Archive

• Necessary Disruption (Part 5: Inquiry-Based Learning)

  April 1, 2011 11:15 PM Comments Off on Necessary Disruption (Part 5: Inquiry-Based Learning)

  In order to keep pace with the rapid, pervasive social and technological change all around them, schools need to modernize their curriculum, instruction and assessment practices while preserving the supportive relationships that will continue to be an essential foundation for student success.  In the last post I suggested the creation of 20% “white space” in the curriculum to create time for learning in depth.  In this post I will look at how instruction must change to exploit this potential and in my next post I will turn my attention to assessment.

  Traditional instruction is primarily telling and demonstrating.  We don’t like to say it quite so bluntly, but the truth is that most time in most classrooms is taken up by some form of reading, lecture or video followed by guided practice or a lab exercise in class with independent practice later at home.  Now there is nothing wrong with this approach at some times for some things.  In fact, a skillful lecture can be both instructive and inspiring, and when augmented by strategies such as those that Barry Bennett describes in Beyond Monet (e.g., academic controversy, mind mapping) direct instruction often leads to success on tests and the various rewards that ensue for students and teachers.  Moreover, students are used to this familiar pattern so they know how to get on with it and parents tend to recognize and trust it.

  There are, however, two problems with this style of instruction.  First, student engagement, and thus learning, tends to be confined to the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.  Second, the soft skills of communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity (aka 21st Century Skills) that are necessary to apply academic learning in real world contexts are addressed only tangentially, if at all.  Additionally, some students do not find this style supportive and experience frustration or failure because of the mismatch with their learning strengths.  Many more who are reasonably successful in academic terms are really only surviving and not truly thriving as we would like.  The increased demands of modern life for creative knowledge workers and critically competent citizens requires that schools do better for students.

  Increasing student engagement, deepening learning in content areas and broadening outcomes to include 21st Century Skills that transcend subject boundaries requires not merely refinements to traditional practice, but distinctly new practices – disruptive rather than incremental change, if you will.  Traditional practices of direct instruction need not be abandoned, however.  They will always have their place in the pedagogical repertoire, but they should be used selectively from amongst a broader pallet that includes critical, creative and collaborative inquiry.

  Inquiry requires questions – real questions – that are developmentally appropriate, related to the learning outcomes that the curriculum intends and both interesting and important within the student’s frame of reference.  Framing these questions in partnership with students and scaffolding the inquiry that results so as to place students in their zone of proximal development is an essential pedagogical skill for 21st Century Learning.  The approach is often termed “problem based learning” or “project based learning,” without any significant distinction as far as I can tell.  Personally, I prefer the former description of PBL because it emphasizes the grounding in real questions.  (Note that PBL not the same as ‘discovery learning,’ which is concerned with the initial development of understanding rather than deepening it through application.)

  The questions that students explore should provide an opportunity for them to use what they have learned previously and augment that with new public knowledge to which they have access and which they are developmentally able to understand.  This knowledge building exercise should be conducted in groups, which provides the benefits of complementary abilities and potential synergy as well as the opportunity to develop communication and collaboration skills.  Because students must identify relevant and reliable information, which they then use to create a response or solution, PBL requires both creative and critical thinking.  Finally, the project should result in an actual application of the solution developed to evaluate its effectiveness and/or presentation of group results to an authentic audience that can validate the work and provide useful feedback.  

  As important and powerful as such projects are, they cannot constitute the entire curriculum.  There are some things best learned through direct instruction.  However, the knowledge acquisition and skill development that students continue to require is lent greater authenticity and significance when it is understood by students to be a useful part of a larger inquiry that requires such knowledge and skill.

  It is fashionable to suggest that the use of technology itself will deepen engagement and thus understanding.  I do not believe that to be an automatic result, at least not beyond a short-lived Hawthorne effect.  The key to engagement is that students find the content interesting and important enough to warrant their time and energy.  The modern world is infused with technology and that technology is reshaping the way things are done in all aspects of life, so schools should also exploit its potential, but technology itself is only a vehicle.  It offers many exciting possibilities and innovative educators are demonstrating the potential of a technology-infused pedagogy in often dramatic ways, but technology grafted onto weak pedagogy will not result in improved learning and teaching.  High Tech High, for example, has made a name for itself as an exemplar of 21st Century Learning and makes extensive use of technology, but its design principles are focussed on learning, not the technology used to support it (see http://thurly.net/).

  More inquiry-based learning that extends and deepens learning through knowledge building and public application/presentation is essential to 21st Century Learning.  This is hardly a new idea – in fact, it sounds a lot like something Dewey might say – and it is far from unknown in schools already, but it has to move from familiar theory that is occasionally enacted, perhaps with an enriched class, to a central premise and practice in all schools and for all students.  Our ability to do so can be greatly enhanced by infusing inquiry-based pedagogy with the technological tools that are endemic in the world outside of school, but the heart of the issue for 21st Century Learning is not merely using technology but regularly engaging students with questions they can explore rather than only answers we want them to absorb.

