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| New minds for a New Millenium |
Time for a rethink about the role of education
in a democratic society.
A crisis in education
I write this in a week primary teachers are to go on strike
for better pay. Concerns about the excessive workload expected of teachers is just as big a concern.
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| Time for new thinking |
Both issues need to be sorted if teaching is to become an
attractive career – a career that values teachers as the professionals they
once were.
If conditions are not resolved then improving salaries will not
solve the issues of workload and associated stress. As one wise old rural
adviser once said, ‘teachers need to protect their time and energy, if this is
wasted on b/s then they will have no time left to teach.’
With this in mind the following is a look into a possible
future.
It all began with
Tomorrows Schools
The workload and associated stress has increased
dramatically since the introduction of the competitive Tomorrow’s Schools
reforms of the late eighties. These reforms were part of the dramatic political
changes of the times based on a belief in ‘market forces’, individual
responsibility and choice (for parents) would encourage greater initiative. It
hasn’t quite worked out to plan
As part of the reforms a New Zealand National Curriculum was
introduced along with documents for every learning area that outlined learning
objectives to be achieved and assessed. requirement placed impossible demands on
schools and eventually, with a change of government, was replaced 2007 by a
revised New Zealand Curriculum which did away with the problematic Learning Area
booklets with their impossible
assessment demands but before this could be implemented another change of
government saw the introduction of the reactionary National Standards in
literacy and numeracy which required greater intensive assessment and reporting to parents
and as a result a narrowing of the curriculum.
And now a new government has been elected and, by removing
National Standards, have signaled a return to the highly regarded (but
side-lined) New Zealand Curriculum.
The techno- rational model is the problem
The past decades have seen a techno-rational model of
teaching replace an earlier more creative holistic humanistic developmental model. Sadly current
teachers have only experienced the current techno rational model based on
standards, testing, levels, outcomes, targets, hyper assessment, measurable
evidence and a narrow focus on literacy and numeracy. Teachers now have an
opportunity to escape the pressures created by hyper assessment and evidence
based teaching.
Time for new thinking
Time now for some fresh thinking and to place the focus on
creating a ‘high trust’ environment
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| A 'high trust' culture |
to allow teachers to get on with teaching
guided by the vision of the innovative 2007 curriculum.
This of course is not to say that there are not teachers and
schools already involved in developing more imaginative and creative approaches
to teaching and learning. It is to such teachers and schools ‘we’ ought to turn
to for inspiration and in the process share their ideas in a more collaborative
future environment.
Need for a 'high trust' environment
For schools to be developed as learning communities,
premised on creative teachers and active learners, all current workload
expectations need to evaluated, streamlined or abandoned. Teachers need to have a 'high trust' environment for them to be able to use professional judgement to assist their students. The current stressed and overworked teachers
are a sign of an unhealthy system 'low trust' system.
Learning is an innate
disposition.
The basic premise that teachers need to hold in mind is the
belief that all students have an innate desire to learn and that, as
educational psychologist Jerome Bruner has written, ‘teaching is the canny art
of intellectual temptation' to ensure all students are positively engaged. Sadly, as
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| Jerome Bruner |
teachers well know, many children arrive in class (at all levels) with their desire to learn damaged from early experiences placing ‘learning recovery’ a priority for such
learners.
The ‘artistry’ of teaching
The challenge for teachers is to create a ‘tempting’
environment to capture the innate curiosity of their students. Active learners need authentic tasks that
require them to use inquiry ‘how to learn’ skills making use of appropriate
learning areas.
Teachers need to come alongside the learner (s) to help as
required – making suggestions, challenging student preconceptions and helping
sort out necessary resources. the fast changing future requires of future citizen’s
creativity, imagination and individuality to achieve this students need to ‘go
beyond’ what is expected.
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| Valuing students ideas |
This is going well beyond current formulaic standardised ‘best practices’ such as
‘learning intentions’, ‘success criteria’ and WALTs. Such practices infer that
teachers know what students require and this too easily results in results lacking individuality.
Authentic learning challenges
Teaching teams could devise provocative topics or themes for
students to explore that relate to, or combine, the various strands of the New
Zealand Curriculum. This would not preclude topical studies that ‘emerge’ that
students might want to study. Themes could cover language and mathematical
studies and, as well, these areas will be integrated into all studies.
The future emphasis
will need to be on inquiry and talent development rather than the current
literacy and numeracy.
It might be possible for workshops (at various levels of
expertise) to be offered to the students selected from the Learning Areas –
drama, music, cultural experiences, mathematical explorations, ecological
studies –the possibilities are endless
Students could get credit for their achievements level
and outside expertise
could also be involved if required.
At all levels students could keep learning journals expressing personal ideas as well as content
from learning areas covered – such journals could be kept in electronic portfolios or developed
as personal blogs
Need to value the
‘voice’ of all students.
Teachers need to value the ‘voice’ and identity’ and areas
of personal interests of all students as central to all learning. Students need
to feel their questions, concerns and their lived experience are the vital
ingredient in all their learning. Schools needs to provide opportunities for
students value their strengths rather than have their weaknesses identified.
The teacher’s role is to provoke students to ask their own
questions, to encourage to work collaboratively, to allow them go at their own
pace and to value the diversity of their students. This is the essence of personalisation . Over time identified talents would be amplified, new areas
recognised and recorded on their learning profiles and included
in the portfolios.
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| Value multiple intelligences |
Personal writing journals could be also kept to record
student’s inner thoughts and shared with teachers if agreed to by the students.
Need to dig deeply
into curriculum
The curriculum, whether arising from student’s interests or
negotiated by the teacher needs to assist students dig deeply into areas chosen and result in worthwhile learning artifacts. It is important to do fewer
things well to achieve the students ‘personal best’.
The curriculum is itself a search for meaning and a mean for
students to expand their perspectives, to challenge their thinking and to
provide opportunities their potential talents to be recognised.
Students as active learners
When students are treated as active learners (the 2007 NZC
states that students should be ‘seekers, users and creators of their own
knowledge’) they will, through their actions, discover the value of
craftsmanship and honest work and in the process provide teachers and parents
with authentic assessment of their achievement.
As students work together to solve problems their combined
efforts creates a true democratic learning community where all the diverse
voices are valued and appreciated. We
are talking about classrooms in which the students are moved to imagine, to
extend and renew their ideas creating in the process their own learning community.
Student achievement can be assessed by means of
demonstrations of knowledge, exhibitions and displays, presentations and
portfolios of completed work.
A creative role for
teachers
Teachers have a vital role in creating such learning
communities by providing opportunities for students to express their ideas
through exploring a range of media. Teachers help students realize their own
images, their own vision of things helping them develop ideas they never (nor
the teacher) knew existed. This creative pedagogy empowers both teachers and
students and prepares all
involved to thrive in what will be an exciting and
ever changing future.
All interactions with students provide opportunities for
evaluating achievement and, if necessary, students can be withdrawn for ‘catch
up’ help and then returned to the tasks at hand.
Ideally schools need to appoint teachers with a diverse
range of talents for enable them share their talents with their students
including teachers with special qualifications in helping students with
particular learning difficulties.
Class and school
organisations
The shape and organisations of such learning communities
will challenge the creativity of teachers.
Classrooms (or work spaces) need to be envisaged as an amalgam of an
artist’s studio, a science laboratory, a media centre/workshop, and exhibition
gallery.
A class /school could be imagined as an educational version of a modern
art gallery/museum such as Te Papa – with students researching topics and
creating interactive displays for visitors encouraged by their tutors. Such
schools already exist to some degree.
Industrial age
remnants
Today’s classrooms all too often reflect a past industrial
age with students moving from subject to subject or , at the secondary level, from room to room following a set timetable. This fragmentation is further
fractured with the use of ability grouping (usually only in literacy and numeracy)
and further fragmented by isolating such things as phonetic instruction in
language. As a result it all too often is hard to see evidence of real
creativity and student ‘voice’.
Re-imagining the
school day
It will require a dramatic mind set to re-imagine flexible
new organisations. It would be possible to block times for certain activities
(as long as they were integrated with current study topics) and, as
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| Valuing imagination |
teacher and
students skill develops, times for various activities could be negotiated with
the students – some schools currently do this.
With time students could take responsibility for arranging
their own timetables determined by requirements for their negotiated individual
learning plans – a form of contract learning.
An imaginary visit
A visitor entering
such a learning community, particularly if they reflect on their own more
traditional school experience, will be in for a real surprise , particularly if
the school is an open modern learning environment with no traditional classroom
spaces
Visitors (provided with a student guide) would be amazed by
the quality and the range of the work on display. If visitors have attended a
science, maths or technology fair, combined with an arts festival, in the past,
they will get the idea. The majority of the displays will interactive and
involve the use of a range of computer controlled activities.
Nothing is new -the future is already here.
We already have teachers and
schools at all levels well along the way; it just needs for the ideas to spread
throughout our education system. There are plenty of educationalists to provide
inspiration such as Sir Ken Robinson who has stated that ‘creativity is as
important as literacy and numeracy’ and Guy Claxton replaces Sir Ken’s ‘creativity’
with ‘learnacy’ in a similar quote,
The diverse programmes outlined tap into the ‘multiple
intelligences’ ideas of Howard Gardner and also Eliot Eisner who, echoing
Gardner, writes that we all interpret the environment with different
‘frameworks’. It’s time to face up to the issue of student disengagement for
far too many students.
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| Elwyn Richardson |
In the 1950s pioneer teacher Elwyn Richardson developed the
genesis of such a learning community of scientists and artists. It is timely that his inspirational book, ‘In
the Early World’ has been recently republished by the NZCER.
It was John Dewey who wrote over a century ago that
‘children grow into adults as they live today’, that they learn through doing
and reflecting on their experiences and that, if we want to ensure democracy
endures, we need to have democratic schools.
If such a transformed ‘high trust’ education system were to
eventuate (combined with appropriate salaries) talented individuals will want to
become teachers and to be part of the unfolding adventure of learning; what
better job could there be?
