vancouver. I call David an unRaveller because he is dedicated to taking apart this complex place we call school one thread at a time, challenging many of our assumptions and beliefs along the way. Currently, David is involved in organizing an edcamp unConference—a concept that is beginning to gain some momentum throughout North America. David talks about how he hopes to change the way we do Professional Development with teachers.

  
  

  John Knotten is an artist and teacher at Toronto’s Mary Ward Secondary School. One of just a handful of Canadian schools dedicated to student self-directed learning, John has spent most of his career living in the heart of this fairly large-scale innovation. I dare you to listen to John talk about Mary Ward’s vision without getting excited!

  
  

  Finally, Peter Fujiwara teaches at St. Roch School in Brampton, Ontario. Peter has always taken his love and passion for communication technology and has built a very robust and enviable program for students enrolled in his Pathways program. But for Peter, the real innovation has come through a discovery of what this program has meant for the rest of the school community. Somewhat unexpected, but very inspiring.

  
  

  Have a listen to the latest episode of Teaching Out Loud, and let us know what you think. In the next week, the second in the Teaching Out Loud Innovation Series will be posted. Here I had the opportunity to talk with David, John and Peter in greater depth about their work and their view on the importance of innovation in our schools.

  
  

  As always, your comments are important and welcome.

  
  

  Where do you stand on the issues of innovation and improvement? Are you currently part of an innovation that is making a difference in the success of your students? Should we be spending more time nurturing the “best practices” that we know about, rather than heading out to find new ways of doing things?

  
  

  Is there a difference between creativity and innovation? Is there more to learn about the best way to do school?

  
  

  There’s always lots to talk about when you’re Teaching Out Loud!

• High Touch for High Tech

  January 28, 2011 6:24 PM Comments Off on High Touch for High Tech

  Have you noticed that nobody advocates for 21st Century Knowledge?  Well of course not.  Much of what our students will need to know 20 years from now, which is when the educational chickens really come home to roost, is not yet known and much of what we think we know now will be irrelevant or wrong within their lifetime.  So, knowledge is not the key to the future.  That is not to say it is unimportant, but only that it is not the determining factor in a strong education or a successful future, and it is not what separates the economic winners from the also rans or what creates a healthy society.

  So everyone turns to skills.  Surely “know how” will be more important as “know what” becomes both more universally accessible and more volatile.  Well, skills are more durable than knowledge but they are still not stable, particularly when skills are seen as specific scripts that can be trained – such as knowing how to use computer software efficiently or even to program computer applications directly.  This stuff is changing so fast that what one really needs to understand is not the specific procedures for doing things but the principles behind those procedures so that one is better equipped to keep up as they rapidly evolve.  Fortran was essential when I was a graduate student but it doesn’t do me much good now.  So even specific skills are not sufficient to carry you into the future.

  Unless, of course, we are talking about social skills.  These are changing as the world becomes more diverse and multicultural but they are still far more stable than technical skills and increasingly essential for employment success, just as they have always been critical to social engagement, citizenship, personal fulfillment and happiness – the seldom mentioned ‘other half’ of educational purposes.

  21st Century Skills should include technical prowess for obvious practical reasons but the truly essential skills are not the ‘hard’ technical ones; they are the ‘soft’ human ones – communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking for example.  These have always been important to us, and they have always been buried somewhere in the nether regions of educational mission statements, but as the pace of change accelerates, diversity increases, and interconnection and interdependence intensify in our ‘shrinking’ global village, the soft human skills must be brought into the foreground and given the full attention they deserve.

  And underlying skills there are attitudes, which may be an even stronger determinant of success – curiosity, confidence and courage for example – and dispositions like empathy and ethics.  These too need to be taken out of the closet and put into the middle of the classroom.

  Now there are some problems in doing so.  We know how to present students with knowledge and figure out with reasonable accuracy if they have absorbed it.  We can also determine if they have understood it, although that is a bit harder.  And we are fairly good at skill development – at least technical skill development – but its much harder to evaluate.  However, when it comes to social skills and attitudes, not only are we poor at teaching them – if “teaching” is the term – but we are flat out lousy at assessing them and we have no agreed upon standards that would allow us to evaluate them even if we could assess effectively.

  This is the real challenge of 21st Century Learning.  How do we inculcate in our students the soft skills and personal attitudes that will empower them to thrive in the future that is already upon us, and how do we assess, evaluate and report them?  Yes, students also need knowledge and technical skills, but if we allow ourselves to focus on these easier tasks we will fail to understand or address the real need.

  Developing social skills and personal attitudes starts to sound like character development – a term that inevitably raises some hackles and concerns.  This kind of character development, however, should not be confused with moral development because to the extent that it is concerned with values they are the common core values that underlie a democratic society and are central to all moral systems – things like honesty, respect and responsibility for example.

  So, IMHO we should reframe the 21st Century Skills discourse in terms of character development for a diverse and dynamic world rather than as a simple matter of technological mastery.  Now what sort of schooling would it take to accomplish that – or should we be talking about schooling at all?

  
  

• Technology and Student Engagement

  January 11, 2011 9:24 PM Comments Off on Technology and Student Engagement

  Kids are connected all day – except in school.  Therefore, we should get them connected in school as well and this will naturally result in greater engagement and improved learning.  Right?  Wrong!  No doubt, the novelty of using cell phones or iPods in Science class would get rave reviews from many student, but that does not necessarily mean that they would be more deeply engaged or that they would learn more, particularly once the novelty had worn off.

