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!
Political
Cowardice Is Political Courage
Highly recommended article for all who live
in GERM infected countries.
‘To be
blunt, there isn’t a single courageous thing about the Obama education agenda
and policies; in fact, the education policy of the Obama administration is
built on and increases the exact commitments to standards, high-stakes testing,
and punitive accountability measures begun in the early 1980s.’
The
GREAT Teachers & Principals Act will (not) fix our teachers
While written for and about the USA, this
article has relevance all over.
‘In
this current model, there are few incentives to attract the best and brightest
into the field: long hours, high stress, little pay, and no respect. On
top of this, teachers are expected to pay for supplies out of their own pockets
and to pay for and attend required professional development activities on their
own time. Why would someone who is at the top of their graduating high
school class and has many career options become a teacher?’
Why the best literacy approaches are not reaching the
classroom (via Michael Fawcett)
‘But Australia’s scores in international literacy tests
aren’t dropping because the students who sit those tests don’t know their
sounds. They are performing poorly because they cannot comprehend what they are
reading. They have poor vocabularies and cannot follow sentences that employ
more complex language structures. They cannot read between the lines.’
Of
course you don’t need qualified teachers in free schools. Or qualified brain
surgeons, for that matter (via Michael Fawcett)
‘As the use of unqualified teachers in free schools has
proved such a success, surely the Government must extend this method to other
workplaces, such as
operating theatres and nuclear submarines. The Royal Navy
could use the same argument as Michael Gove, insisting there are plenty of
excellent candidates who could command a nuclear sub, having fired torpedoes on
Modern Warfare 2, but they’re put off by the red tape of having to prove
they’re “qualified”, leaving our coast unprotected.’
 |
| unqualified pilots? |
Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!
Another article by
Steve Wheeler, Associate
Professor of learning technology in the Plymouth Institute of Education at
Plymouth University. If you get a chance to attend a presentation by Steve,
take it!
 |
| "We don't need your education" |
‘To draw out a child from within
themselves, we must first accept that the child has something within them to
give. Every child has something unique to offer. Each has skills, abilities, knowledge,
hopes, aspirations and individual personalities that can be nurtured, allowed
to blossom, encouraged. Teachers who ignore this will not only fail to 'draw
out' those individual attributes, they will also deprive children from a
wonderful spectrum of opportunities to learn for themselves.’
The
Power Of Interest
Another excellent article by Annie Murphy
Paul.
‘In recent years researchers
have begun to build a science of interest, investigating what interest is, how
interest develops, what makes things interesting, and how we can cultivate
interest in ourselves and others. They are finding that interest can help us
think more clearly, understand more deeply, and remember more accurately. Interest
has the power to transform struggling performers, and to lift high achievers to
a new plane.’
Are gimmicks and trends getting in the way of
teaching?
Anything
that distracts teachers and school leaders from improving teaching and learning
are cumbersome tools that only weigh us down, argues Alex Quigley
‘We
can readily complicate our lessons by bunging them full of objectives,
starters, potent plenaries, progress points, assessment for learning gimmicks,
token literacy and numeracy – the list goes on and on.’
This week’s contributions from Bruce
Hammonds:
What Is Inquiry?
‘Inquiry is a study into a worthy question, issue,
problem or idea. It is the authentic, real work that that someone in the
community might tackle. It is the type of work that those working in the
disciplines actually undertake to create or build knowledge. Therefore, inquiry
involves serious engagement and investigation and the active creation and
testing of new knowledge.’
Dean
Fink on Personalizing Schools.
A flashback to an article Bruce wrote in
2005.
‘Fink concludes that the time and the times are right for
heads to focus on personalized learning because ‘it promises to do what
education is supposed to do, enhance deep learning for all students.’ I wonder
when our politicians will pick up the ‘personalized learning’ phrase. I prefer
it to the latest ‘eduspeak’, ‘learning competencies’, which our Ministry
technocrats seem to be enamored with!’
Experience
and Education - John Dewey 1938
Another flashback to an article Bruce wrote
in 2009.
Hey
Chris Hipkins, read this.....
‘Such a lot of the ideas expressed today have their
genesis in the ideas of John Dewey.That Dewey's ideas have yet to be fully
realised says something for the power of conservatism in education. 'Experience
in Education' is Dewey's most concise statement of his ideas written after
criticism his theories received. In this book Dewey argues that neither
'traditional ' nor 'progressive ' ideas are adequate and he outlines a deeper
point of view building on the best of both. The following are ideas he
expresses in his book.’
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