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!
Being a Better Online Reader
“Certainly,
as we turn to online reading, the physiology of the reading process itself
shifts; we don’t read the same way online as we
do on paper. “
“The
tangibility of paper versus the intangibility of something digital.” The
contrast of pixels, the layout of the words, the concept of scrolling versus
turning a page, the physicality of a book versus the ephemerality of a screen,
the ability to hyperlink and move from source to source within seconds online—all
these variables translate into a different reading experience.”
Brain waves show learning to read does not end in 4th grade,
contrary to popular theory
“Teachers-in-training
have long been taught that fourth grade is when students stop learning to read
and start reading to learn. But a new study tested the theory by analyzing
brain waves and found that fourth-graders do not experience a change in
automatic word processing, a crucial component of the reading shift theory.
Instead, some types of word processing become automatic before fourth grade,
while others don't switch until after fifth.”
10 School Reform Phrases That Should Trigger Your BS Detector
What others can you add to this?
“Education
is filled with jargon, buzzwords, and BS. I've had a lot of fun over the years
skewering the inanity that gets bandied about in education research and
professional development. Education policy and school reform are rife with
their own vapid vocabulary.
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| A must read!!! |
It's worth flagging this stuff. Doing so reminds us that fatuous
phrases don't make problems go away. It helps
puncture sugarplum visions fueled by hot air. Left unchallenged, pat phrases
allow wishful thinking to stand in for messy realities. After all, these
fatuous phrases are pervasive. Hell, I've lapsed into using them...plenty of
times.
So this is less about calling anybody out than ensuring
that we don't let pleasant words stand in for careful thinking. Here are 10
phrases that, when heard, should cause listeners to ask the speaker to explain
what he or she means, using words that actually mean something:”
Teachers have to make lessons “dull” for
Ofsted inspections
Not just restricted to England, I’d suggest.
“Teachers
have to make their lessons dull and mechanical during Ofsted inspections in an
attempt
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to be judged “outstanding” instead
of making the lessons enjoyable and creative a report has claimed. In a wide
ranging report by the University of Sunderland, researchers found that teachers
are constrained by the structure of the school day and the push for conformity
is hindering progress in “deprived” schools.”
Sweden’s School Choice Disaster
Hey GERMERS, maybe you should read this … Oh sorry, I forgot -
you prefer ideology to evidence. My mistake.
“Advocates
for choice-based solutions should take a look at what’s happened to schools in Sweden, where parents and educators would
be thrilled to trade their country’s steep drop in PISA
scores over the past 10 years for America’s middling but consistent results. What’s caused the recent crisis in
Swedish education? Researchers and
policy analysts are increasingly pointing the finger at many of the
choice-oriented reforms that are being championed as the way forward for
American schools. While this doesn’t necessarily mean
that adding more accountability and discipline to American schools would be a
bad thing, it does hint at the many headaches that can come from trying to do
so by aggressively introducing marketlike competition to education.”
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| So much for charter schools |
What Happens When School Design Looks Like Game Design
Quest to Learn has featured in previous reading
lists. Here’s another article.
“Digital games can
be amazing tools, but only when used to make it easier to contextualize the
gifts we’ve
received from Shakespeare, Socrates, Euclid, and others. The thing about tools
is that their strength is usually derived from the way they approach a problem
rather than in the particularity of the solution they offer. For example,
consider the hammer: a great technological innovation that our
human ancestors
imagined more than 2 million years ago. What made it revolutionary was not so
much in the material from which it was assembled, nor the particular object it
bashed. Instead, the hammer was revolutionary because it forever transformed
human experience by introducing the possibility of striking, and therefore
altering, our natural surroundings. It changed the way we look at things.”
Passion and Purpose
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“Learning
should be passion-driven rather than data-driven and focus on the needs of students
rather than the needs of the tests. Classroom activities should provide numerous opportunities for students to connect with their
dreams, feelings, interests, and other people rather than demand students read
closely and stay connected to text.”
The Neuroscience Behind Stress and Learning
Hey GERMERS, here’s another one. Convinced yet?
“The
realities of standardized tests and increasingly structured, if not
synchronized, curriculum continue to build classroom stress levels.
Neuroimaging research reveals the disturbances in the brain's learning circuits
and neurotransmitters that accompany stressful learning environments. The
neuroscientific research about learning has revealed the negative impact of
stress and anxiety and the
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qualitative improvement of the brain circuitry
involved in memory and executive function that accompanies positive motivation
and engagement.”
“Joy
and enthusiasm are absolutely essential for learning to happen -- literally,
scientifically, as a matter of fact and research. Shouldn't it be our challenge
and opportunity to design learning that embraces these ingredients?”
The arts as "the basics" of education.
This article comes from a site run by US
educator Kieran Egan (thanks to Robert Valiant of the US ‘Dump
Duncan’ Facebook page for bringing it to
my attention). Egan’s
site has a lot to explore and is highly recommended.
Bruce’s comment.’This article gives insight to
his thinking – that young learners have powerful, rich, affective imaginative lives
that we lose as we grow and that a developmental
approach (that we move from
the simple concrete to the abstract) fails to recognise. The idea that students
learn though stories and metaphors is worth thinking about.’
“I
want to suggest that the problem we find ourselves in--sidelining the arts
increasingly even though we recognize their centrality to education--is in part
tied up in our having accepted a set of basic educational ideas that are
mistaken. That is, I want to make the uncomfortable case that the root of the
problem is a set of ideas that most readers of this article probably take for
granted.”
This week’s contributions from Bruce Hammonds:
First up is a series of art relate links, a discipline that Bruce is
passionate about.
Arts Teach Deep Noticing
Bruce: Exposure to the arts teaches observation, or deep noticing.
There is a difference, as you know, between looking and looking closely. When
students are asked to draw something, they must look closely to accurately
observe the lines and shapes of the object they are trying to portray. Students
learn to see tiny differences and to record them. Doesn't this sound like what
a scientist does.
Observational drawing tips for senior students
“For
many students, drawing is the core method of researching, investigating,
developing and communicating ideas.”
The Prince's Drawing School
Bruce: Video Clip about drawing. Many people
think camera and computers have made drawing obsolete. Through drawing you
learn to see the world as if for the first time. Drawing is a way of asking
questions and drawing answers. It slows the pace of the mind and as a result of
drawing the world looks different. In our classrooms too many spoil their work
by rushing( thinking first finished is best) This slowing the pace of mind is
hard to achieve with a camera – although cameras are great for gathering
visual ideas.
Austin's Butterfly: Building Excellence
in Student Work - Models, Critique, and Descriptive Feedback
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| Help students observe like Austin |
Bruce continues: Lots more neat videos from the
people who bought you Austin's butterfly example.
Moving on …
Pasi Sahlberg:
Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland’s schools improve but that American reformers now ignore
Bruce: Time to get back to Finland – enough of this
neoliberal GERM nonsense that has infected education in Australia, the UK , the
US and next year in New Zealand if no change of government.
From Bruce’s oldies but goodies file:
Transforming Secondary Education – the most
difficult challenge of all.Thoughts from a past age – ‘Young
Lives at Stake’ by Charity James
Bruce’s
comment: An oldie but
relevant for rethinking education for students from middle
school to senior secondary. Based on thinking developed 40 years ago by Charity
James, the approach provides the basis for a truly transformed education based
on developing the gifts and talents of all students. Very much in line with the intent of the largely side-lined ,
2007 New
Zealand Curriculum which asks schools to develop students as ‘seekers, users and creators of their own
knowledge’.
“Secondary
schools, if anything, remain determined to lock both teachers and students in a
fossilised 1950s punitive environment of isolated specialist teaching,
arbitrary periods of time, timetables, streaming by ability, uniforms and
hierarchal power structures. Such schools are dysfunctional but there seems
little pressure to change them – instead teachers are criticized for
students’ lack of success and even
poverty is not to be seen as an excuse.”
This week’s contributions from Phil Cullen
Teaching Strategies: A Practitioner’s View
This is an excellent article by Phil, that all
teachers should read.
“Maieutic
strategies convey midwifery roles to teachers; and the strategies towards the
right-hand end of the continuum imply that a child’s natural desire to learn is helped to manifest itself as the child
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develops. The teacher is there at the birth of learning of something new and
nourishes the child’s personal control of
it. Learnacy is part of a child’s psyche from birth
and its development is the real business of the concerned teacher. The
pupilling processes accelerate cognitive development with genuine concern for
achievement.”
Neoliberalism – The New Religion
Another gem from Phil that is everyone (not just
teachers) should read.
“Profit
before people. Profit before social services. Profit before environmental
welfare. Profit.Profit. Profit.Leads to : Men before women. White before black. Right-wing before Left-wing.
Sycophancy before experience. Adults before children. Bureaucrats before Mums.
Testing before learning.”
UTS campus becomes innovative public school
“In
one of Sydney's most striking public buildings, the age of students will not
dictate what they learn, teenagers and preschoolers will study together and
Skype hubs will put students in daily contact with their peers around the
world.”
Education expert Dr Yong Zhao says schools stifle creativity
 |
| Dr Yong Zhao |
Another expert for the Australian government to
ignore, mind you, given Prime Minister Tony Abbbott. who’d be surprised?
“Internationally
renowned education expert Dr Yong Zhao told principals in Brisbane on Thursday
there was a global mismatch between skill shortages and unemployment and
schools need to shift from “a sausage-making model”,
in which they produced students with similar skills and similar knowledge, to
one that encouraged creativity and entrepreneurialism.”
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