   Teachers have long used curiosity as an entry point for learning and stimulating student interest can be an effective strategy, but the attention that results from heightened interest is only a way station on the road to intellectual engagement.  Moreover, a constant focus on finding ways to stimulate interest can divert teachers from pedagogy to performance and create the need for escalating entertainment in order to capture students’ attention, which wears teachers out while distracting them from more important and effective work.  What is needed is a way of moving from external motivation that has to be constantly refreshed to internal motivation that fuels itself.

   The transition from external to internal motivation, and thus the kind of deep engagement that creates understanding which can be applied in novel situations, comes when curiosity is amplified by connection.  That is, only when a student finds an inquiry not only interesting but also meaningful does it become truly engaging.

   Making studies meaningful requires much more than simply making them interesting.  It requires well-conceived curriculum and expert instruction designed for the specific interests and abilities of particular students.  It requires enough, but not too much, challenge, carefully calibrated levels of support, choice that affords an appropriate level of control to the student and immediate descriptive feedback that enables and develops self-regulation in learning.  In short, it requires skillful teaching.

   Skillful teaching can be enriched and leveraged using technology, but it doesn’t work the other way around.  Technology cannot compensate for poor curriculum or weak instructional practices.  It is the craftsman and not the tool that determines the quality of the work.

  However, good tools give a craftsman much greater power.  So what is it that technology could give us?  It could enhance students’ ability to access, process and share information.  It could provide practical support for a “universal design for learning” (see http://www.cast.org or http://www.udlcenter.org). It could help teachers to keep students within their individual “proximal zone” so that they experience an absorbing “flow” that brings out the best in their learning.  It could allow teachers to provide choice that differentiates instruction and personalizes learning without requiring individualization.  It could provide tools for immediate personalized feedback to students and thus support the “assessment for learning” that research has shown to be so beneficial.  It might even finally allow educators to shatter the industrial age batch-processing model of lock-step instruction and enable students to learn at their own pace in their own way.

   There is a great deal that technology could do, and doubtless most of it is already being done somewhere, but not by accident.  Technology delivers on its promise only when educators harness its potential in service of well-conceived curriculum and effective instruction that is tailored to the needs, interests and abilities of their particular students.  Otherwise, it is sound and fury signifying nothing – a lot of ‘heat’ perhaps, but probably not much ‘light.’

  
  

• An innovative pilot project in Alberta asks …“Do credit hours equal learning?”

  January 6, 2011 2:19 PM Comments Off on An innovative pilot project in Alberta asks …“Do credit hours equal learning?”

  Since reading Westley, Zimmerman and Quinn-Patton’s Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed (2006), I’ve found myself looking at educational change in a lot of new ways. The authors ask a lot of compelling questions, but one in particular really stuck with me: “What is holding the system in its status quo?”

  All organizations have a tendency to hold on to some things even if after they’ve stopped serving their original purpose. Could the way we organize time in schools be one of the things we’re holding onto in education? Might the relationships between time and teaching and learning be holding the status quo in place in school systems despite years of educational change efforts?

  Since the early days of public schooling the school day has been driven by time. Many years ago we might have been able to argue that schools were organized in ways that fit with conventional knowledge about how young people learn. Our knowledge about learning has grown immensely since the turn of the twentieth century and yet the school day, especially in high schools, looks very much the same as it did 100 years ago.

  In November I had the pleasure of working with staff from 16 high schools participating in Alberta’s High School Flexibility Enhancement Pilot. This innovative project was designed to address tensions between contemporary beliefs about learning expressed in Alberta’s curriculum and the practice of funding all credits on the basis of the Carnegie Unit of 25 hours of face-to-face instructional time per credit. Carnegie Units took hold across North America as a system for accrediting and funding high school credits in the early 1900s. By releasing 16 high schools from policy requirements built around this unit, Alberta Education will discover, among other things, if they continue to hold educational value in the 21^st century. 

  Through the pilot project, a diverse group of high schools (large and small, urban and rural, French and English-language) are exploring the relationship between hours of face-to-face instruction and student success (e.g. achievement, engagement, school completion) and the merits of various innovative high school designs for teaching and learning. Over the course of the three-year pilots (2011-2013) students, parents and staff at each school will work together closely to develop an approach to school organization that does not necessarily equate time with credit. 

  The project’s leader – Gerry Fijal – and participating schools are currently finalizing an evaluation plan for the project that will include What did you do in school today? measures of social, institutional and intellectual engagement.  Outcomes of the project will likely be available in 2013, but regular updates will be posted on the project website where you can also find a copy of the literature review written to stimulate thinking about innovative practices for high school redesign including,

  • Increasing learning opportunities for students;
  • Enhancing engagement of students in their learning;
  • Addressing diverse learning needs of students;
  • Enhancing relationships in the school community; and,
  • Enhancing teacher collaboration.

  What do you think might be holding up the status quo in our school systems? Are you exploring innovative ideas to disrupt policies or practices that might not be working anymore in your district or region? If you are, share your ideas here and look back here in a few weeks to see others that I’m learning about through What did you do in school today?

• Is the iPad the Answer?

  January 5, 2011 4:01 PM Comments Off on Is the iPad the Answer?

  Federal “Race to the Top” funding in the US is supporting new iPad initiatives from New York to California in the latest rendition of one-to-one laptop programs.  Will this cheaper, smaller, simpler device finally bring computer technology into the educational mainstream?  The advocates predict big things, but the New York Times quotes Larry Cuban as saying that “There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better by using these machines.”

   If the idea is that technology will engage and motivate students, this will be a costly flash in the pan that fades and fails as the novelty wears off.  However, the iPad (and the parade of rivals that will soon be introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week) clearly represents an new threshold and not just a smaller laptop like the netbook so perhaps this really is the time that technology finally takes hold and goes to scale in education.  What will it take (other than money) for that to happen?