• Necessary Disruption (Part 4: Less, But Deeper, Curriculum)

  March 27, 2011 4:50 PM Comments Off on Necessary Disruption (Part 4: Less, But Deeper, Curriculum)

  Schools must respond to the rapid, pervasive social and technological change all around them.  In doing so they must preserve the supportive relationships which are their most essential benefit.  Surface features of schooling such as curriculum, instruction and assessment, however, need to be transformed.  But how?

  Let’s start with curriculum, and specifically the high school curriculum.  It’s too broad and too thin.  It too easily becomes a superficial diet of info-bits that are required to pass tests that measure what is easiest to measure rather than what is most important.  In a rush to ensure that students know all the basic essentials in a world where knowledge is growing exponentially we have fallen into the trap of filling heads rather than changing minds.  This serves no one well.  Curriculum bloat needs to be reversed in order to free up the time required for deeper inquiry into big ideas so that students are enabled with understandings, skills and dispositions rather than encumbered by inert and decaying knowledge.

  Curriculum is also too fragmented into subjects.  This is a purely academic deceit that is not present in the “real world,” where issues are always multidisciplinary.  Subject divisions make life easier for curriculum writers, text book publishers and testers, but they make schooling less authentic, engaging and significant for students.  These divisions also obstruct the development of important life skills such as critical thinking, collaboration and communication that should be present as pervasive themes but are generally lost, or at best inconsistently addressed, because nobody sees them as their job.

  It seems to me that there is a fairly broad consensus that students would be better served if curriculum were deeper and more integrated, but much less willingness to make the change.  Policy makers seem reluctant to suggest that anything be removed from the curriculum and many teachers are so indoctrinated with, and comfortable within, a subject-specific view that they do not seize the opportunities that do exist for a more substantial inquiry-based approach to learning.  Sometimes, in fact, it is teachers themselves who are the most fervent defenders of the curricular status quo.

  Therefore, I would propose a two-pronged response to this problem.  Government should, with consultation but without undue delay, trim the curriculum to create some “white space,” perhaps about 20%.  Teachers should be challenged to use this opportunity to integrate and deepen learning and schools should be required to consult with and report to their community in this regard.  I don’t believe, as Michael Fullan says, that you can mandate what matters but you can articulate a worthy goal, create the potential and issue the challenge.

  Ideally, in addition to individual teachers making changes, secondary schools would then organize students in “academies” or “houses” consisting of one class group per grade in order to encourage integration by having two teachers work together to cover at least the English, Social Studies, Math and Science components of the curriculum for those students until at least the end of Grade 9.  These classes should stay together and work with the same core teachers for at least two years.  This would provide a much more natural transition from elementary and create the potential for extended inquiry and stronger relationships.

  To invigorate and accelerate these changes, teacher teams should, within the confines of the working day, be provided with time to co-plan, and, as part of their own commitment to professional growth, they should create personal learning networks (directly and virtually) on their own time.

  The experience of deeper inquiry will, I believe, inspire both students and teachers so inquiry-based learning that takes root in Junior Secondary will extend into senior grades even if the greater degree of specialization required at that level makes a similar cohort organization impractical – which, however, I believe should be kept as an open question.

  Government assessments, which some would eliminate but which I see as a reasonable expectation by the public and an inevitable feature of schooling in our time, should be amended to reflect these changes – narrowing but also deepening their focus.  (I will say more about assessment in a future blog but mention this aspect because it is an essential feature of the disruptive change I am proposing.)

  There are abundant individual examples of similar approaches that have been highly successful even without the enabling government action proposed.  Its time for this good practice to become the common practice, and the expected practice, in order to provide students with the integrated, inquiry-based learning they require to prepare them for the world as it is and as it is becoming.  I believe that it would serve both students and society better and that it would be more enriching, rewarding and sustainable for teachers as well – a virtuous circle of benefits.

• Good to Great? Who Knew?

  March 25, 2011 9:47 AM Comments Off on Good to Great? Who Knew?

  There is a strong correlation between a school system’s improvement journey stage and the tightness of central control over the individual schools activities and performance. Systems on the poor to fair journey, in general characterized by lower skill educators, exercise tight, central control over teaching and learning processes in order to minimize the degree of variation between individual classes and across schools.

   

  In contrast, systems moving from good to great, characterized by higher skill educators, provide only loose, central guidelines for teaching and learning processes, in order to encourage peer-led creativity and innovation inside schools, the core driver for raising performance at this stage. 
  —“How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better” (p. 26)

   

   

  It’s been almost a week since Spring Break 2011 ended and I’m still unpacking, but not in the way that you think! Instead of heading south this year, I headed to the Web and spent a good portion of my school break journeying through the McKinsey & Company report, “How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better”. Now before you roll your eyes or begin playing mournful melodies on the violin, please understand that I usually enjoy reading this type of material. For me, it represents a powerful form of professional development and, in this particular case, an opportunity to hone my critical thinking skills.

   The McKinsey report tracks the improvement journeys of 20 school systems around the world, systems that have realized steady gains on a variety of national and international assessments over an extended period of time. But it’s not a report to be taken at face value. There are a good deal of ideas, approaches and claims in the 126 pages of the report that require careful thought and, yes, some unpacking.

   In previous reflections, I focused on the lack of stories connecting the data with the lives of real teachers and students, as well as the counter-narrative suggested by the choice of photographs for the report.

   But there is one aspect of the report with which I’ve struggled right from my first reading. It’s a struggle that has to do with the amount of central control necessary at each of the performance stages described in the report: poor, fair, good, great, and excellent. It’s a struggle that is most concisely expressed in the excerpt from the report quoted in at the beginning of this reflection.

  Part of my difficulty has to do with the fact that the McKinsey report traces the improvement journey of Ontario, the province in which I have spent my entire career, from being a good system ten years ago to its current standing as one of the world’s great school systems. Hmmm. If you were to ask any Ontario teacher who was part of a publicly funded system in the year 2000 about the messaging that they received from the government of the day, and from their own school districts, I’m pretty confident that you would get quite the opposite sense. After all, provincial testing of elementary students was just a few years old, the Secondary School Literacy Test was due to be piloted that year and the establishment of a provincial Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat was still a few years off.

  If we were a good school system in 2000, someone failed to pass on the message! Instead, our lives as teachers began to be de-professionalized in many respects. In fact, many of the intervention strategies that the McKinsey report describes as being appropriate for a poor system on the road to becoming fair would likely resonate more with many teachers in Ontario. From the report, a the proper way to deal with a school system moving from poor to fair:

  • Scripted teaching materials
  • Coaching on curriculum
  • Instructional time on task
  • School visits by center
  • Incentives for high performance

  • Outcome targets
  • Additional support for low performing schools
  • School infrastructure improvement
  • Provision of textbooks

  Hmmm. Sound familiar? I would argue that this has been the reality on the ground in Ontario for many teachers, for many years. Oh, there may be some schools where performance scores have allowed for more innovative collaboration and relatively loose central control, but for many, my own included, loose central control is a concept that stands as a distant memory from my early days of teaching.

  So my first difficulty in unpacking the McKinsey report has been the apparent disconnect between the story we’re telling the world—those on the outside, and the story that we’re telling our own people, especially those who work within the system.

  Looking forward, my second concern can be expressed most simply as a question: Is it really possible to rebuild a sense of professionalism in a group that has had, over a period of time, been systematically de-professionalized?

  According to the McKinsey report, many of the strategies that have been used with teachers over the past decade or so have been based on a set of false assumptions. Ontario teachers are very highly skilled, carry with them a great deal of both explicit and tacit knowledge about their work and, as a group, have been capable of establishing a very highly developed professional development culture. Yet, the strategies that have been used seem to have assumed that we come with low skills, would benefit from tight control and surveillance, and are in need of a centrally-organized training regimen. 

  So, as I continue to unpack from my journey through the McKinsey report, my main questions look to the future of the profession that I love: As we move forward, how do we give back to our teachers that professional space to develop a strong sense of purpose and efficacy?  How do we as teachers work to reclaim our identities as highly trained and highly competent professionals?

  Still some unpacking to do here! Perhaps you’re willing to jump in to the conversation and help me do that. Is this an experience that is unique to Ontario? Can educators from other Canadian jurisdictions find any resonance in the Ontario experience? Am I mis-reading something here? 

  
  

• 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.  

• How Can We Prevent High School Dropouts?

  March 16, 2011 6:43 PM Comments Off on How Can We Prevent High School Dropouts?

  How do we help students stay in school?

  For most people, completing secondary school has become a basic requirement to be able to live satisfying and productive lives. Much has been learned about the factors that keep young people on track to successful high school graduation.

  The most important single factor is students’ feeling of connection to the school and in particular, the belief by every student that there is at least one adult in the school who knows and cares about that student. Schools can do many things to promote this, such as assigning teacher advisors, and taking action early when a student shows signs of being in difficulty, both personally and academically. Schools can reach out to struggling students to offer extra support; sometimes only a small amount of such support is enough to make a big difference.

  Also important are an engaging curriculum and effective teaching practices. Many students do not find their lessons intellectually stimulating.   Students want and need work that challenges their abilities but that also provides the opportunity to be successful. This is only partly a matter of the content; it is also a matter of effective teaching and of fair assessment practices. Students do better when they feel they have some input into the kind of work they do, opportunities to improve their work, and teaching that pays attention to their background knowledge and interests.

  The fourth key factor is a respectful environment, where staff and students treat one another with consideration and thoughtfulness, where students have a voice in how the school operates, and where rules show consideration for students’ individual needs and circumstances.

  High schools that embody these features will have better outcomes and better graduation rates.

  ---

  Additional Resources For Parents

  GLOBAL VOICES IN CANADA: What Did You Do in School Today?: This article looks at the importance of student engagement in high schools. http://webspace.oise.utoronto.ca/~levinben/Kappan1002levWDYDIST.pdf

  In Canada: 20 minutes to change a life?: The article discusses the positive impact of supportive adult attention on students facing challenges in high school.

  http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/20-minutes-change-life

   

  National Center on Secondary Education and Transition: This website provides tips for parents on strategies that promote graduation and school achievement.

  http://www.ncset.org/publications/viewdesc.asp?id=3135

   

  Ontario Ministry of Education: This website provides options for parents to help children graduate from secondary school.

  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/studentsuccess/index.html

   

  School Leavers: Understanding the Lived Reality of Student Disengagement from Secondary School: This report was prepared by Resource Group The Hospital for Sick Children For the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, Special Education Branch, Toronto, Canada

  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/schoolleavers.pdf

   

  What Did You Do in School Today?: This report discusses the need for social, academic and intellectual engagement for adolescents learners.

  http://www.cea-ace.ca/sites/default/files/cea-2009-wdydist.pdf

   

  Research References Informing this Issue

  Balfanz, R. et al. (2007), “Preventing Student Disengagement and Keeping Students on the Gradation Path in Urban Middle-Grades Schools: Early Identification and Effective Interventions” in Educational Psychologist, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 223-235.

  Hammond, C., Linton, D., Smink, J., & Drew, S. (2007). Dropout risk factors and exemplary programs. Clemson, SC: National Dropout Prevention Center, Communities In Schools, Inc.

  Jerald, C. D. (2006). Identifying potential dropouts: Key lessons for building an early warning system. Washington, DC: American Diploma Project Network, Achieve, Inc.

  Lyche, C.S. (2010). Taking on the completion challenge: A literature review on policies to prevent drop out and early school leaving. Paris: OECD

  Mac Iver, D.J. and M. A. Mac Iver (2009), Beyond the Indicators: An Integrated School-level Approach to Dropout Prevention, The George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence in Education, Arlington

  Rumberger, R.W. and Lim, S.A. (2008), Why Students Drop Out of School: A Review of 25 Years of Research, California Dropout Research Project, Santa Barbara.

   

   

   

   

   

• 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

• A non-classroom day?

  March 12, 2011 9:50 PM Comments Off on A non-classroom day?

  It’s the first Saturday of Spring Break, and I’ve just spent the past couple of hours catching up on some reading and writing that has been stored in the favourites section of my twitter account. (Twitter favourites are now the virtual equivalent to my bedside table!)

  One blog post that caught my eye was written by Dwight Carter, principal of a 2400 student secondary school in the U.S. Carter had heard about the idea of a no-office day for administrators–a day where principals and vice-principals unchain themselves from their desks and their computers and have time to get out into the halls and classrooms of their schools. I love the email that Carter sent his staff to announce his intentions:

  NO OFFICE DAY- In order to visit more classrooms, I am having a NO OFFICE DAY on Friday, February 4. I will not be in my office the entire day (unless there is an emergency). I’ll see you around!

  Throughout the day, Carter used his mobile phone to communicate with his Twitter followers about what he was seeing and experiencing. A positive and eye-opening experience!

  Beyond wishing for this experience for the administrators at my own school, Carter’s post got me thinking about a time in our own district where, as teachers, we were encouraged to visit other teachers. There was an infrastructure of coverage in place where we could have a substitute come in to cover our day while we spent time either in our own school, or at another school in the district.

  It was an experience of collegiality before the time where we needed to talk a whole lot about collegiality. If I knew of a teacher that had a dynamite writing program or an innovative arts approach, I could arrange to spend time observing, chatting and learning. If I knew about an engaging social studies program across the district, I could go and see it.

  Dwight Carter’s commitment to the idea of a non-office day got my imaginative juices flowing to the point where I’m wondering whether there are any school districts around the country that  have this type of option built into their professional development plan for administrators or for teachers. If so, I would love to hear about it!

  Here’s a brief and rather modest proposal that might act as a placeholder for some more robust conversation about a non-classroom day for teachers.

  What if teachers were to negotiate a clause in our teaching contracts that would allow us to dedicate one day per term for a non-classroom day? The day could be jointly funded by professional development monies maintained by the teachers’ association/district and the teacher’s own sick day allotment. Participating teachers could make use of a variety of methods for reflecting on the experience (written reflection, blog entry, podcast) in order that the learning is recorded for use in teacher portfolios and group P.D. archives.

  I’m not sure if my experience is similar to that of other educators across the country, but I have found that much of what is currently done in the name of teacher professional development at the district level and beyond is governed and controlled by an agenda that sees better test results as a key indicator of success. There are plenty of experts available to come into our schools to tell us what we should be doing in terms of best practice but this is seldom accompanied by opportunities to go and see it working in real classrooms with real teachers and real students!

  Watching beautifully-edited video clips of guided reading, critical thinking and mathematical problem solving may be enough to inspire some teachers to go out and learn more. Polished books and articles may contain important insights about certain approaches, but they are a poor cousin to actually spending extended periods of time in environments where colleagues are working—sometimes struggling– to implement a particular approach, method or strategy.

  I’m wondering whether a non-classroom day might be one way to build a renewed sense of self-directed collegiality back into the profession.

  If you already have access to this type of opportunity, I would love to know how it works. If not, would this be something that you would find helpful?

  A non-classroom day! Could a change of scenery be as good as—professional development?

• 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!

• Teacher Merit Pay in Canada

  February 15, 2011 10:08 AM Comments Off on Teacher Merit Pay in Canada

  My greatest fear surrounding the idea of introducing teacher merit pay here in Canada is not that it will fail to have an effect on our schools. My greatest fear is that it will!

  A big part of me knows that if we were to begin to link cash bonuses to how well students perform on standardized tests, we would likely begin to see an increase in how well students do on standardized tests. If we were to link some part of our compensation model for teachers to an evaluation of how well teachers understood and implemented certain “best practices”, I have no doubt that the way teachers teach would be changed substantially. 

  As I indicated in my last post on this topic, I’m not against re-examining the way that we compensate teachers. It may be true that the experience/education rubric on which most pay grids are based may no longer be effective in encouraging the type of schools that will meet our needs in the 21st century. And, I’m not naïve enough (anymore) to think that teachers are going to do their most effective work just because they “love kids”.

  But I think that we need to be clear about the type of school system that we want to leave for future generations and how the type of teaching (and learning) that would come from any type of “pay for performance” would affect that vision.

  First, I know that as soon as we define what counts as student success under a merit pay system—and we will have to clearly define this—we automatically sideline other types of gains that may, in fact, be very desirable. We’ve seen this happen in the current school climate where focus is placed almost exclusively on literacy and numeracy.  Instead of opening up the walls of our schools to include alternative ways of learning, new ways of thinking about literacy (and what counts as literacy) and possibilities for drawing community resources into the schoolhouse, I fear that merit pay will further narrow the already tight definitions around success, student progress and school improvement.

  The second thought that I have has to do with the working conditions that will be promoted and fostered under a “pay for performance” system. I fear that teaching will become even less collaborative, more isolated and more focused on the implementation of “right practice” as opposed to the exploration of new possibilities for teaching and learning.

  In my last posting on this issue, I promised some alternatives to a merit pay system, alternatives which could also have the desired effect of improving the quality of our schools and the effectiveness of our teaching. Since that posting, I’ve had a number of conversations with my colleagues about this topic and, although many ideas emerged, very few of them involved paying teachers any more for the work that we do. First and foremost, they involved imaginatively changing the way that teachers are encouraged (and permitted) to carry out this work!

  Here are my top three imaginings.

  First, imagine how effective teaching could become if we were to get serious about the power of collaboration. We must do something to build this into daily practice. Currently, the first time during the day that I get a chance to have a meaningful conversation with another colleague is in the faculty lounge at lunch, and from my experience, these conversations rarely center on curriculum design and implementation!

  In my own school district, elementary teachers receive, on average, 220 minutes of planning time each week but, in most cases, this is staffed and scheduled in such a way that opportunity is not provided for teachers to meet with grade level partners, let alone other teachers in the school. So my first idea for increasing teaching effectiveness is not simply about more planning time. It’s about creating an infrastructure that encourages more opportunity for authentic professional conversation and collaboration.

  Second, imagine what could happen if we were to challenge the firmly entrenched assumption that development and learning are primarily tied to age. What if we were to challenge the idea that “if I’m a seven year old, here is the list of skills and knowledge that I need to know before I become an eight year old”? As soon as we begin reflecting on that single assumption, and start to imagine what schools might be like if we were to loosen the hold it has on our thinking, the nature of our work as teachers could be opened up in ways that could be more effective for both students and teachers. I can imagine possibilities like cross-grade projects, skills-based pods of learning for specific curriculum areas, student-directed learning initiatives, and more space for well-designed differentiated instruction. The entire architecture of schools could change to better accommodate the complexity that largely goes unrecognized under our current model.

  Finally, imagine what could happen if we began to shift the direction in which information about teaching and learning flows. In the past 20 years, I have noticed a large change in the way that teacher knowledge is valued and sought. These days, much of what is considered to be “best practice” comes from outside our classrooms and schools. Presented as research-based, it is packaged, published and, in some cases, scripted for immediate use. While many of these strategies and approaches may be valuable, handing them to teachers in this way effectively short-circuits an extremely important part of the teaching and learning relationship and implies a lack of trust in the power of the complexity of what happens in schools!  An essential part of feeling like a professional comes from the sense that members are contributing to what counts as professional knowledge. In an effort to fast-track the process of school improvement, a good deal of this sense has been lost. But I imagine that we can get it back through the forging of more deliberate relationships between field-based professionals and the research community. As just one example, strategic alliances could be built that leverage the experience and resources of university-based researchers to enable strong and lasting connections with teachers in school communities.

  Of all the ideas that have emerged connected with improving the quality of teaching, the least imaginative is merit pay. It is an idea that would, no doubt, have a tremendous impact on education here in Canada, but I think that the impact would be regrettable and difficult to reverse.

  What are some of the alternative strategies about which you have been thinking? Is this issue a part of your conversations with your colleagues? If you are a teacher, what do you see as the initiative that has affected your own teaching practice the most in the past few years?

• Merit Pay for Canadian Teachers

  February 1, 2011 1:57 PM Comments Off on Merit Pay for Canadian Teachers

  I’m not opposed to merit pay for teachers on the grounds that I am looking to protect the jobs of incompetent colleagues, or my own job, for that matter. I’m not opposed to it because, as a teacher, I’m afraid of being publicly judged.  And I’m certainly not opposed to a system of merit pay because I’m resistant to change. No, the reason I’m opposed to concept of merit pay for teachers—at least the models of merit pay as they are generally being debated in the United States and, most recently, here in Canada—is that they are ill-conceived, simplistic and are very unlikely to have any lasting impact on the success of students in our schools.

  
  

  When B.C. leadership hopeful Kevin Falcon indicated a few weeks ago that he was willing to include merit pay for his province’s teachers as a plank in his political campaign, the reaction was predictable, polarized and protective. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t too surprised by this. If we’re serious about revamping the model we use to compensate and value teachers, all of the parties involved need to be at the table throughout the entire process. Thoughtful, respectful conversation on this issue will always trump media storms and political manoeuvrings.  We have to think more carefully about our motivations for introducing these ideas as well as our long-term goals for our schools and our students. I’m not confident that this is being done to an adequate degree.

  
  

  We also need to think clearly about the long term costs of implementing a new compensation model. With teacher salaries and benefits taking up the lion’s share of any education budget, it is important to consider what would happen if a teacher merit plan actually worked! Teacher merit pay is often lumped into conversations about teacher accountability. Financial accountability cannot be ignored in the process.

  
  

  The idea of paying educators based on student performance fails to acknowledge the complexity of the teaching enterprise. The use of some narrowly devised value-added metrics to assign bonuses to teachers represents, not only a misapplication of this type of assessment tool, but it tries to bypass the need to recognize that student performance on the standardized evaluations that would be necessary under such a scheme cannot possibly capture the complexity involved. Basing teacher performance solely on student performance assumes a simplicity about the work of teaching that is simply not there.

  
  

  Finally, the idea of merit pay for teachers may yield some short-term gains, but both the model and the gains are likely to have a limited shelf life. Again, on the one hand, the cost of ensuring that the scheme is both scalable and sustainable would be, by all accounts, prohibitive. On the other hand, we already know that, while high stakes testing can actually draw attention to areas on which focus is required, they can also sideline other valuable aspects of the school experience. In the end, the implementation of a merit pay scheme based on student performance runs the serious risk of narrowing the scope of classroom practice even more.  In effect, a model designed to improve student achievement may, in fact, serve to have the opposite effect.

  
  

  That said, I’m all for having a discussion about how to restructure the way that we compensate teachers for the work that they do. I don’t know many people who would argue that the current experience-education matrix of determining teacher value represents a type of international gold standard.  But let’s be a little more creative, respectful and intelligent about it.

  
  

  I don’t know about my colleagues, but I feel that I’m pretty well-compensated as a teacher. I recognize the value of my benefits package, the freedom provided by the structure of the school year in terms of vacation time and the fact that I have been paying into a pretty enviable pension plan. While I’m not adverse to higher levels of pay (I do have a family and a mortgage), I don’t think that the prospect of remuneration for student results is going to make me approach my job in a different way. I’m not going to spend additional hours preparing lessons. I’m not necessarily going to teach more effectively. I won’t be more dedicated to the students that I teach. I like to think that, while there is always room for improvement, monetary incentives are not going to bring me to a new plateau of excellence.

  
  

  Similarly, for teachers who should likely be considering another profession (and there are some), a whole new model of compensation is unlikely to provide the motivation that they need to work harder or perform better.

  
  

  So, there you have a sense (admittedly brief) of why I can’t take seriously the argument that teacher merit pay is going to improve teacher quality and student achievement in this country.

  
  

  But, I’m not done. I do have a modest proposal for a performance incentive program of my own, based on what I know motivates me as a teacher and, as Daniel Pink suggests in his book, Drive, motivates most people involved in work that is both complicated and complex.

  
  

  That will be the topic of my next posting.

  
  

  Until then, do you believe that a system of merit pay is what is needed to improve teacher quality in this country? Do you think that teachers need incentives to do better work? What would your system look like? Feel free to take issue with anything that I’ve said so far. Feel free to offer your own thoughts and ideas!

  
  

   

  
  

   

• 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.’

  
  

• Let’s Get It Started

  January 7, 2011 3:46 PM Comments Off on Let’s Get It Started

  Well, its taken a few months, but some of the issues that emerged from the Waiting for Superman conversations in the United States have started to slowly drift north of the border.

  This week, many news services picked up the trial balloon surrounding merit pay for teachers floated by B.C. leadership hopeful Kevin Falcon. At the same time, the National Post carried a commentary by Kevin Libin pointing out that some international jurisdictions appear to be enamoured with Alberta’s policy allowing for charter schools and voucher programs–despite the fact that the rest of Canada has appeared to take very little notice.

  Both of these articles have drawn, and will continue to draw the expected responses from the usual suspects and advocacy organizations on both sides of the debates, and that’s OK. That’s their job.

  At the same time, I’m hoping that the emergence of these issues in the popular press might finally begin to animate a set of conversations at tables around the country–boardroom, kitchen and staffroom–about education in this country. As many involved in educational data and research are quick to point out, Canada does pretty well on many international assessments. But there are still major issues of quality, equity and vision that need to be addressed.

  This is not a time to hope that debates around teacher quality, testing, funding and school choice will simply go away. Instead, this is a time to try to keep these issues on our radar and in front of Canadian citizens. Let’s begin to tackle these questions head on in passionate but rational ways. Let’s move the important conversations about the future of Canadian education and Canadian schools out of the dark corners of relatively obscure blogsites and into the open light.

  We have a great deal of work to do if we are going to claim that all Canadians have access to an excellent public education system in this country. But we need to carry on that work in a spirit of full disclosure, shared vision and evidence-based decision making. This is not a time for partisan politics, unexamined assumptions or timidity. Instead, this is the perfect time to accept the challenge to open up conversations that will ultimately result in sound policy and a system that meets the needs of all Canadians as we move further into the 21st century.

  Bring on the controversy. Let’s get it started!

• 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.

• Are We There Yet?

  December 27, 2010 4:26 PM Comments Off on Are We There Yet?

  Many drivers have now traded in their rather thick, dog-eared map books for the more compact, efficient and fun-to-use GPS receiver. Not only does the availability of voice command technology replace the need for reading complex maps while driving, many GPS devices can also direct you to local points of interest, drastically reduce time spent asking for directions, as well as the embarrassment of admitting that you’re lost (particularly useful for those of us who hate stopping to ask for directions)!
  
  Like many new technologies, a GPS receiver is so simple to use that we are sometimes oblivious to how complex the inner workings of the system actually are, and what is required to make it work with such accuracy and efficiency. There are, however, a couple of important and somewhat fascinating things about this technology that—you guessed it—may be helpful in a metaphorical way as we continue down the road to educational transformation.
  
  First, the GPS device in your car must receive signal information from at least 4 of the 24 working Global Positioning Satellites that circle the earth every day. The receiver collects and compares the data in order to determine where on the Earth’s surface you are standing. Without information from several different sources, an accurate reading would not be possible.
  
  The second important thing has to do with the information that is held by the receiver itself. Although a GPS receiver does not actually send a signal, it does have a pre-loaded map of the area in which you’re traveling in its memory. As the signal is received the GPS receiver overlays your location data onto the map, allowing the device to provide turn-by-turn directions. This also makes more complex calculations of speed and time of arrival possible (and invaluable!) As I discovered in driving through a fairly new set of subdivisions, however, it is essential that an accurate and current map of the area is loaded into your GPS devices.
  
  In addition to the everyday utility of GPS devices, especially for those who travel a great deal in unfamiliar territories, the way the technology works provides some powerful metaphorical tools for thinking about educational change.
  
  First, I would argue that the education of a Canadian citizenry is a much more contentious enterprise than it was 50 years ago. Our society has matured to the point where the sheer complexity of life both inside and outside the schoolhouse has increased immensely. As educators, and as those who make policy for educators, we need a set of tools to help keep us on track and headed in the right direction.
  
  Beyond that, however, thinking about change through the lens of the GPS metaphor suggests at least two other important questions. First, are we using more than one or two sources of data to make decisions about future paths, or are we limiting the source and type of information that we are collecting? If, for example, our policy decisions are being made by looking at just one type of annual test, no matter how well constructed it may be, we run the risk of being misguided, if not misinformed. For sure, we are living in data-drenched educational communities, but how diverse are the forms of data that are being collected and used for decision-making? Lots more to say here!
  
  The second question that emerges from the GPS metaphor has to do with accuracy and relevance of the maps and models that are being used to guide our vision of this place called school. A great deal of new and exciting research on learning, brain function and effective teaching has been done in the past 15-20 years. Couple that with the way that technology has transformed ways and means of communication, interaction and collaboration and you suddenly have a multitude of new paths and avenues that needed to be added to our map! Yet again, there seems to be a great deal of reluctance to explore how these new ideas and technologies might take us in a whole new direction.
  
  Like GPS technology, data in the absence of accurate and detailed visions of all of the routes open to us in terms of educating our young people is simply going to get us lost, frustrated and late for the 21st century. Perhaps, alongside the development of better positioning tools, we need to begin in earnest the work of remapping the educational landscape so that our data collection projects might lead us to new and valuable places.

  
  

  Are we there yet?

• Improving Assessment and Reporting with Performance Standards

  December 17, 2010 6:34 AM Comments Off on Improving Assessment and Reporting with Performance Standards

  Descriptive assessment that helps learners and their parents understand what they can do and what they are aspiring to be able to do is a powerful lever for learning.

   In British Columbia, teacher-developed tools that serve just this purpose are available from the Ministry for optional use in reading, writing, numeracy, social responsibility, ICT integration and Healthy Living (http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/perf_stands/) and an ad hoc task force formed by a consortium of school districts is in the late stages of developing similar standards for science (). (If you know of other similar resources that are available to teachers in Canada, I would love to hear about them.)

   These standards are descriptions of the stages of intended learning outcomes that have been developed so that teachers do not each have to develop assessment criteria themselves. They are most effective when shared with students and parents as the basis for assessment and reporting, which improves communication and enables self-assessment.

   Criterion-referenced assessment, as it is called, measures student learning against expectations rather than by comparing students to each other (which is known as norm-referenced assessment, or ‘grading on the curve’). Explicit expectations stated in advance make learning goals clear and assessment more transparent and understandable.

   If resources such as those I have mentioned do not pertain to the specific learning activities being undertaken, teachers can develop criteria themselves, or collaboratively with their class, in advance. This helps students know what they are trying to achieve and ensures that they will understand the assessment provided by the teacher during and after the activity. It also helps them to take more responsibility for and assess their own learning.

   Criterion-referenced assessment does not eliminate the subjectivity that is inherent in all grading (including those with the illusion of objectivity like math and science exams), but it goes a long way towards making assessment consistent, transparent and meaningful for students and parents.

   And it certainly makes more sense that just totaling up the quiz scores and turning them into a percentage.  This produces a grade alright but it doesn’t help the student know what they are doing well or where they are expected to improve – which is the primary purpose of assessment.

• The Children Left Behind

  December 16, 2010 7:07 PM Comments Off on The Children Left Behind

  The research is fairly clear and consistent regarding the effect of socio-economic status (SES) on educational achievement, especially in the early years of a child’s life. In education circles, the generally accepted notion that SES is the strongest influence on a child’s academic achievement is usually followed by the reminder that schools play a vital role in helping to mitigate the inequity caused by poverty.

  Unicef’s recently released Innocenti Report Card 9: The Children Left Behind asks a very critical question as it examines the inequalities and, indeed, inequities in the area of child well-being in 24 of the world’s richest countries: How far behind are children being allowed to fall? Admitting that when you set out to measure any demographic domain, there will always be groups that fall on either side of the normal range, Innocenti #9 probes the gap between the lower end of the distribution and the median.

  And when that measurement approach is applied to the three major areas of child well-being examined in the report—material, educational and health—Canada lands pretty well in the middle of the pack.

  There are two subdomains that are particularly disturbing, and ones that we need to take seriously when we’re talking about school performance, academic achievement and the idea of success for all.

  When it comes to the indicators for material well-being, Canada scored 20 out of 24 countries when it came to the household income and overall living space in families living with children. In terms of household income, this means that families in the bottom 10th percentile had a household income that was 56% of the national median.

  When you begin to look at the research on SES and student success in school more closely, it becomes apparent that there are many factors associated with lower SES that contribute to low school performance: amount of time working parent(s) have to spend with children, access to educational resources, parents’ own level of schooling, support networks, and home structure. So, the SES problem is really a complex set of problems that are intimately connected with each other.

  Complexity aside (for a moment, at least), I think that there is a fairly straight line that can be drawn between what is revealed in the UNICEF report about the gap between our poorest families and what is considered to be normal in terms of the income necessary to raise and nurture children that are able to participate effectively in our society. If schools are one of the primary gatekeepers for that participation, and if equity is a real priority for us, then this gap needs to foster some serious questions on a number of different levels.

  You know, we’ve spent a great deal of time talking about student achievement, mostly in terms of test scores and educational attainment statistics. But these are measures of output, aren’t they? For me, the UNICEF report forces us to ask questions about what we’re providing on the other end of the process that will ensure greater success for all participants. If we know that SES is a major factor in reaching our provincial and national goals around achievement, and if we know that this is a an area of equity in which Canada is falling behind, then we need to turn some of our energy away from the hand-wringing that we experience everytime a set of achievement data is released, and get down to the real work of closing the gaps that children in a country of our standing should not be experiencing.

  One of the recommendations made by UNICEF Canada in response to the Innocenti Report Card #9 is the establishment of a Children’s Commissioner to ensure the best interests of children are considered in policy decisions that affect them, and services and policies affecting children are coordinated across government so all Canadian children have equitable access to and benefit from them.

  In my mind, this would be a positive step in addressing the complexity aat the levels of both policy and practice.

  UNICEF Canada has invited supporters to sign an electronic petition demanding that this recommendation becomes a reality.

  I’ve just signed my name!

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: