By Allan Alach
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it
to me at allan.alach@ihug.co.nz.
This week’s homework!
Master
of many trades: Our age reveres the specialist but humans are natural
polymaths, at our best when we turn our minds to many things.
Not strictly educational, but, then again,
isn’t this what education should be focussing on, rather than GERM? Shouldn’t
the focus of education be on guiding all children to become polymaths?
‘An
intriguing study funded by the Dana foundation and summarised by Dr Michael
Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests that
studying the performing arts — dance, music and acting — actually improves one's
ability to learn anything else. Collating several studies, the researchers
found that performing arts generated much higher levels of motivation than
other subjects.’
Do You have the Personality To Be an Inquiry-Based
Teacher?
‘So far, the challenges of transforming education into a
system capable of inspiring students to become skillful, creative,
knowledgeable problem-solvers fall into familiar territory: What types of
curriculum, standards, skills, strategies, and adaptations to classroom
teaching methods will be necessary to do this? But it’s likely these will prove
to be secondary questions. As education crosses the divide between a
transmission model and an inquiry model, a more pressing issue will be
apparent: How do we identify, attract, nurture, and train teachers who have an
“inquiry-friendly” personality?’
9
reasons why I am NOT a Social Constructivist
Right, here’s your dose of learning theory
for this week. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?
Kelvin Smythe comments, ‘Social
constructivism may not be that great as a teaching and learning theory, but to
dismiss it as having a negligible effect on the learning valued by a society is
silly.’
‘Educators nod sagely at the mention of ‘social
constructivism’ confirming the current orthodoxy in learning theory. To be
honest, I’m not even sure that social constructivism is an actual theory, in
the sense that it’s verified, studied, understood and used as a deep,
theoretical platform for action.’
I am with Kelvin - Bruce
Pearson 'Education' -- Who Are These People? (via Donna
Yates Mace - USA)
This article looks at
Pearson Group’s fingers in the USA education pie, but be assured, people, they
will be coming to your country (if not already there). You were wondering why
education has become a battlefield?
According
to a recent article on Reuters, an international news service based in Great
Britain, "investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit
potential in public education. The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S.
spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18.
The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training,
represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the
energy or technology sectors."
Test
the World: The coming global testing boondoggle (via
Donna Yates Mace - USA)
Frightening stuff,
unless you have shares in Pearson Group...
“[W]e
do not yet know the full scale of the crisis because measurement of learning
achievement is limited in many countries, and hence difficult to assess at the
international level. A global data gap on learning outcomes is holding back
progress on education quality.”
International test scores: Getting the data straight
Valerie Strauss:
‘Here is a third post in a debate on The Answer Sheet
about international test scores and whether they tell us anything important
about the U.S. public
education system. The conversation began with a post I
wrote last week titled “The
fetishization of international test scores” which looked to the
upcoming release of 2012 PISA test scores on Dec. 3 and said we place too much
attention on these scores.’
‘Talent is not just something we should hope our teachers
have and feel lucky when they do. It is something we have to find, invest in,
build, and circulate, very deliberately, if we are going to get great returns
from it. Approaching talent development in this way is what we call investment
in professional capital. The professional capital of teachers cannot be
squandered recklessly for short-term gains. Nor should it be squirreled away in
individual schools and classrooms so no one else can have access to it. But
this is exactly what too many people are doing – especially people in policy.’
A Student Explains What's Wrong With Our School System
And Why We Mistrust Teachers. Nails It.
‘This kid
(Eh ??? Young adult...) nails
the problem with Common Core in a new way, claiming that we're ruining the way
we teach and learn. It's keeping teachers from doing what they're so good at
and students from being real human learners.’
Beyond tests: How to foster imagination in students
Another excellent
article from USA educator Marion Brady.
‘Those paying attention know that the high-stakes testing
craze has pushed hundreds of thousands of kids out of school, trivialized
learning, radically limited teacher ability to adapt to learner differences,
and ended many physical education, art, and music programs.’
Are schools squandering their teachers' talent?
We
must stop squirreling away our teachers' talent. It's time to invest in it like
other high performing nations do, say Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan.
Written about England
but equally applicable elsewhere. This is a MUST READ.
‘Talent is not just something we should hope our teachers
have and feel lucky when they do. It is something we have to find, invest in,
build, and circulate, very deliberately, if we are going to get great returns
from it. Approaching talent development in this way is what we call investment
in professional capital. The professional capital of teachers cannot be
squandered recklessly for short-term gains. Nor should it be squirreled away in
individual schools and classrooms so no one else can have access to it. But
this is exactly what too many people are doing – especially people in policy.’
Are We in an Age of Collective
Learning? (via Tony Gurr)
‘As
William Gibson said “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly
distributed.” So are we heading to a world of connected learning, network
thinking, and networked libraries? ‘
This week’s contributions from Bruce
Hammonds:
3
Strategies to Promote Independent Thinking in Classrooms
‘....the
classroom should become an incubator for growing students' attentional
capacity. Instruction should be organized in intriguing yet challenging ways to
foster attention. Teachers can utilize three strategies to cultivate improved
focus: sequencing instruction, recovery from mistakes, and setting goals.’
Balancing
the art and science of education
‘As we continue to fight to keep the arts in education,
it is time to realize that the real fight is keeping the art in education. When
I first started teaching many years ago, teaching was primarily seen as an art
— an innate ability to use creative skill and imagination to communicate and
build relationships that facilitate learning. The curriculum guide was a small
gray book covering all subjects. Now, teaching is seen primarily as a science.’
Promoting
a growth mindset for all students
‘What if we gave a test and everyone passed? That should
be the goal! If that happened, however, instead of celebrating that success,
policymakers likely would have the test-makers create harder tests. The reason
is pretty clear: standardized tests primarily are for controlling education,
not educating students.’
From Bruce’s ‘Oldies but Goodies’ blogs from the past.
The
Da Vinci Formula
‘What we need are some better ideas. In a Fast Company e-zine a
number of creative individuals were asked to say where they thought new ideas
came from. I thought it worth sharing some of their ideas as businesses have
given up on improvement; they appreciate we are living in a world that requires
new thinking!
Standardisation
or creativity; McDonalds or Weta Workshops?
‘The pattern is quite universal - declare a crisis,
impose standards in a big hurry to avoid debate, then impose measures to ensure
compliance with the standards, declare the results of the measures
unsatisfactory, blame the teachers and the schools for poor performance, label
critics whiners and wimps for using poverty and endemic unemployment as crutches
for their own failures.’
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