   Whatever the technology horse, the educational cart remains the same.  What it is carrying (the content) and the destination (the intended outcomes) may change but the task of engaging students and supporting learning remains the same.  Research done by CEA (see the What Did You Do In School Today report on this web site) indicates that student engagement is generally low and that it drops off after elementary school with only a minor recovery in the last year of schooling.

   Unless students are intellectually engaged, which is a purely voluntary matter over which they have complete control, their learning will at most be superficial.  Once engaged, they will learn but they will learn in different ways and at different rates, and they will be developmentally ready to learn various things at different times.

   A teacher’s most fundamental task is to meet the challenges of engagement for a diverse group of students within the batch-processing model of education that arose as a factory analog within the Industrial Age, and thus to enable and energize students’ learning.  Computer technology, and the iPad in particular, have great potential for meeting these challenges, but only if used within curricular conceptions, and to support instructional approaches, that directly and intentionally address the challenge of engagement within diversity.  Technological titillation alone will not do the job.

   IPad projects, and the laptop initiatives that preceded them, face other challenges of course – for example, teacher training, technological infrastructure and sustainable funding to keep technology functioning and up to date – but how to engage students in ways that respond to and support their diverse interests, styles and abilities remains the fundamental issue.  This is the question that the iPad must answer if it is to deliver its enormous promise.

• Teaching Out Loud

  December 3, 2010 8:51 PM Comments Off on Teaching Out Loud

  You’re invited to check out Teaching Out Loud, CEA’s new podcast initiative. It’s an initiative designed to raise the voices of passionate and innovative teachers across Canada.

  
  

   I know from personal experience that teachers are often spoken about, spoken for but, we’re not often spoken to when it comes to conversations about policy, ideology, and what happens on a day-to-day basis in our schools. Yet the voice of the teacher is so vital to any discussion about educational transformation and change.

  
  

  So, each month, Teaching Out Loud will focus on another thread in the complex educational tapestry, featuring the voices of real teachers from across Canada. You’re invited to participate by listening to the podcast and then dropping in here to join the conversation! Think of the podcast as a story starter, and this blogspace as the next step in the writing process.

  
  

  This month, Teaching Out Loud begins with some questions for all teachers, each of them centering on the main theme:

  
  

  “So, what brings you here?”

  
  

  What influenced your decision to become a teacher? Were there specific experiences that you had that got you thinking about a teaching career? Were there people in your life that inspired you to consider the profession? Are the things that initially brought you to teaching the things that keep you coming back?

  
  

  You know, in a great deal of the public discourse about the teaching profession, teachers are often presented as this huge monolithic organism–one that thinks in one way, moves in one way and reacts in one way. Those of us spend any time hanging around schools know that nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m hoping that, in featuring the voices of individuals, Teaching Out Loud might help to challenge this idea and help to create some a new space for expression.

  
  

  So, let’s get it started! Listen to the very first episode of Teaching Out Loud as I speak with teachers David Wees, Julia Rheaume and Auni Boghossian. Then tell us your story!

  
  

  Remember, a lot can happen when you’re Teaching Out Loud!

• Marginalized Youth in Contemporary Educational Contexts: A Tranquil Invitation to a Rebellious Celebration

  November 24, 2010 10:16 PM Comments Off on Marginalized Youth in Contemporary Educational Contexts: A Tranquil Invitation to a Rebellious Celebration

  First get off the streets, second get a job, and 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.

  -“John” speaks about his education.

  I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

  -Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

  Contemporary educational practices remain locked in to faulty ways of doing things, and as a result they continue to lock out many young people. The academic success of young people is of critical interest to societies and individuals for both social and economic reasons. General levels of educational attainment have now been clearly linked to economic productivity, and it is widely accepted that meaningful participation in the democratic process requires a level of literacy and understanding that allows one to sort through the complex issues of the 21^st century. For young people today, economic stability and a sense of belonging in society depend in large part on step-wise experiences and achievements in the pathways provided in the formal education systems. Since the invention of the schooled society, with days filled with age-segregated formal schooling, young people have been at the mercy of educational ideas and practices. For these reasons, when any groups are systematically excluded from meaningful participation and achieve below their levels of competence, they become both “marginalized” in their current school environments and economically and socially disadvantaged over their lifetimes.

  We begin with this tranquil invitation to rebellious celebration: tranquil in that we make space to discuss and reflect on these critical concerns; rebellious in that debate and action are crucial.

  Thus, we have urgent reasons to be on the watch for such tendencies and to work to quickly address and avoid them. We are also well advised to map these trends over time and point out those that persist in the face of policy or program attentions. This special issue of Education Canada provides a focused conversation about the ways in which many young people are continuing to be marginalized by contemporary educational processes. One does not need to look far into the literature to see the lasting and abject effects of poverty, culture, or region on youth education. For many young people, these intersecting marginalities come in the form of lowered expectations from those around them, schools which negate their cultural ways of knowing, stalled academic and social accomplishments, a hopeless sense of being on the outside of the educational journeys they had imagined for themselves, and/or even an inability to access a school.

  Each of the articles presented in this special issue discusses such marginalities for young people. The authors have lived and worked with young people who are injured and excluded by their social class, poverty, visible minority status, regions, cultural status, mental health challenges, gender, sexual orientations, and so on. While not claiming to speak for, hear, or represent all young people, the purpose of this issue is to share in collaborative conversations about what we know, what has been done, and what must be accomplished. We begin with this tranquil invitation to rebellious celebration: tranquil in that we make space to discuss and reflect on these critical concerns; rebellious in that debate and action are crucial. Even though many excellent programs and projects have been launched by dedicated communities, celebration is premature while so many young people continue to flounder in the boat of contemporary education and society

  We should acknowledge from the outset that western democracies have shared the hope that public education would be the “great equalizer” for their societies. Despite the progress in societal prosperity and public education through the 20^th century, in most countries educational inequities remain large and persistent.[1] It is clear that we first need to examine our expectations and assumptions about public education systems and how they function. What should we expect of contemporary schools and education systems with regard to producing socially just outcomes for youth?

  On one hand, international data shows that schools appear to account for only about 20 percent of the variation in student outcomes.[2] While this knowledge might tempt us to moderate our expectations, we have to remember that this reflects the performance of our systems, institutions, and the people in them as they now function; it does not tell us about their potential impact. On the other hand, we also know from the same international data that schools do make a difference! In fact, the research carried out in the last three decades makes it clear that students in classrooms with the most effective teachers may gain on average 1.5 years (standardized achievement measures) while students with the least effective teachers gain only 0.5 years in the academic year.[3] Furthermore, the last two decades of research have brought us a wealth of knowledge focused on evidence-based teaching practices that are effective with a variety of students facing academic disadvantage for a number of reasons (socio-economic struggles, learning a new language, learning disabilities, etc).[4] At this point in time then, our evaluations of current and future outcomes and expectations must be set against the framework of what we know can be done as opposed to what we have been doing. Our students deserve nothing less!

  One especially persistent inequality in education is socio-economic. Often intersecting with cultural and regional inequalities, the relative wealth of families has made, and continues to make, a good deal of difference to the educational treatment, opportunities, and pathways of young people. As a recent Globe and Mail article succinctly attests, the elephant in the room of current U.S. educational policy is income inequality. And, we know that countries with the highest levels of equality in income have the most effective education systems.[5] Thus, the persistence of class-based inequalities in education is disappointing but perhaps not surprising given that, despite some positive policy changes, many core inequalities remain unchanged.

  Children’s early experiences within the family still provide them with an essential preparation for formal education and lay the foundations for patterns of inequality and marginality. Some children begin school able to read simple words, identify colours, count, and do simple arithmetic. Others have to acquire these skills within the school environment and may be poorly regarded by their teachers from the outset. Throughout their time in schools, those from more advantaged families often have access to educational resources in the home environment and support from family members who have some knowledge of the curriculum and who can help with homework. In addition, middle class families frequently stress the importance of education, highlight potential benefits, and are able to use their knowledge to secure advantages in an educational marketplace. By contrast, working class families may have narrow occupational horizons, less direct knowledge of educational benefits, and be unable to support their children beyond the end of compulsory education. In short, current notions and aims of education tend to match those of a mainstream middle class.  As a generation of critical researchers and pedagogues has shown, there are myriad ways in which school and classroom practices continue to help in stacking the deck against young people from poor families.[6]

  They may not necessarily appreciate what goes on in school every day, but young people are aware of their desire and right for quality education to set them along good paths as they define them.

  At the same time, education has undoubtedly become more important to young people. The labour market has changed and opportunities for poorly qualified young people are severely limited. In the new knowledge economy, a lack of skills can lead to even further marginalization and exclusion.[7] In these circumstances, young people are participating in education for much longer, and the majority has a strong awareness of the link between educational attainment and subsequent life chances. In our recent studies, young people (those who have left high school and those who have not) clearly state their yearning for quality education, which to them means a system of schooling that is responsive, relevant, flexible, youth-attuned, caring, and proactive.[8] They are interested in “tough but fair” practices and teachers who are “good at teaching” and can make learning fun and engaging while teaching difficult content. This is a reasonable set of expectations for which they do not wish to be short-changed. They may not necessarily appreciate what goes on in school every day, but young people are aware of their desire and right for quality education to set them along good paths as they define them.

  The ways in which young people approach education and establish learner identities, therefore, shapes educational experiences. The cultures associated with socio-economic challenges and social classes are important and can impact on educational outcomes. Previous research suggested that a clash between working class cultures and the middle class culture of schools led some young people to resist the authority of the school and reject school-based values that placed a premium on academic success.[9] This process of resistance was regarded as central to the marginalization of working class pupils. But, with education having become much more central to the lives of all young people, such explanations have started to fall out of favour. At the same time, young people living in poor communities may develop waning confidence in their academic abilities and may distance themselves from school. Indeed, conformity to the school may come at a price: in lower working class peer groups it is often not “cool to be clever”, and therefore the educational rewards for breaking with peer values have to be made clear.[10] Such subtleties require serious consideration.

  Increased participation in education, therefore, may come at a further price to young people and lead to the emergence of fresh inequalities. Not all families can afford to support their children through long periods of post-secondary education or training. And even if state support is available, there are still important dividing lines. Evidence from the UK shows that young people from less affluent families are frequently debt adverse and reluctant to take out student loans to finance their studies.[11] Young people from poorer families frequently select courses on the basis of cost – not simply in terms of fees, but overall costs, which may include the need to move away from home, travel costs, the length of course, and the perceived linkages between their course and future employment. This can result in selecting courses in less prestigious institutions, choosing shorter courses, and considering courses with strong vocational orientations.[12] In addition, less affluent students frequently work long hours to survive in education, which can interfere with their studies and prevent cross-class social interaction.

  In modern contexts, an ability to manage the complexity of educational structures, make informed choices, and negotiate educational careers is increasingly important. Education has been subject to a process of marketization in which knowledgeable “consumers” with spending power are advantaged while others may be marginalized. For those with inside knowledge who have direct experience of the ways in which education is delivered and the implications of various choices, the process can be relatively straightforward, but for those from families with little experience of post-compulsory education, it can be difficult to navigate effectively and further marginalization can occur through inadequate support and poor choices.

  Young people are the divining rods and tropical frogs of contemporary society and our system of schooling. If they are increasingly intellectually disengaged from school at the very time society is asking for further and deeper intellectual engagement, where does that leave them?[13] If more young people are precariously perched along the folds of marginalization, what are they feeling and how are they reacting? What does it mean for education? If they lose confidence in the intellectual aspects of schooling when being called to further demonstrate critical thinking and coping abilities, how are the cultures of schools, families, and communities positioned to respond? The paradox of providing the deep intellectual engagement required for the knowledge economy alongside the creeping watering down and rationalization of education requires discussion, especially for those young people who have traditionally been excluded and made marginal in schools.

  In Canada, the importance of attending to youth confidence (in their learning and futures) is gaining some focus. A meaningful way to assess the pulse of young people is currently on the table at the Canadian Education Association and in many community efforts. If class cultures are serving as reference points through which educational opportunities are evaluated and negotiated, then we come to appreciate that active and prolonged engagement in education requires deeper understanding and accommodation of learner identities over their life course. Young people have always had the challenge of developing and negotiating identity processes and today must be comfortable to describe themselves as students. They must, with our help, work out what that means in terms of involvement in their communities, in the here and now, and in the context of future lives and careers. A class-based “authenticity” must include the effective participation of working class students and those from low socio-economic situations who are not asked to cast aside their identities, but seen to be driven by a desire to accommodate their school experiences within a framework that respects their class roots.[14]

  Understanding how young people make sense of their lives within the dynamic processes of transition and change is crucial. There are many advantages derived by educators who are able to act as “biographical engineers”, and help young people to write their life stories and also recognize that some young people have limited “coping resources”.[15] Young people reflect on past experiences as a way of framing future plans and try to make sense of their lives through putting together a coherent story. In the past, young people were, to an extent, able to use the experiences of significant others (especially family members or peers from the same class positions or with similar educational attainments) to help them construct road maps. In the modern world, rapid processes of social change and the fragmentation of experiences make it extremely difficult to plan for the future and manage lives.

  In this context, it can be argued that educators have a new and important role to play in helping build young people’s capacity for reflexive action, and helping them to become aware of the very real structural barriers that must be negotiated. Educators must become a part of an entire community of helpers who are, at bottom, human developers with a core mission to address and act on the inequalities young people carry to school. Equipping all young people to develop a lucid life story with a stronger sense of themselves – a “room of their own” in Virginia Woolf’s sense – and a place in the future is of the essence. But, do we see this as education? Just as Plato’s original symposium incited debate on the meanings and merits of “love”, so too do we invite critical dialogue on the meanings of a “good education” for contemporary young people – most especially for those who continue to be locked out and/or locked in by socio-economic inequality.

  EN BREF – Quand des groupes sont systématiquement exclus d’une participation significative et que leurs résultats sont inférieurs à leurs niveaux de compétence, ils deviennent à la fois « marginalisés » dans leurs environnements scolaires actuels, ainsi qu’économiquement et socialement défavorisés tout au long de leur vie. Pour de nombreux jeunes, ces marginalités recoupées prennent la forme d’attentes moindres de la part de leur entourage, d’écoles qui nient leurs manières culturelles de connaître, de réalisations scolaires et sociales moindres, de l’impression désespérée d’être à l’extérieur des trajets éducatifs qu’ils avaient imaginés ou même de l’impossibilité de fréquenter une école désirée. Nos évaluations des résultats actuels et futurs et des attentes pour ces jeunes doivent être fonction de ce nous savons qui peut être fait, au lieu de ce que nous faisons. Les éducateurs doivent jouer un nouveau rôle, contribuer à bâtir la capacité d’action réfléchie des jeunes et les aider à prendre conscience des obstacles structurels très réels à contourner.

  ---

  [1] R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better (London: Penguin, 2010).

  [2] D. Willms, Learning Divides: Ten Policy Questions about the Performance and Equity of Schools and Schooling Systems (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 1995).

  [3] W. L. Landers and S. P. Horn, “The Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System: Mixed Model methodology in Educational Assessment,” Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 8 (1994): 299-311; “Teachers Matter: Evidence from Value-Added Assessments,” Research Points 2, no. 2 (American Education Research Association, 2004).

  [4] L. B. Stebbins, R. G. St. Pierre, E. C. Proper, R. B. Anderson, and T. R. Cerva, Education as Experimentation: A Planned Variation Model, vol IV-A (Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates, 1977); C. Bereiter, “A Constructive Look at Follow Through Results,” Interchange 11 (1981).

  [5] R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better(London: Penguin, 2010).

  [6] See for example the work of Jean Anyon, Michael Apple and Bruce Curtis.

  [7] A. Furlong, F. Cartmel, A. Biggart, H. Sweeting, and P. West, “Complex Transitions: Linearity and Labour Market Integration in the West of Scotland,” in Young Adults in Transition: Becoming Citizens, eds. C. Pole, J. Pilcher,  and J. Williams (London: Palgrave, 2005).

  [8] K. Tilleczek, ed., Why Do Students Drop Out of High School? Narrative Studies and Social Critiques (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008); K. Tilleczek, S. Laflamme, B. Ferguson, et al, Fresh Starts and False Starts: Young People in Transition from Elementary to Secondary School. Report to the Ontario Ministry of Education. Toronto, 2010.

  [9] P. Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1977).

  [10] H. Williamson, The Milltown Boys Revisited (London: Berg, 2004).

  [11] A. Furlong and F. Cartmel, Higher Education and Social Justice (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2009).

  [12] Ibid.

  [13] See D. Willms, S. Freisen, and P. Milton, What did you do in school today? Transforming Classrooms through Social, Academic and Intellectual Engagement, First National Report (Toronto: Canadian Education Association, 2010).

  [14] D. Reay, Who Goes Where in Higher Education: An Issue of Class, Ethnicity and Increasing Concern (Institute for Policy Studies in Education, London Metropolitan University, 2005).

  [15] S. J. Ball, M. Maguire, and S. Macrae, Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-16 (London: Routledge-Falmer, 2000).

• Passion and Purpose in Public Schools

  November 16, 2010 3:07 PM Comments Off on Passion and Purpose in Public Schools

  I would like to talk about passion and public education.

  I’m not sure if your experience is similar to mine, but I can’t recall ever having a dispassionate conversation about schools—the way they are, the way they used to be, or the way they could be as the result of reform or transformation. And this sense of passionate response has only been heightened by the release of several documentaries on the state of public education, mainly in the United States.

  But it’s not passion for quality schools that I’m talking about. It’s passion in quality schools that has been on my mind of late. It’s an idea that has been front and centre for me for a while as I have struggled with others to revitalize the experience of school through a more artistic approach to teaching and learning. It’s an idea that re-emerged for me this past weekend as I sat down to watch yet another educational documentary, this one focusing mainly on the current state of education in the U.K.

   In a sense, We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For, (2009) provides a type of counter-narrative to the stories of broken, dysfunctional schools found in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman. In We Are The People, the film’s author, Sir Ken Robinson, makes it clear that the vital question is not about how we fix our broken schools, but about how we develop a whole new approach—a whole new model—for education. After all, why try to fix something that is no longer the right tool for the job?

   At the heart of We Are the People, is a call to create for our young people a place where, in addition to learning the skills and knowledge that they need to become participating citizens, they can also discover a sense of passion and a sense of purpose, not just for school, but for life—their life!

   As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but think back to my own schooling. You know, in retrospect, I discovered one of my life’s great passions in Grade Five; I was ten years old. It was 1968 and the education landscape in Ontario was starting to look a little bit different. That September, I was placed in the new open concept wing of the school that I had been attending since Kindergarten. I arrived on the first day to discover that desks had been replaced by work tables, wall-to-wall carpets had been installed over the tile floors and, most intriguing for me, record players had been replaced with cassette tape recorders, each with an external microphone!    

  To say that this new technology was a game-changer for me would be an understatement. Instead of spending the day with foolscap paper as the main medium of communication, I was given the freedom to use the cassette recorder whenever I wanted; I was permitted to use it to record my own voice and present class work and assignments. Heck, I even did my grade five speech on the invention of the cassette tape recorder. It wasn’t long before I had basically claimed the machine as my own.

  Once I had been successful in convincing my parents that I needed a tape recorder that actually belonged to me, I could usually be found in my room creating my own radio programs, novelty musical montages and news broadcasts.

  Throughout the rest of my schooling, I looked for opportunities to hang out in places where recording technology was being used. I joined the A.V. team at my junior high, participated in the closed-circuit coverage of a federal election in secondary school and continued to look for ways to integrate the technology into my own class work.

  When it came time to apply for post-secondary institutions, my first choice was the Radio and Television program at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. My parents refused to consider this as an alternative because Ryerson was not considered a real university. So, I trundled off to the local campus of the University of Toronto every day for three years and eventually applied to the Faculty of Education.

  People will often ask me why I didn’t apply to join the University radio station. My reason is always the same: I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. I realize now that, while school did a good job of trying to teach me the basics of math (!) and language, it wasn’t a place where my intense interest in this alternative form of communication could be nurtured and grown. That’s not what school was all about.

  While I’ve had a very fulfilling career in education, I know that my true passion was revealed to me in Grade Five. It happened quite serendipitously, quite by accident. It is only now, some 42 years later that I’m actually beginning to live it!

  So, how is this story connected with our current conversation on educational transformation?  Well, it’s not at all connected with the push towards higher achievement as reflected in test scores or graduation rates. And it’s not connected with the cry to fix schools so that they more effectively deliver the type of education for which they were originally created. And it may not even be connected with the mandate to prepare every student for a post-secondary education.

  It is, however, a story that speaks to me about schools becoming a place where passion and life can be discovered, explored and supported. It speaks about expanding, not narrowing possibilities for learners. It hints at engagement not just as something we do to students, but as something that becomes part of the energy of schools—something that enables learners to find what might continue to turn them on as they continue to move through life.

  I do recognize that many secondary schools are now doing a much better job at providing programs that would have allowed me to play with my passion a little more. Our current research on engagement, however, does indicate that much of this is still considered extra and not part of the really important work of schools.

  We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For asks us to weave a different narrative thread into our story of school—one that re-defines school as a place that is equally concerned with what learners hope for after graduation, rather than just graduation, itself.

  Ironically, this evening, I will be sitting in my newly completed basement studio recording my the first episode of a new CEA podcast series, Teacher Voices. At 10:00 p.m. the door will close, the On Air sign will be activated (a gift from my wife) and I will be, for the first time in my life, living out that passion that was stirred up in Grade Five.

   Way more to talk about here, but I’ll pose a few questions.

  Do you think that it is the role of schools to nurture this sense of passion and possibility, or are we suggesting something that is simply beyond the reach of a school’s mission?

  Are you part of a school community that is on the road to this type of transformative thinking? Do you know of a school vision that embraces these values?

  As always, we would love to hear from you!

   

• Theory of Disruption Applied to K-12 Doesn’t Compute

  November 15, 2010 8:41 PM Comments Off on Theory of Disruption Applied to K-12 Doesn’t Compute

• Engaging Learning in the 21st Century

  4:58 PM Comments Off on Engaging Learning in the 21st Century

  On November 17, 18 and 19 CEA will facilitate 2 workshops at York Region’s Quest Conference: Engaging Learning in the 21st Century. We look forward to sharing what we have learned about student engagement through What did you do in school today? in our presentations on Students as Agents of Change and CEA’s Multidimensional Model of Student Engagement: From Theory to Practice. Denise Rose (Superintendent) and Lisa Blackstock (Director of Staff Development) from the Foothills School Division in Alberta will be co-facilitating the second workshop with Penny Milton.

  This year CEA was also invited to submit an article to the Quest Journal 2010 – our article The Search for Competence in the 21st Century is now available to read through the online journal at https://www.leadingedgelearningcenter.com/. We welcome your comments on the article and our presentations, which will be posted here in the next couple of weeks. 

• What’s Stopping Us?

  October 21, 2010 12:58 PM Comments Off on What’s Stopping Us?

  It’s Thursday afternoon in a school in Brampton, Ontario. The dismissal bell has rung, and staff members are anxiously waiting in the school library for the arrival of the principal who has called what has been billed as an extremely important meeting—a command performance!
  
  “I’ve got news for you,” the principal declared as he entered the room and sat down. Our ears naturally perked up. 
  
  “We’ve got to change. The world around us is changing and we have to change with it. We need a paradigm shift in the way we think about the work we do!”
  
  And then he paused.
  
  That’s all I remember about that meeting—except the date: February…1990!
  
  In the weeks that followed, we engaged in lively discussions about new practices, student-centered learning, real-world problem solving and authentic tasks and assessments. Not everyone agreed with the new programs that were being introduced, but the school, the district and the province seemed to be pushing forward.
  
  Yet today, some 20 years later, new generations of teachers continue to beat a path to a largely unchanged and unmoved schoolhouse. Curious, isn’t it? Maybe not!
  
  In my last entry, I presented a list of criteria that could help us develop powerful and engaging learning tasks. Someone on my current staff saw the blog post and approached me this week with a rather poignant remark: “This is a great list, but we’ve been talking about this stuff for so long. Why aren’t we there yet?”
  
  There is something stubbornly resistant about this place we call school. But what, exactly, is at the heart of this resistance. I used to think that the solution to the dilemma lay in getting people motivated and excited about new ideas.
  
  But now I spend a good deal of my time thinking that there are more fundamental factors at play here. My new question:
  
  If we have a sense of what the criteria for quality learning environments are, what are the things that we bump up against when we’re trying to develop these experiences at the classroom and school level?
  
  In my own experience, I see several things that contribute to our current state of inertia when it comes to transformation. In this entry, I have chosen to focus on three of the “dissuaders” that I have encountered over the past three or four years.
  
  First, the accountability movement that also began in our schools about 20 years ago (huh!) has actually narrowed our vision of what schools could be for our learners by forcing educators to focus primarily on things that can be easily measured. A charged-up, uber-excited group of teachers in September can quickly turn into a panicked and rather staid set of individuals as the deadline for the first set of report cards approaches. In the past several years, I have found it increasingly difficult to report on student progress using the rather narrow band of success defined by our current reporting system.
  
  And let’s face it: many teachers are governed by yearly reporting cycles. If there is a mismatch between how we teach and how we are forced to report on what we teach, guess which one is going to win out? When push comes to pull, the tiny assessment boxes on the report card rule every time!
  
  Point One: We need assessment, evaluation as well as reporting tools and cycles that are more reflective of the transformative practice that we want to encourage in our schools. We need to expand our notion of accountability to include much more than what can be tested.
  
  Second, the architectural design of our school facilities goes a long way to controlling what actually happens within them on a consistent basis. Most school design is still based on the idea that learning takes place in small, isolated rooms with a single door. Despite a brief period in the late 60’s and early 70’s when walls started coming down in favour of more open learning spaces, this compartmentalized approach to design has been one of the most recognizable features of schools.
  
  Not only are teachers limited to just a few possibilities when it comes to arrangement of learners and furniture, the potential of opening up classrooms to other resources: physical or human is also limited by size and space. Oddly enough, I’m finding that, instead of getting larger and more spacious, many new schools that I visit have even smaller classroom spaces, smaller library, and smaller common areas for collaborative meeting of staff, students and parents outside the confines of the classroom.
  
  Point Two: The way that we imagine learning space will have a great influence on whether our visions of transformation will occur. We need transformation-minded teachers, learners and others to be part of design teams and committees, not just in the early stages, but throughout the entire planning and building process! (Do they make extra small hard-hats?)
  
  Finally, we are still forced to think of schooling in terms of separate distinct curriculum areas. Many jurisdictions produce separate curriculum documents, written by separate curriculum teams and rolled out of district offices by separate groups of curriculum consultants. The chances of developing powerful and engaging integrated tasks at the classroom level is diminished by the way that this strict discipline-bound approach forces educators to envision their curriculum design.
  
  Oh there are some advantages afforded by our current model of doing school. It  allows for easier scheduling of staff and learners, a more efficient balancing of time throughout the day, as well as the development of neat and tidy sets of data for—you guessed it—report cards.
  
  The world that is meant to be the subject of our school-based investigations is, itself, a pretty complex place. And the life that we live within that world is becoming increasingly connected and integrated. We can no longer expect learners to be prepared to be a confident contributor to that world unless the learning experiences in which they are immersed throughout their schooling are somehow reflective of that complexity. And in order to do this, we need a curriculum that reflects the deeper relationships between and among the learning expectations that we develop and the documents that we write!
  
  Point Three: A stronger focus on connective curriculum and interdisciplinary thinking must accompany any attempts to really transform the work of our classrooms. The most creative and imaginative teachers, despite their best intentions, will still declare the challenges they face in bringing to life a curriculum that is composed in silos.
  
  So, there are my three entry points into the conversation about some of the challenges that we face in bringing our ideas for quality learning environments to life. But you have likely encountered your own points of resistance.
  
  What do you see as the primary point of resistance in your own school experience? What are some of the ways that you have met and even overcome these challenges? Where is the most work needed if we are going to foster the development of quality learning environments for all students?

  
  

  Take a chance—post a response!

• Wanted: Quality Learning Environments

  October 10, 2010 12:34 AM Comments Off on Wanted: Quality Learning Environments

  Let me begin by acknowledging the elephant that has been lurking in the room for sometime now:

  Schools are not the best place for kids!

  A rather odd statement I know, but look at it this way: If we were to take everything we know about cognitive, emotional and social development, about how people learn and under what conditions and we used that to develop a place where children could be nurtured into a life of happiness and meaningful participation, do you think it would look anything like the schools of today?

  Most people recognize that there is a wide gap between the schools that we need for the 21st century and the schools that we currently have. Although the problem of how best to bridge the gap is a complex one, and even a little scary at times, we have to start somewhere and we have to start soon.

  In the next couple of entries, I would like to do some thinking out loud about a possible starting point that has been recognized by many as the one that holds great promise.

  ---

  If the movie Waiting for Superman presented me with any ideas worth pursuing, it was the one that claims that schools are really about the adults. I’ll massage that point a little and say that, from my experience, our schools are really designed for teaching and not for learning.

  Don’t believe me? Take a closer look at the current education reform discourse that is being used in our schools. So much emphasis is being placed on effective teaching practice: strategies and approaches that teachers can use on their students that will, if performed correctly, result in higher achievement. (My own home bookshelf boasts 32 books on “strategies that work”—all of them written within the last 5 years.) The most popular courses at faculties of education are the ones that deal with effective classroom (read student)  management techniques. Lesson plan templates are strongly geared to the things that teachers are going to do to students in order to get them to learn. Professional development programs in many jurisdictions are limited to those approaches and methods approved by ministries of education and school districts.

  And last year, a ministry-appointed trainer came in and presented teachers at our school with a scripted literacy program to use with our students during the first 20 days of school! It was at that point that I realized that the elephant in the room was actually sitting squarely on the school improvement agenda, and we weren’t going to be moving anywhere very quickly!

  It was then that I began to realize that we need a narrative turn in the story that we tell ourselves about school and I believe that the most important thread in this new story is this:  these buildings to which we force our children to come day after day, year after year are really about them and not us. Our public schools need to become primarily places of learning, not teaching. In schools, the word student and all of the metaphorical implications with which it has become infused, needs to be replaced by something that will force us to pay attention to the needs, challenges and possibilities of the young people that walk into our midst each day. For now, let’s consider the word learner.

  In redefining what we mean by effective, successful schools our starting point should be a serious examination of the heart of the school experience: the type of “work” in which learners are engaged on a daily basis.

  Imagine if all educators–not just teachers–committed significantly more time to designing the tasks and experiences in which learners were going to be engaged than we did to writing the lesson plans, preparing for tests, marking work, and trying to rush through curriculum expectations. Imagine if deep and transferable learning were the new standard for achievement and success. Imagine if learner engagement was an essential criterion for evaluating teacher effectiveness, more essential than test scores.

  So, how do we begin to make our imaginings come to life?

  Well, I think we can begin by trying to think back on those times when our classrooms really hummed—a time when learners were turned on so much that the recess bell seemed like a rude interruption. For those of you who are not educators in the formal sense, you may recall times in your own schooling where you just couldn’t wait to get to school in the morning, or you didn’t want to leave in the afternoon.

  I’ve thought about those times in my own educational career and I’ve come up with a list of ten criteria that might get the conversation going. Here goes!

  You know you’re really on to something when:

  1. the activity connects with the world of the learner; it is engaging because they can relate to it.
  2. the activity comes from the learner’s own input; it is engaging because they helped to design it
  3. the activity is based on the freedom to choose; it is engaging because they selected it
  4. the activity is meaningful; it is engaging because they feel that they are contributing something to their school, their community or the world
  5.  the activity is challenging; it is engaging because there is a real problem to be solved
  6. the activity draws the outside world in; it is engaging because it is rooted in the non-school world
  7. the activity is awe-inspiring; it is engaging because it encourages learners to look at their world in a different way
  8. the activity is interesting; it is engaging because it forces the learner to say “huh!”
  9. the activity is interdisciplinary; it is engaging because it involves ideas from a variety of traditionally separate curriculum areas
  10. the activity is expansive; it is engaging because it offers the opportunity for further investigation and learning

   I realize that, in this brief space, I’ve just begun to explore the question of what makes for a powerful, high-quality learning environment. But it’s a start!

  I would love to get your input on the list—things that could be added, taken away, expressed in a different way. I would also like to hear about those experiences that you’ve had where learning has been particularly powerful. What made it memorable?

  I believe that, despite the complexity of our current situation, we can begin to design and create schools that are full of life, of excitement and wonder. I’m hoping that something about this issue might capture your imagination and allow us to continue the conversation.

  Stephen Hurley
  stephen.hurley@sympatico.ca

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: