The Ministry
of Education flagship for a twenty-first education system are the development
of schools as Modern Learning Environments – MLEs for short. They are appearing
wherever there is the population growth to require new schools and in the
Christchurch area following the destruction created by the earthquakes.
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| A new Modern Learning Environment ( MLE) |
Video clips
on TV provide a glamorous picture of such building. Flexible spaces allowing for team work and
teacher collaboration with dramatic entrances and amenity plantings. Students are to be
seen sitting on aesthetically designed furniture and spaces featuring access to computers.
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| A Modern Learning Environment - Student centred? |
What could
go wrong and are they really so new? And did the architects confer with
creative teachers about how they are to be used?
Such
environments were created in the 1970 and were then called open plan schools.
The only thing missing at the time were the computers. Those that were successful were led by
innovative teachers who were able to develop teaching approaches to take
advantage of the flexible spaces. In most cases the walls were returned and
teachers returned to self-contained classrooms. Many parents, after initial
excitement, asked for their children to be placed in ‘normal’ classrooms as
many students were not seen to be gaining any real advantage. Ironically the
best open plan environment I observed (and assisted) was led by a very creative
teacher was a collection of prefabs joined together
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| An Open Plan school 1960s |
The lesson
learnt (or more to the point forgotten) was that pedagogy is more important
than buildings designed by distant experts.
Late last
year I was given a NZ Council for Educational Research (NZCER) paper called
‘Supporting future-orientated learning and teaching- a New Zealand perspective’
which provides teachers working in MLEs
valuable ideas (ideas equally valuable for teachers in self-contained
classrooms).
The authors
argue that current educational structures and practices are not able to cater
for the learning needs of all students in the 21stC. The paper provides
findings to contribute to the development of a future oriented system.
The future
of educational change can be seen in many current innovative programmes. My
feeling it is such schools/teachers we need to help share their ideas and not
in Ministry determined clusters led by the wrong people!
The authors
are also well aware that the phrases ‘21stC learning’ or ‘future learning’ can
be seen as problematic and open to various interpretations but their paper
provides ideas to assist schools – MLEs or not.
Changing
times, social and technological, demand new approaches; educational assumptions
need to be challenged. We face an uncertain world faced with a range of
‘wicked’ problems. Teachers and students need support ‘to actively develop the
capabilities they need to productively engage in 21stC wicked problem solving.’
Schools need
to be built around what we know about learning and in an information age how
students can create their own content through action – ‘knowledge
workers’. Education in a Knowledge Age
‘must foreground the development of learner’s dispositions, capabilities or
competencies’.
Research
clearly shows people do not learn well as spectators receiving pre-packaged
information delivered by experts. Good learning requires ‘active engagement’ in
the ‘whole game’ and the more people learn the more they are capable of.
Creative teachers have always known this but ‘our schools are often set up in
ways that do not support theses principles’.
A paradigm shift is required. Schools, the authors write, need to be
‘unbundled’ and ‘reassembled in smarter ways’ to reflect the needs and demands
of a 21stC world.
The paper outlines seven ‘emerging
principles for a 21stC education system.
Theme one: Personalising learning.
‘Education
needs to be built around the learner rather than the learner being required to
fit with the system’.
Education should keep the innate desire to learn alive;
to tap into, amplify or provide opportunity, to develop every learners’ unique
talents. This is well beyond current educational provision and although the
authors recognise teachers at the margins, ‘we are not yet seeing deeppersonalisation’.
Theme Two: New vies of equity,
diversity and inclusivity.
It is
obvious that the needs of many groups of learners have not been met. National
Standards have narrowed opportunity for many students who see themselves as
failures. Education needs to value diversity rather than the current press
towards standardisation. Diversity needs to be actively recognised as a future
strength and requires valuing individual ‘needs, strengths, interests and
aspirations’. We have in our schools an ‘opportunity’ rather than an
‘achievement gap.’
In a future
diverse world people will need to work ‘with people from cultural/religious
and/or
linguistic backgrounds or world views.’ Students need the ‘ability to
think between, outside and beyond them – that is, the ability to work with a
diversity of ideas.’
Theme Three: A curriculum that uses
knowledge to develop learning capacity.
This, the
authors believe is our biggest problem. Our current or traditional idea of
knowledge is about ‘content and skills to be selected from the disciplines to
form the “subjects” or “learning areas” of the school curriculum; the learner’s
job is to absorb and assimilate knowledge in their minds’ and to demonstrate
this through assessment.
The conception
of knowledge as seen by the authors is ‘ as something that that does
things’; ‘more like a verb than a noun’. The knowledge Age requires students
‘creating and using new knowledge to solve problems and find solutions to
challenges as they arise on a “just in time” basis.
Reproducing
stored up knowledge can no longer be the educators core goal instead ‘the focus
needs to on equipping people to do things with knowledge in inventive ways in
new contexts and combinations.’ An individual stock of knowledge is important
as a foundation for their personal cognitive development and to be useful
‘individuals must be able to connect and collaborate’ with others ideas.
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| Sidelined? |
From this
point of view disciplinary knowledge should be seen, not as end in itself, but
as a context within which students learning capacity can be developed’. ‘While
the New Zealand Curriculum signals this it is clear that this has not changed
underlying thinking for many schools’.
Theme four: “Changing the script”;
Rethinking learners and teachers role.
‘Twenty
first century ideas about knowledge and learning demands shifts in the
traditional roles or scripts followed by learners or teachers’; ‘teachers’
roles must be re-conceived’; the ‘learners roles and responsibilities must also
need to be re-conceived’. ‘This calls for a greater focus on recognising and
working with learners’ strengths and thinking about what role teachers play in
supporting the development of every learner’s potential.’
Such ideas
are often ‘shorthanded’ by such phrases as ‘student centred pedagogies’ or
‘student voice’
however starting sharing power with the learners can be met
with resistance, particularly if this is interpreted as “anything goes”’.
‘The
challenge is to see past seeing learning in terms of being “subject centred” or
‘learner driven” and instead think about how learners and teachers would work
together in “a knowledge building” learning environments’. ‘This is not about
students and teachers being”equals” as learners. Rather it is about structuring
roles and relationships in ways which draws on the strengths and knowledge of
each other in order to best support learning’.
Theme Five: A culture of continuous
learning for teachers and educational leaders.
All the
principles above are premised on the need for those supporting students to work
effectively towards 21stC learning as some of the approaches differ from what
today’s teachers experienced in their own learning. ‘Teachers and school
leaders may resist adapting current approaches.’
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| Need to change assumptions |
The authors
state that many of the ‘21stC ideas…are not actually new. They have been around
a very long time’. ‘The challenge is to achieve a system shift that creates a more
coherent educational ecology that can support what is known about good learning
and that can accommodate new knowledge about learning and, importantly new
purposes for learning in a changing world.’
‘This means
that education systems must be designed to incorporate what is known’. ‘This
has implications for thinking about professional development’.
The Government’s
plan to develop cluster with lead principals and teachers will only work if
those selected have experience with such ideas – to my knowledge such creative
innovative thinkers are simply not available in sufficient numbers.
Theme Six: New kinds of partnerships
and relationships. Schools no longer siloed from the community.
‘Learning
for the 21stC, it is argued, should support students to engage in
knowledge-generating activities in authentic contexts. Students must learn to
recognise and navigate authentic problems and challenges in ways that they are
likely to encounter in future learning situations.’ This will involve ‘messy’ problems where
answers or outcomes not known to teachers.
This implies
involving people from the wider community and for developing schools more connected
to the community and this in turn requires students and teachers collaborating
with other people who can provide specific kinds of expertise, knowledge or
access to learning opportunities in community contexts.
Real change will
require ‘buy in’ from the wider community. ‘‘Buy in’ could be achieved by
engaging community members in authentic educational activities that draw on
their expertise’.
Theme Six: New technologies.
Notwithstanding
considerable investment in ‘digital resources have not revolutionised learning environments’.
‘The potential of new technologies to transform teaching and learning is heavily
dependent on educators’ ability to see the affordance and capacities of ICT in
relation to the underpinning themes for learning in the 21stC’. ‘It is further dependent
on schools having the infrastructure, inspiration, capability and opportunities
for innovation to achieve these kinds of teaching and learning.’
It is
obvious that simply providing Modern Learning Environments, ICT and clusters
and lead teachers is not answer unless underpinned by appropriate
learning/teaching beliefs.
Theme Seven: The role of
collaborative practices.
The idea of
clustering has become increasingly popular but ‘networking and collaboration in
itself do not necessarily support the emergent of future focussed learning
practices’ but, done properly, they would provide opportunities.
Policy Implications.
The authors
conclude their paper require three key ideas to ensure an education system
based on the above themes is: diversity, connectedness and coherence.
Such ideas
allow us to see a way forward that goes beyond ‘ticking the boxes: that is are schools personalising learning;
are they educating for diversity (as well as working to achieve success for all
learners); are they reconceptualising the roles and responsibilities of
teachers and students; are they engaged in continuous professional learning;
and are they developing a range on new “real” partnerships with their communities?’
It is time
to move away from focussing on the parts but to focus on strategies to put
these ideas together; to join all this up in a way that is ‘driven by a
coherent set of shared ideas about the future of schooling and its purpose and
role in building New Zealand’s future’.
The key
phase is ‘from the ground up’.
“Many “neuromyths” are rampant in our classrooms, and research suggests
that people are often seduced by neuroscientific explanations, even if these
are not accurate or even relevant. Research also shows that explanations
accompanied by images of the brain also persuade people to believe in their
validity, however random the illustration.”
“What has ‘Blended Learning’ done for the world of learning? It had
the promise to shake us out of the ‘classroom/lecture-obsessed’ straightjacket
into a fully developed, new paradigm, where online, social, informal and many
other forms of learning could be considered and implemented. This needed an
analytic approach to developing and designing blended learning solutions. So
what happened?”
the child's
developmental stage. Can it really be possible to judge, on the basis of
observation in the first six weeks of children starting a new school, whether
they are or are not "risk taking", whether they have or do not
have "curiosity" and “persistence”?”
Hans Henrik Sievertsen from the Danish National Centre for Social
Research in Copenhagen and his team have looked at 2 million standardised test
scores from Danish children aged between 8 and 15. Starting from 8 am, for
every hour later that a test was taken, scores declined by an amount equivalent
to the effect of missing 10 days of school. Children who were performing worse
at school seemed most affected by the time they sat the exam.
“The problem with sticker charts and similar reward systems is not
that they don’t work. Rather, they can work too well, creating significant
negative and unintended long-term consequences for both the kids and their
families. Sticker charts are powerful psychological tools, and they can go
beyond affecting children’s motivation to influence their mindset and even
affect their relationship with parents.”
“In the
'Pygmalion Study'(Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968) elementary teachers were told
that the lowest achieving students were actually the highest and vice versa.
Simply because of this information and teachers' subsequent expectations, the
low achieving students showed significantly higher gains in their scores. Thus
labelling or grouping students not only has a negative impact on their
self-efficacy, but on teacher expectation.”
The power of
observation – elementary my dear Watson
This thing called reading.
New Zealand respected educationalist Lester
Flockton encourages principals to be critical.
