Plant a native garden

I have just been helping plan and plant a small native garden.

The idea of developing small native garden in the school grounds makes an ideal integrated inquiry study. And the time and weather is right for the task.

The ideal garden could feature mainly smaller alpine natives as there are a wonderful range of plants to choose from.

If you are interested first find a suitable site - open and sunny is the best. Measure it up to work out how many square metres you have.

Then start your research.

What plants might be suitable? Who could help you? There are a a number of suitable books with good photos and information to get ideas from. Another idea is to look around your environment to see similar gardens and capture their ideas with a digital camera. Note how close they are planted and maybe you will see that often plants are planted in groups. Maybe there is a parent or local who can help you select plants

Draw up a list of suitable plants ( with digital photos) and display on class wall. Do some research on selected plants.

Now to involved in some more mathematics. When you find your source of plants you will get an idea of the costs involved. How will you go about finding the money? Maybe the BOT can help you or you could get involved in some fundraising?

Possibly it is a good idea to start small and restrict yourselves to fifteen or twenty plants. With small natives look for ones with interesting shapes as well as flowers.

When you have you plants the fun begins.

By now you will have begun to develop some real knowledge about your plants -mainly how big they grow or spread.

Place then out and move them around until you are happy. This might be a good time to have a little local expertise to call on.

Learn how to plant them properly and finish the job.

Over the next months ( or years) watch them grow.You will soon find out which ones really like where you have planted them and you might have to replace the odd one.

It is fun watching how gardens turn out and by now you will have learnt a lot about plants. Maybe some of you might like to become botanists or landscape artists?

The class might even like to begin to propagate some plants of their own -many grow from cuttings but you will need to do your own research. This is real learning.

Maybe you could make study of a local piece of bush and even begin to care for it?

Environmental Awareness

A collection of rewarewa leaves and flowers -and a ceramic tui. Tuis feed off the rewarewa, commonly called for this very reason honeysuckle . From such collection an interesting painting could evolve.

As I wander around my garden, or as I walk down the driveway to a school, I am always on the lookout for ideas to share with young people - trouble is these days I don't have a class or a school to share such ideas with.

I was pleased, while visiting a local school, when a teacher on seeing me, rushed over to ask me to visit her classroom. She wanted to show me the results of a kowhai study that she had based on one of my recent blogs.

This time of the year the Rewarewa ( or Honeysuckle) is in flower and around their base you can pick up flowers , last years seed 'pods' and of course leaves.

Rewarewa are a common native tree and are well worth a study. It maybe possible to visit a tree or at least bring a few flowers and seed 'pods' along for children to wonder about, to observe and to draw.

Students need to be encouraged to look carefully, use their senses and, if drawn, to take their time, to go slow, so as to produce work of quality. It is important for students to learn to do things well. As they draw children can be encouraged to note their thought and their questions.

Following this books can be used to 'research' and develop their knowledge.

All this might lead into bush study or at least looking for native trees in the school grounds, or even buying a rewarewa tree to plant in the school.

Personally I believe that such small scale studies are vital to develop environmental awareness and will lead students to develop a love of their environment and then onto the more adult idea of sustainability.

The great thing is teachers can learn alongside their students and get away from the idea that teachers need to know first and then teach which seems to underpin much of what passes as teaching these days. This is demeaning for learners.

Children are born learners and are equipped with ways to learn that schools need to encourage. Adults are at best resources students can call on but their main role is to create the conditions for children to want to learn. It was Jerome Bruner who wrote that 'teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation'.

And a long time a go that wonderful teacher Socrates simply asked questions of his students believing that the knowledge was within.

Another Greek Plato wisely wrote that the 'task of the teacher is not to place knowledge where it does not exist but to lead the minds eye that it might see for itself'.

So my advice to to keep you eyes open for ideas to 'tempt' children and then help them learn for themselves. Spring is the time to develop this awareness.Such a lot of things to notice if you keep you eyes open. November is the best time for a harakeke, or NZ flax, study.

It is time to stop teaching and become co-learners.

It is about ensuring students become ' seekers, users, and creators of their own knowledge ' as it says in the revised New Zealand Curriculum.

More fun and easier.

What messages does your school pass on to students?

This students' mural of going to school in the 'olden days' gives pretty clear 'message' about what was important in such times. The green lipped backboards is central and, along the walls, the olden days equivalent of laptops . The clock stands front centre representing the importance of the timetable and a 'special needs ' corner complete with dunces hat. I am not sure that they were ever used in New Zealand? Spot the mistakes. The students are facing away from the board .In earlier days desks were screwed to the floor - no moving around allowed. And the teacher ought to be immense as she, or he, ruled supreme. In her hand is a cane or, in my time a length of supplejack, or leather strap. Note the ceramic ink wells in the desks.

What school was all about was clear. Obedience, conformity, no talking and the 'three Rs'. In those times classes were called standards - maybe this is where Mrs Tolley is taking us. This approach to education lasted up until the late 1950s -and in many ways is still the standard village dance in many secondary school classrooms.

The other day I had occasion to look at a teachers timetable for the coming term and I considered the 'message' it was giving to both the teacher and their students. All the morning were to be spent on literacy and numeracy with the afternoons given to art, te reo, technology and sports. The afternoons only went from 1.30 to 3.00. An inquiry topic seemed absent. Little emphasis was placed on students 'voice', cultures, or the various aspects of the local environment. It seems that nothing much has changed in this school?

The following are some clues to determine the 'messages' of a school?

The use of time is a major clue.


The first thing to look for in a primary school is how time is apportioned out during the day.

In a secondary school note how all students are timetabled, sorted, and graded. If learning is fragmented as if a factory it results in a ‘hardening of the categories’. Another clue is in primary schools if literacy and numeracy take up all the prime time and the other Learning Areas are virtually light entertainment in the limited time remaining. This will be exaggerated even more in such schools by National Standards, giving off more than a whiff of a Victorian mentality.

Once inside the school, look for evidence of student ‘voice’.

Does the learning centre around students’ questions and concerns or are students busy following teachers’ pre-conceived plans? Can you see, or read, their personal thoughts about their lived experiences, their responses to their environment, and their critical thoughts about whatever study has caught the class’s attention? Look for individuality in the way children’s work is presented and particularly in their art which ought to be as diverse as the students. Do classrooms have an aesthetic quality? If in primary classroom, students’ ‘voice’ is overwhelmed by literacy and numeracy demands and in inquiry studies student ‘voice’ is often missing with children happy to simply present information, this too is a clue.

To solve these problems teachers need to reframe both literacy and numeracy as vital ways for children to express personal, critical, or interpretive points of view in their inquiry studies.

In such classrooms literacy is used to ‘frontload’ content by developing comprehension and information inquiry skills to contribute to current inquiry studies. Such an integrated approach makes literacy and numeracy more important and more meaningful.

It is important if students are to become active learners for them to tell their own stories, to pose their own questions and to make their own interpretations of what they experience. If their ‘voices’ are not recognised there will be many who will continue to disengage from their learning. That is the problem that standards are meant to solve!

Learning is essentially personal. How personalised is learning?

We all invent ourselves in response to experiences we have. It is obvious that it is impossible for every student to have their own programme but it is possible to value each learner’s interpretations and creativity. Teachers, who believe in a constructivist approach to learning, who respect learner’s prior knowledge and skills, and who give whatever help is necessary, are well on the way to personalising learning.

There are also teachers who follow James Beane’s model and negotiate a curriculum based on asking students for the problems, issues and concerns they would like to study. From such an emergent process curriculum themes are democratically arrived at and then students individually, or in groups, become personally involved in purposeful research. The ideas behind science, mathematics, or science fairs can be extended to part of normal teaching. The Reggio Emilio early education schools of Milan are excellent models of true community schools whose curriculums ‘emerge from their students’ interests. This approach was common in New Zealand primary classrooms of the 70s and is equally relevant today.

Does the school value students’ gifts and talents?

All students are different and ‘one size’ never fitted all. As students progress through school their innate differences ought to become more diverse. Current pressures for standardisation and focusing measurement on a narrow range of academic abilities repress such diversity. Schools must celebrate diversity.

Howard Gardner tells us that children can exhibit intelligences in a range of areas – the visual arts, music, sport and dance, mathematical and logical thinking, natural history, linguistics, and inter personal and intrapersonal skills. Do schools recognise and value these or do linguistic and mathematics ‘intelligences’ dominate? And if this is the case what happens to those students whose talents lie elsewhere?

Imagine if schools made developing students’ creativity their central focus and then introduced appropriate skills to help then realise their gifts? Such teaching would move teachers well beyond predictable ‘best practices’, or standards, and asks them instead to accept the ‘unknowability’ of what might evolve. Personal excellence based on a comparison with previous achievements would be the criteria for success.

Does the school assess values and dispositions?

Schools in past decades have been encouraged to demonstrate achievement in literacy and numeracy and no doubt this will be exaggerated by National Standards. Some schools however are also recording students ‘feelings for’ the various learning areas and are able to demonstrate how their students’ attitudes have improved through the year. As well, other schools are making efforts to assess students’ dispositions towards learning - the competencies that contribute towards ensuring all students become confident life long learners.


How central is inquiry in the school?

In schools that believe in inquiry classrooms reflect students’ questions, prior ideas, theories and evolving ideas being gained as they learn. There are a number of inquiry models but the base of all ought to be the realisation that inquiry is the ‘default mode’ of all learners from birth. Just as students were born to create they were born to inquire and search for personal meaning. That this desire to learn, this love of learning, often dulled by schooling ought to a concern of all. There are those who see process as the new content but the revised curriculum is clear, both content and process are to be seen as complimentary. Learning how to learn is the shadow of in-depth inquiry. A study without real content is a study at risk.

If inquiry was truly central to learning then the results would be plain for all to see. The room would be full of the results of authentic studies covering a range of learning areas. The walls would be covered with study questions, research findings and processes - not just de Bono’s hats or an outline of an agreed inquiry process. The visual environment ought to be seen as the teacher’s main message system and the importance of aesthetic expression in all forms ought to be an integral part of such a message system

Authentic assessment ought to be based on what students can do - particularly in a new situation. ‘It is what children do when they do not know what to do’, that is the key to future success according to Piaget. Innovative schools are requiring their students to undertake a self-chosen inquiry challenge towards the end of each year as an assessment task. Such tasks clearly demonstrate how well students are able to use the critical seeking, using and creating skills required for such learning.

The hardware of information technology is often shown off to visitors as an indication of up to date thinking but all too it often over promises and under delivers. However, if used wisely, it contributes to in-depth inquiry and could eventually transform education, as we know it. Used unwisely it can result in shallow learning. Nothing should be researched that can be answered with one click of Google! A quick look at students’ presentations and bookwork will show, through the language used, if inquiry is robust or if ‘cut and paste’ and shallow thinking is the order of the day.

What is the role of the teacher in the school?

In such a democratic environment the role of the teachers is vital. No longer to be seen a transmitter of predetermined content and chief judge the teacher is now much more of a creative learning coach providing help, negotiating tasks and criteria for student self assessment. And that help should always be given with a light hand.

Creative teachers understand the need to do fewer things well, appreciating that something done well can be a transformational experience for a learner. Not only do creative teachers help students see connections between learning areas they also appreciate the importance of enriched sensory experiences gained through first hand learning.

Most of all creative teachers work hard to establish a democratic, trusting relationship to allow students to take the necessary risks to learn. As part of such an environment teachers need to negotiate benign classroom organisations, often defining group tasks, to provide their students with a sense of structure and predictability. All too often primary classrooms are too heavily structured in literacy and numeracy and then too open for the rest of the day. And secondary schools too timetabled, fragmented and disconnected. Successful learning depends on organisational patterns that allow students to work independently (often in groups) and also allow teachers to focus on helping those in need.

What is the 'message' given of a future learner?

Teachers, in all their interactions, need to keep in mind the vision of the learner they want to develop. Guy Claxton suggests that students need to be encouraged to be curious and to ask questions; to be resilient and to stick at things; to be willing to ask for help and accept feedback; and to step back and think things through. He asks of teachers to envision their students as ‘brave and confident explorers, tough enough in spirit, and flexible in mind, to pursue their dreams and ambitions’.

The revised curriculum is premised on a vision of all students being ‘confident lifelong learners’ and sees students as able to 'seek , use and create their own kowedge'.

This is not what I see when I visit schools and, heading towards National Standards, is heading in the wrong direction.

Dweck's book a must for all teachers and leaders.

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It is hard to avoid reading about Carol Dweck's work on the power of mindsets in learning. Business leaders and sports coaches use her ideas and so ought schools. It will be the most influential book on motivation. A book that with ideas to change the lives of students and their teachers.

I am writing this blog before I have fully absorbed the message of the book as I want to loan it to a young teacher . As a result of reading the book I have decided to start something I have been meaning to do for years. I now have the right mindset. Watch this space.

My advice - buy the book pronto. My copy cost NZ $29. Not bad for a mind changing book. 'Mindset The New Psychology Of Success' Published by Ballantine Books NY ISBN 978-0-345-47232-8


Carol Dweck is a Stanford University Psychologist and in her book Mindset she shares the ideas about learning she has been working on for decades. In her book she shows the power of people's beliefs that strongly effect what we want and whether we succeed. Beliefs ( 'mindsets') we are unaware of but which have a profound effects on our lives. An understanding of these beliefs have the power to unleash your potential and that of your students.

Dweck has written this book in a popular style which makes it available to anyone who picks it up.

Schools worldwide have problems with students who fail to learn and this book provides some real answers.

Dweck outlines the two mindsets.One she calls 'fixed' where students believe that their talent is 'fixed' from birth ( natural talents) and the 'growth mindset' which sees learning as a result of effort and practice. Dweck does not suggest that those with a 'growth' mindset can be anything but they do believe that a person's potential is unknown and that to develop it requires 'passion , toil and training'.

The real problem is that many people feel that those who succeed in any field do so because of natural talent. This is the 'fixed mindset'. The problem is that such people do not believe in effort and even see the need for it as weakness. And those who believe they cant do something see no point in trying.

My bet is that such people make up our so called 'achievement tail'. Helping struggling children change their limiting mindsets may be more profitable than obsessively focusing on literacy and numeracy standards.

Dweck writes that the 'fixed' mindsets can be changed and replaced with the more positive 'growth' mindset. Her book is full of practical ways to do just this.

'When you enter a mindset', she writes, 'you enter a new world'.

Dweck believes all students are born with an intense drive to learn and worries about what puts an end to this exuberant learning and why some children develop a limiting 'fixed' mindset.

It begins, she says, when students begin to evaluate themselves and, as a result, some become afraid of challenges - and this is further developed by parent who want their children to succeed. Such children end up by wanting to make sure they succeed and don't like taking risks; don't like to expose their deficiencies. And they don't like asking for help.

'Growth' mindset children, in contrast, see success in learning as stretching themselves, about becoming smarter, and are happy to ask for help.

'Fixed' mindset people do well when things are within their grasp. If 'fixed' mindset people think they cant do anything they don't try, avoid situations, find endless excuses, blame others, and don't ask for help. They don't want to to risk their identity. Perfectionist girls seem specially at risk in this respect.

It makes a big difference which mindset develops.

And the positive 'growth' mindset can be taught.

Dweck lists accomplished people who were considered to have little future potential including Charles Darwin and Elvis Presley. People with a 'growth' mindset know it takes time and effort for potential to flower. She also describes people who many think had a natural talent ( 'fixed') but whose success was determined by a 'growth' mindset including - Mohammed Ali and Michael Jordan.

Dweck suggests teachers do a simple survey of their students to see what mindset they hold and then to introduce ideas to change those with the limiting 'fixed' mindsets. Do they believe their intelligence was a fixed trait or or something they could develop?

She also describes a number of research situations where she demonstrates such changes. Students with the 'growth' mindsets allows people to love what they are doing and motivates them to try harder, practice and ask for help. Mistakes, or failures, are seen as learning opportunities not the end of the world. A 'growth' mindsets allows abilities to be cultivated.

Talent, or drive, with the right mindset, can help any learner produce amazing things. It is all about continually improving on ones personal best.

Talented or failing 'fixed ' mindset students fail when placed in new learning situations - 'growth' students enjoy the challenge. Even prodigies with gifts feed the gift with constant endless curiosity, practice effort and challenge seeking. All children , Dweck writes, have interests that can blossom into abilities and this includes those currently seen as 'low ability' or failing. No one know about negative ability labels like Maori and Pacifica group or woman when it comes to maths and science.

All students need teachers who preach and practice the 'growth' mindset. Such teachers focus on the idea that all children can develop their skills. 'Growth' orientated teachers and parents praise effort rather than ability or talent. Praising talent teaches students the 'fixed' mindset. Ability grouping and praising ability can have negative effects on learning.

We need to give all students the gift of the 'growth' mindset and in the process put students in charge of their own learning.

Many students will enjoy the stories in the book about the difference between the natural and effort orientated sports people. Their stories will help students appreciate the positive growth mindset and how sports people learn to cope with setbacks. Teachers will enjoy the differences between the 'fixed' and growth orientated coaches.

School leaders will enjoy the differences between the heroic talented leaders ( 'fixed') and the 'growth' orientated leaders and how they handle failure and staff development.

The most important chapters focus on teachers and parents and where do mindsets come from?

These chapters focus on the messages we give children - and that every word and action sends a message. Students are extremely sensitive to such messages. What we praise, or give feedback about, is vital and it needs to be focused on effort and future strategies to consider.

Consider also how children develop their attitudes towards maths, or art, or sport. Do they see it as a 'fixed' gift or something they can all do to some degree with effort and practice as they ought to? Consider how you would set about to change students' attitude towards maths, or art, or anything thay have closed their mind to.

'Dont judge. Teach.It's a learning process', Dweck writes.

All the stories Dweck shares are about how parents and teachers want the best for their children in the right way - by fostering their interests, growth and learning.

If teachers make explicit the importance of a 'growth ' mindset and encourage it in their students all students will succeed. The teacher's stance is all important. 'Growth' mindset teacher tell the truth and set about to help their students close the gap. Dweck's research shows it can be done even with students who at first don't seem to care.

Most interesting for teachers are the mindset lectures she gives her graduate students and the brain, or mindset workshops she gives younger students where students learn about positive mindsets and how to use them.

In just eight one hour sessions children's' minds, she shows, can be changed.

And she makes the point that change is not easy. It is hard to give up a 'fixed' mindset. Concrete plans are required not just good intentions. 'Will power', Dweck writes, 'is not just a thing you have or don't have. Will power needs help.'

It is all about seeing things in new way.

Every day presents you with chance to grow and to help the people you care about grow. Learners who take on board a 'growth' mindset become more alive, courageous and open.

Buy the book to really get Dweck's powerful message. The ideas in the book will resonate with the many creative teachers who really value developing in their students a positive learning identity. Students who are able to 'seek, use and create their own knowledge'. Students who will become 'confident life long learners'.

Get it now and share her ideas.

'How to be an Explorer of the World'

Now for something really different!!!

If anybody out there is creative, or would like to be ( after all we were all born creative until schools got hold of us) this is the book for you or your students. Actually if anybody out there is a scientist, or would like to be, ( after all we were all born to be scientists until schools got hold of us) this is the book for you, or your students.Or if you would just like to see more, notice more or make life more interesting this is the book for you ( because this is what we were born to do).

To me this book supplies what is missing in our increasingly focused literacy and numeracy classrooms. Any half creative teacher would find it packed full of great ideas and not a learning objective, WALT or success criteria in sight.


How to be an Explorer of the World by Keri Smith.
ISBN 978-0-399-53460-7 ( us $14 95)

Now and again along comes a book that surprises. How to be an Explorer is one of them.

The book even comes with a warning.

'To whoever has just picked up this book if you find you are unable to use your imagination, you should put this book back immediately.It is not for you. In this book you will be repeatedly asked to...suspend your disbelief, complete tasks that make you feel a bit strange, look at the world in ways that make you think differently, conduct experiments on a regular basis, and see the inanimate objects as alive.'

This 200 page 'book' is full of interesting ideas to use with your class - or just for yourself.

The book is all about observing, collecting, analyzing , comparing and noticing patterns.

Kids love collecting - everything, the author writes, is interesting. People who collect things do similar work to the work of ethnographers who document the particular culture through field research.

The book is packed full of wonderful practical ( and simple) ideas to help the readers document and observe their world - and to take notes and to record what is seen.

This is the essence of education and amazingly it encompass literacy and numeracy but only as part of exploring. This is as it should be. Only schools distract learners from their real world.

The book is full of prompts as assignments to help you become an explorer. And you can start from where you are currently sitting and then spread out to wherever you go. Your curriculum is whatever you notice -whatever emerges. This is something creative teacher have aways known but now almost impossible in our soulless, measurable, accountable, and increasingly formulaic and standardized system of education.

Everyones house is full of collections of objects to start with. Start by looking at them closely and why they appeal to you. The book then takes you into exploring their immediate environment through the senses (another lost art in out literacy focused schools).

Random experiences are there to be savoured and every experience is personal and unrepeatable - this is true personalised learning. Teacher could take the class on a daily weekly walk ( just a few minutes) to notice what is their to be noticed or to see something in particular. And from his oral language will lead to writing and reading - and in that order. Before the word comes the experience.

The book is all about the genesis of the creative and scientific process - or about taking advantage of what all children were born with until 'flipped' by often abstract school experiences.

A class using this book would become a museum of children's collections an art gallery of their expression, and a scientists lab of their experiments.

There are just so many great things in this book to enhance children's perception. Digital cameras would be invaluable along with drawing skills that slow thinking down enough to really see things to wonder about. As Jules Verne says 'look with all your eyes' and, I would add, with all your senses and with your imagination - something young children have in spades. 'Sometimes a tree can tell you more than can be read in a book', writes Carl Jung.

This is non-linear learning, the opposite to much of traditional schooling. It is, as Paul Klee wrote long ago, ' taking your mind for a walk' -actually he said 'taking a line' but it much the same thing. You never know where you will end up. Possibly the most important lesson in this highly unpredictable life we all lead. There is an activity included in the book called 'how to wander aimlessly'.

And the book contain all sorts of ideas to transform everyday experiences through art and the imagination.

The book comes complete with lots of ways to record fieldwork and to document what has been observed and noticed.

But remember this book comes with a warning! If you mind had been habituated by teaching maybe this book is not for you - or maybe it is just the book to learn to see like a child explorer again.


It is simply a fun book -all written by hand!

National Standards lay waste to creativity. Wise words from Kelvin Smythe!

Creative New Zealand teachers should listen and pass on Kelvin's words to all. Visit his site and join up for his regular postings -and join upper right to get my blogs. It is important to see through the smog of Ministry dogma and appreciate the sad reality the Ministry taking New Zealand education.

The following is a slightly edited version of Kelvin's posting.Visit his site to read it in full.

Kelvin writes


'We all know that the technicalities of national standards are irreconcilably flawed, but are we sufficiently focused on national standards as a concept being irreconcilably flawed?

National standards are irreconcilably flawed as a concept because they set up narrowed versions of literacy and numeracy as proxies for the curriculum, resulting in a lack of time and attention to the broader curriculum, laying it waste. This means children who are having no problems with literacy and numeracy, for no good reason, have an impoverished education; while children having problems with literacy and numeracy, for good reason, but doomed means, have an impoverished education as well.

The big issue of national standards is not that they don’t work for literacy and numeracy but that they harm the education of all children by working against the wider curriculum in the process of not working for literacy and numeracy either.

This effect on the wider curriculum is the number one issue for children and teachers, and the most potent one for getting the message across to the public about national standards.

Let’s get the technical issues about national standards out of the way first. This web site has continually made the point that national standards cannot be defined and that in the absence of this definition, formal assessment tools function will come to act as de facto definitions. National standards cannot be defined because in any definition there is always at least one idea that requires further definition.

It needs to be made clear that if the discussion was about school standards, it wouldn’t matter if there was some imprecision in the definitions because it would simply be an agreed goal towards which a school was working, but national standards are a very different thing.

I sometimes hear teachers say their school is doing national standards. Rubbish – no school is doing national standards.

National standards, by definition, are about high stakes’ assessment (meaning individual and school reputation, and career aspirations, are at stake), involving national moderation procedures and external checking. The ministry and review office will be all over schools. It will be a Disneyland for the bureaucracies. When you are doing them you will know – you will be feeling the pressure in relation to the decile you are – an intense, unpleasant pressure. And always in these circumstances ‘distortions’ occur. Wow! That decile 1 down the road has done amazingly well. What’s going on there? Yes, what is going on down there?

Then there is Overall Teacher Judgement (OTJ).

In New Zealand, as a selling point that our national standards are somehow different from national standards that have occurred elsewhere, OTJ has been introduced. What a merry dance leading nowhere that is going to take us.

National standards will not be real national standards for about five years. The time in between will just be play time.

Let us go back to national standards and follow the lead from there to establish the real national standards. Clearly those bland statements called the national standards aren’t the real national standards; they are general statements lacking any semblance of precision. So national standards are not the real national standards. Those non-national standards’ national standards point to the curriculum levels. But those curriculum levels were not designed to be national standards; they were designed as general levels for a curriculum. This is demonstrated by the curriculum levels requiring a large number of achievement objectives to explain them. But these achievement objectives were not designed to be national standards either; they were designed as indicators for the curriculum levels. The achievement objectives are too numerous and too lacking in scope to be the national standards. The same can be said for the progressions that have been produced, and which have no formal recognition, anyway.

So far, no luck with finding the real national standards.

We are now left with the standardised assessment tools and the press-ganged assessment tools, and OTJ. Ostensibly the standardised and the press-ganged assessment tools are there to place children at particular curriculum levels, but seeing curriculum levels are not real national standards, that is not possible.

The standardised assessment tools (PAT and the semi-standardised asTTle), and the press-ganged assessment tools, however, are producing numbers which are putting children in categories. What are those categories? Are those categories the real national standards? My answer is yes. What, then, are national standards? National standards are the categories that assessment tools are putting children in. Yes – but what are national standards? They aren’t anything you can define in words; they are the numbers allocated to children by the assessment tools. They can’t be defined in words, because the assessment tools whether already established, or press-ganged, perform their function by producing their numbers. Anyway, as has already been suggested, national standards cannot be defined.

The already established standardised assessment tools can be turned to producing numbers for national standards because they are normed to some degree – well normed in the case of PAT; and marginally well (and for the later years) in the case of the sprawling, wayward, and fitfully insightful asTTle. The press-ganged assessment tools weren’t designed for national standards; they were forced into service to produce numbers in relation to levels, which, as already discussed, do not work for national standards.

The end result will be that the press-ganged assessment tools will be sidelined, and we will be left, believe it or not, with PAT and asTTLe. All that kerfuffle and we are back with PAT and to some extent asTTle. This will, of course, take a few years to shake down, but that is what will happen.

What about OTJ?

When national standards are fully moderated and externally checked in, say, five years, very little differentiation will be allowed between assessment tool numbers and OTJ. Schools will have to justify any significant differentiation and that will put a real crimp on that manoeuvre. To allow significant differentiation would be to concede that the assessment tools were faulty; and, above all, make the moderation process incapable of moderation.

With New Zealand national standards we have national standards which aren’t national standards; curriculum levels which weren’t designed for national standards; achievement objectives that were designed for the curriculum levels not national standards and, anyway, as achievement objectives aren’t suitable for national standards; and OTJ which, when national standards become high stakes and real national standards, will be seen as antithetical to the nature of national standards.

I want to stress that real national standards won’t happen for about five years, up until then we will be playing at national standards. The settling in period will really be a phony period for suckering schools. After that there will be a winding down to PAT and to some extent asTTle as defining national standards by whatever numbers they produce and wherever the national standards’ bar is placed.

And the irreconcilable flaws, well – there are no defined national standards or any other words that define them (levels and the like); all the press-ganged assessment tools don’t and can’t work for national standards; OTJ can’t be accommodated in national standards; leaving aside asTTle, only PAT works for national standards, but it is already working for standards, it is already moderated, it is already standardised, and OTJ is already used to put the results into context and perspective. Why would we want to stuff up that old faithful by forcing it into a task it wasn’t designed for?

Indeed, why would we want to stuff up our children, teachers, schools and system by having national standards?

How did this gigantic stuff up come about?

Well it came about because our used car salesman wanted a stunt as a substitute for an education policy; the ministry said Oh no! It has been a disaster every other place it has been used, we’ll try and give it some credibility; but national standards can’t be given credibility, they only 'work' if they are imposed arbitrarily because, as an education idea, they are irreconcilably flawed; and in trying to give them some credibility, we have, ladies and gentlemen, this gigantic stuff up, Aotearoa-style.

If certain assessment tools are going to define national standards by the numbers they produce, as they will, we might as well go straight to national testing. It is probably the more honest thing to do. Then we can see our future more clearly: a devastated wider curriculum; and a child-time of children being prepared for tests. We will see our future in how it is reported from America; how it was reported from England by Robin Alexander in the monumental The Cambridge Primary Review.

Behold the wasteland.

We will, also, see quite clearly what monumental ….. we are making of ourselves'.


And I am totally behind Kelvin.

Too many principals are becoming overt or subtle apologists for the Standards; 'We are already doing them'. They are too busy pretending all is well, or there is no real problem, to see the wood for the trees and, in the process, leading schools into the right-wing politics of blame. It is all about how to factory farm those pigs. It is all about a McDonald's approach to education. It is a thin view of educational excellence. Those in high decile schools ought not to fool their parents it is good for them because they will win by default. Low decile school will scramble to show results but will always fail in such a un-level playing field. The real problem to failing students lies outside the school gates. One solution is creative teaching that develops the gifts and talents of all students.

We need more dissidents

The rebirth of education - a real Renaissance

The invention, sometime around 1445, by Gutenberg of the printing press enabled books to be printed and contributed to the first Renaissance. The spread of books changed the face and conditions of things all over the world.The number of books produced in the fifty years following Gutenberg equalled the number produced by European scribes during the preceding 1000 years. By this means ideas were set free and a literacy culture challenged the prior religious oral culture, beginning the development of the scientific mind - the first Renaissance ( the rebirth)

I have also read the Renaissance was helped by rats. The great plague wiped out rich and poor in Europe, a third of the population, providing the impetus for new thinking as old systems of faith were seen as inadequate.

If the power of the printing press changed our world dramatically then the new communication technologies will even be more dramatic and even more mind changing. The old oral cultures and religious beliefs continued up until this day but the world was changed forever. The world, until now, revolved around rational linear book orientated thinkers. The world of schools.

There are some who say we are now entering a new age -'A Creative Age', or a 'Second Renaissance'. I am with them. Our current institutions, shaped by Industrial Age thinking, are no longer able to cope - they are all well past their 'use by date'. We now need new minds for the new millennium. New minds will be shaped by the new communication mediums - where ideas can from anyone, anywhere, any time. An age of inter connectivity and creativity - a new Renaissance.

It seems to me that if we are to revitalize our schools so as to engage all our students, and ultimately save our planet, it will require the death of education and its rebirth.

An educational Renaissance.

Our schools are not just in need of improvement. They are well and truly unable to engage all the students who enter their traditional gates. Schools, particularly secondary schools, were never designed to cope with all students. Our schools had their origins in an industrial mentality producing biddable workers for the mass production factories. The Three Rs ( the National Standards) filled the student's day. Mass or 'standardized' education.

What is now needed is a bold new planetary vision for the future - a sustainable ecological vision, a future based on tapping the creativity of all citizens .

We particularly need a powerful new vision for New Zealand; one that is more inspiring than ‘catching up with Australia.’

If we want to be recognised as a creative and innovative country, a country at the leading edge of change, then the most important asset we have is the talent and creativity of our citizens. Once such a vision has been defined then schools can follow the lead or better still be seen as leaders.

We could do worse than follow the lead of Singapore with their 'Thinking Schools Thinking Nation' motto. According to its Ministry of Education ‘thinking schools will be learning organisations in every sense, constantly challenging assumptions, and seeking better ways of doing things through participation, creativity and innovation….the spirit of learning should accompany our students even after they leave school…A Learning Nation envisions a national culture and social environment that promotes lifelong learning in our people.’

Singapore’s Education Minister explains that the big adjustment for their teachers is in the way ‘we educate our young to develop in them a willingness to keep learning, and an ability to experiment, innovate, and take risks’. Unfortunately these ideas that seem foreign to our own Minister.


New Zealand schools, if transformed, could make a significant contribution to developing our country’s capacity for creativity, imagination, and innovation. To achieve such qualities we need our education system to focus on developing the diverse creativity of all students, not just the academic students as at present.

In the meantime , like Nero, our Minister fiddles with delivering National Standards - some sort of educational castor oil.

If we do not want to suppress the creative genius of our students then we need to transform how we imagine our schools.

We need to move beyond current problem solving reforms. The future requires our schools to ensure all students leave ‘confident, connected life long learners’ as our revised curriculum asks . We need all students leaving school with courageous self images and positive learning identities with their gifts and talents developed.

Schooling as we know will have to change dramatically. Nurturing a deep engagement in the learning process will require teachers to challenge often unquestioned assumptions and structures. We now know enough to do this but only if we change our own minds first.

If we are to break through the limits imposed by the industrial age and reach towards what some are calling an Age of Ideas, or a Second Renaissance, then we need to explore new ideas.

Teachers need to stand back and take a fresh look at taken for granted assumptions. Without this ability they risk remaining locked in the habitual.

Whatever evolves needs to be built on the foundation of a solid pedagogy which reaches well beyond current formulaic ‘best practices’. We need to replace our teacher , assessment and curriculum dominated system with one premised on personalising learning. We need to move from idea that had their genesis in the first Renaissance to the emerging ideas of the Second. We are all entering an evolutionary ecological interconnected world.

Choices will have to be made. Courage will be required.

Thankfully there are plenty of inspirational ideas to call on.Ideas that many creative teachers have been working away 'underground' for decades. And thankfully there a number of schools are already well on the way.

All that is needed is the courage for other schools to leave their comfortable well trodden paths. The future demands we all make our own paths and if we do to leave tracks for others to follow. This is the spirit of the 'Creative Era' or the 'Second Renaissance'.

It is all about developing new minds for a new millennium.

Tom Sawyer -educator ( and Goldilocks)

I like Mark Twain. A great observer of people and a great story teller. He once described leadership like being the captain of a Mississippi paddle wheel steamer who had to to know every bed in the river, every sandbar, and every snag every twenty four hours!

Sounds like being teacher. Intuition is more important than out of date river charts. Thinking on your feet, making instant decision, is the mark of a good teacher not following lesson plans mindlessly.

If you are reading this be great if you were to pass on the blog to other creative people who might be interested and get then to receive the blog, as posted, by e-mail.See box above right.



Getting students involved in learning because they want to - because it makes sense to them - is the art of the teacher. The great things is that students are born with an innate desire to learn, to explore, to experiment with things, as long as it is meaningful or fun. All too often school is none of these things. Educationalist Jerome Bruner once wrote that the ' canny art of the teacher is one of intellectual temptation'. You can't drag a horse to water but you can sure make certain the horse is thirsty. If kids want to do something they see as important they will work really hard and even practice.

Remember the story about how Tom Sawyer got his friends to whitewash his Aunt Polly's fence. Tom, knowing the universal human weakness towards jealously and competitiveness, jumped to the task of painting the fence with great enthusiasm and delight. Soon his friends were asking if they could help but Tom refused saying they might not do it right. Eventually after considerable pleading and begging from his friends Tom gives in but pleaded with them to be careful. But not before his friend Ben gives him his apple as a reward! He then gives them the brush and bucket while he rested in the shade keeping a careful eye on them.

In this situation he turned hard work in play.

Daniel Pink writes about the fence incident saying Tom turned a dreary task by pretending the grim task was a captivating source of fantastic privilege. Pink writes that Twain extracts a key motivational principle namely that 'Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Intrinsic motivation (learning as its own reward) increases performance and creativity. Pink calls this the 'Sawyer Effect'.

I have seen students, in creative teachers classes, becoming involved in fun challenging activities that were really maths, or science or reading. There are such a lot of interesting science, technology and maths activities that teachers can use to 'tempt' students -and, if somehow, it is the students who suggest the activity like Tom's friends they are trapped doing it for the fun of it. Tom's role as a teacher is done.

While I am at it remember Goldilocks and the three bears? This story illustrates the need for learning to be not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Goldilocks discovered what Vygotsky was to call the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) - that students will have go at meaningful task that is just within their reach.

Pink , writing about the Goldilocks's effect writes that when task exceed their capabilities the result is anxiety.When the task falls short of their capabilities the result is boredom. When the match is just right you get what Csikszentmihalyi calls 'flow' - and it is 'glorious'. Transformational or attitude changing. 'Flow' tasks provide powerful learning experiences as they inhabit the zone of living on the knife edge between chaos and disorder.

And I bet many teachers feel the same anxiety and even boredom as they as asked to 'deliver' and 'cover' curriculum tasks that they know don't make sense to them or their students! The savvy of Tom Sawyer and Goldilocks tasks provide an answer. Purpose and fun combined with mastery or feelings of success.

I bet a lot of so called failing or struggling kids feel anxiety in our schools as they are asked to do things the can't see the point of in and bright kids are all too often bored. If teachers don't get the match right teacher are asking for trouble.

Teaching is about understanding human nature and students need for fun, mastery, and power, or as Daniel Pink writes in his book Drive, autonomy, mastery and purpose. He writes that students ' default' drive to learn is 'flipped' by experiences at school where students come to see learning as something done to them.

As soon as this happens learning stops and teaching becomes hard. But if learning is about real and relevant tasks ( not too cold or hot) then teaching is lot easier. Teachers can rest up like Tom to reflect on how they can and assist students who need help to achieve mastery in what they want to do.

It's called going with the grain!

There is just time for a Kowhai Study before the holidays

When I visit schools I often see teachers involved in ten week inquiry studies which seem all process and little real content. Good inquiry studies should result students uncovering some real in-depth content. With the holidays coming up there is just time for a 'mini study' based on one of New Zealand's iconic plants - the Kowhai. How much do your students know about this amazing tree? How much do they look at a kowhai and see very little except yellow flowers. In one week of a focused in-depth inquiry a lot can be learned. Through poetic language and the expressive arts children's creativity can also also be celebrated.


Creative teachers should always be on the lookout for ideas to introduce their students to.

This time of the year it almost impossible to ignore the kowhai which is now in full flower.

The kowhai is an ideal integrated study that can involve many areas of the curriculum.

So if there is a kowhai near you this is the time to take your class out to take a close look at a native tree that we often take for granted. And as well, if you are lucky, you might also see that other native icon the tui.

Introduce the tree by bringing in few flowers for students to observe closely. Using a pencil or biro and a small piece of paper encourage students to draw what they see carefully; when finished their drawing can be coloured in with coloured pencils. There is an important learning lesson to be gained in the process. Students need to take the time and regularly look at what they are drawing. This seems obvious advice but all too often children look once and then draw from what they thought they saw. Close observation is a learnt skill – ‘slowing the pace of work’ is important if students are to gain a quality result.

After drawings ask the students what questions came to mind. Drawings, questions, and later their researched answers, can be part of a growing kowhais display.

Visit the tree and sit quietly by it. Get the students to think of a phrase that describes the flowers, another about the trunks and branches and a third about the fallen flowers on the ground. These can be drafted up into simple three line haiku poems to add to the display. Some children will need a little help to learn to value their own ‘voice.

When at the tree think about how you could measure the height, the ‘drip line’ ( the distance from the trunk to the outer branches) the circumference and, back in class, pull apart a flower and count the petals, the stigma and the stamens ( after you have sorted them out yourself!). Work out the function of the stamens and the stigma.

Collect up a 100 kowhai pods if available from last years flowers and in group remove the seeds noting how many seeds in each pod – leading to developing ideas about percentages.

Try germinating some seeds. Soak some for few days, burn a few pods and recover seeds, carefully chip a few seeds, and plant some just as they are. Plant 10 of each and work out percentages that germinate.

When flowers eventually lose all the petals and stamens tie a piece of cotton to the remaining stamens and measure growth over a week or so. Graph the results. You will be surprised.

If possible introduce children to other leguminous plant flowers (beans, peas, etc) and help them understand that plants are classified by their flowers and not their shape.

As the study processes students could research up information about the Maori and scientific names and whatever else they can research.

A concluding activity could be doing a larger drawing of a tui feeding on a kowhai (you will need some photos of tuis to refer to). Use pastels to colour in.

The ideas above are only suggestions but indicate all sorts of possibilities for students to use during other environmental studies.

In the process of such simple study you will have developed your children’s awareness and knowledge, used ‘real’ maths, and extended their vocabularies.

After such an experience keep your eyes open for other environmental or seasonal possibilities to introduce to your students

National Standards for Dogs?

All dogs have evolved from wolves and this process has been effected by deliberate breeding. Dogs are now as diverse as humans. Would it be possible to develop standards to assess them? Would you choose speed or strength, trainability or native intelligence, suitable as pets or hunters. Whatever you choose will narrow the options and breeders will breed to the qualities chosen. No use for dogs but OK for our kids.

This blog comes from Phil Cullen the ex Director General of Primary Education Queensland who is strongly against this technocratic standardized testing idea. Visit his site to read what he has to say.

Phil got the blog from American educator Marion Brady who is also against standardisation.Visit his site if you are curious.

So thanks Phil and Marion.

The Wonderful Diversity of Dogs

Driving the country roads of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, I have sometimes been lucky enough to be blocked by sheep being moved from one pasture to another.

I say 'lucky' because it allows me to watch an impressive performance by a dog -- usually a Border Collie.

What a show! A single, mid-sized dog herding two or three hundred sheep, keeping them moving in the right direction, rounding up strays, knowing how to intimidate but not cause panic, funneling them all through a gate, and obviously enjoying the challenge.

Why a Border Collie? Why not an Akita or Xoloitzcuintli or another of about 400 breeds listed on the Internet?

Because, among the people for whom herding sheep is serious business, there is general agreement that Border Collies are better at doing what needs to be done than any other dog. They have 'the knack.'

That knack is so important that those who care most about Border Collies even oppose their being entered in dog shows. That, they say, would lead to the Border Collie being bred to look good, and looking good isn't the point. Brains, innate ability, performance -- that's the point.

Other breeds are no less impressive in other ways. If you're lost in a snowstorm in the Alps, you don't need a Border Collie. You need a big, strong dog with a really good nose, lots of fur, wide feet that don't sink too deeply into snow, and an unerring sense of direction for returning with help. You need a Saint Bernard.

If varmints are sneaking into your hen house, killing your chickens, and escaping down holes in a nearby field, you don't need a Border Collie or a Saint Bernard, you need a Fox Terrier.

It isn't that many different breeds can't be taught to herd, lead high-altitude rescue efforts, or kill foxes. They can. It's just that teaching all dogs to do things which one particular breed can do better than any other doesn't make much sense.

We accept the reasonableness of that argument for dogs. We reject it for kids.

The non-educators now running the education show say American kids are lagging ever-farther behind in science and math, and that the consequences of that for America's economic well-being could be catastrophic.

So, what is this rich, advantaged country of ours doing to try to beat out the competition?

Mainly, we put in place the No Child Left Behind program, now replaced by Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards Initiative. If that fact makes you optimistic about the future of education in America, think again about dogs.

There are all kinds of things they can do besides herd, rescue, and engage foxes. They can sniff luggage for bombs. Chase felons. Stand guard duty. Retrieve downed game birds. Guide the blind. Detect certain diseases. Locate earthquake survivors. Entertain audiences. Play nice with little kids. Go for help if Little Nell falls down a well.

So, with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top as models, let's set performance standards for these and all other canine capabilities and train all dogs to meet them. All 400 breeds. All skills. Leave No Dog Behind!

Two-hundred-pound Mastiffs may have a little trouble with the chase-the-fox-down-the-hole standard, and Chihuahuas will probably have difficulty with the tackle-the-felon-and-pin-him-to-the-ground standard. But, hey, no excuses! Standards are standards! Leave No Dog Behind.

Think there's something wrong with a same-standards-and-tests-for-everybody approach to educating? Think a math whiz shouldn't be held back just because he can't write a good five-paragraph essay? Think a gifted writer shouldn't be refused a diploma because she can't solve a quadratic equation? Think a promising trumpet player shouldn't be kept out of the school orchestra or pushed out on the street because he can't remember the date of the Boxer Rebellion?

If you think there's something fundamentally, dangerously wrong with an educational reform effort that's actually designed to standardize, designed to ignore human variation, designed to penalize individual differences, designed to produce a generation of clones, photocopy this column.

If you think it's stupid to require every kid to read the same books, think the same thoughts, parrot the same answers, make several photocopies. And in the margin at the top of each, write, in longhand, something like, "Please explain why the standards and accountability fad isn’t a criminal waste of brains," or, "Why are you trashing America's hope for the future?" or just, "Does this make sense?"

Send the copies to your senators and representatives before they sell their vote to the publishing and testing corporations intent on getting an ever-bigger slice of that half-trillion dollars a year America spends on educating.

Kelvin Smythe John Hatties nemesis!

Education is at turning point. National Standards takes us back to the past. The revised curriculum the future. Schools however can't have it both ways. Compromise is almost as bad as compliance. Kelvin Smythe has a steady eye on the future. John Hattie seems confused - busy hedging his bets.

The following, is an abridged e-mail sent out by Kelvin and sums up a long posting of his .Read the full posting for yourself.


'This posting', Kelvin writes, 'addresses the question of how an academic of such intelligence and status can be so superficial, can be, just when it matters, so unimaginative, have such fantastic blind spots, promote opposing ideas with such credibility.


'I have been very gratified at the exceptional number of people who clicked on to this posting. I know it was long, in many ways inappropriately long for busy teachers and principals. In that respect, I apologise.

In the case of Hattie, I really wanted to work out for myself how he advanced his pedagogical case. He is an immensely powerful academic, not only for what he is, but also for what he represents; understand him and his pedagogy and you understand the future of New Zealand education.

After a quick reading Hattie’s article I knew that he started off with saying we had a glorious past (but not explained), and that while he started off with apparent scepticism about National Standards, he quickly moved into full support (but not explained), on the grounds that he had the answers to avoiding the significant problems that had occurred in other implementations.

I also knew that by the end of the article he was a million miles from coming up with the answers. I was also aware that there were areas of education activity and education research he avoided the best he could (for instance, the influence of socio-economic factors on learning, also the parts of learning that are difficult to measure, the purposes of NS).

In the course of the writing I came up with a lot of gems. The best in my opinion was when he was discussing Alexander’s UK research (which recommended doing away with NS) – very adroitly Hattie shifts from discussing NS to discussing the apple pie of high standards. (He was trying, it seems, to appropriate Alexander’s recommendations against NS to his NS.) Also, he seemingly agreed with Alexander’s criticism of national tests – SATS – but two paragraphs later, in his conclusion, he praised their architect and recommended we follow SATS’ implementation as a model.

Probably the most concerning gem was the way Hattie started off a paragraph extolling the importance of teacher voice in policy matters, but ended by suggesting that teacher organisations were unfit for the purpose and other arrangements were needed. I have great fears for the future of our teacher organisations.

Hatties ‘Horizons and Whirlpools’ article is replete with sudden, complete, and blithe shifts like these.

I see a not too distant future when teacher organisations are sidelined, principals are government servants, and the curriculum narrowed to a pinpoint'.


At least Kelvin can envision a future horizon but the choice still lies with schools. Will they be sucked into Hattie' whirlpool? Or will they have the courage to value their own professionalism?

Will the real John Hattie stand up.

John Hattie - the holder of the Holy Grail or a Poison Chalice? It does appear that John Hattie seems to be running with the hares and hunting with the hounds? Kelvin Smythe is keeping a clear humanistic eye on him on behalf of creative teachers.

Hattie and Tolley at it again writes Kelvin

Kelvin's article has been slightly abridged - read his full statement on his website.

'The heading for this posting does not mean I believe that Hattie and Tolley are personally close or in regular communication, but it does mean they share a community of interest in pushing the arguments they do. Tolley has developed a visceral contempt for teachers as a result of their energetic opposition to national standards; and Hattie has become frustrated with teachers as they indicate an increasing apprehension of his overarching plan to bind teachers and children into sets of rules, standardisations, and controls administered by experts – in other words academics or those controlled by academics.

In the Sunday Star-Times (August 29, 2010), in response to a beat-up front page story about ‘criminals in our classrooms’ there is the following quote: ‘education expert John Hattie wants professionals to monitor teachers, who he says are “allowed to do almost anything” ’ Tolley, of course, evinces concern about the so-called situation and promises an enquiry. They are both at it again.

There is no doubt that Hattie along with Tolley are becoming increasingly isolated from teachers and worried about how their education strategies are being resisted. This has prompted both of them to move to undermine teacher organisations, to weaken genuine teacher representation, and to centralise, bureaucratise, and expertise the administration of education.

Hattie’s response in this week’s Sunday Star-Times, his use of praise of teachers as a cover for inserting policies which undermine them, the illogic of his ideas, the fantastic internal contradictions, the lack of explanation, the lack of imagination, the narrow view of education, his claims to have the answers (clearly misplaced), and the gathering in of the reins of power to authorities and academics of his type.

Just because I have placed Hattie under intense scrutiny for over two years now does not mean I have any particular antagonism to him personally.

In America, Hattie would be a dime-a-dozen academic, just another one of those academics who, with politicians and education administrators, dominate the narrowing education philosophy of that sadly confused country. (I acknowledge, however, that in pure energy he does stand out from that benighted academic crowd.) In New Zealand, though, ‘He is an immensely powerful academic, not only for what he is, but also for what he represents; understand him and his pedagogy and you understand the future of New Zealand education.’

I believe, however, his support amongst academics is waning, even amongst those of his own type. Hattie would have known of the dismantling of NEMP and it being replaced with a discredited education review office outcomes-type assessment structure. This announcement was a sudden one, taking most academics by surprise. I’m not saying it was Hattie’s idea but it is in line with his philosophy and he would have known about it. No doubt, he has been contacted by his fellow academics and no doubt he would have said something ambiguous in response. Look for something of a falling out there.

I predicted two years ago that it was not Hattie and Auckland University that needed to be watched closest, but Hattie and Cognition (a linking of Hattie and MultiServe) – though I’m not predicting an immediate connection between Cognition and the dismantling of NEMP. It is about time the academics of New Zealand stopped being in thrall, fear, or run-off-their thinking by this academic. Why should most of the criticism to do with Hattie come from a lowly educationist from the provinces.

So that is one part of the Sunday Star-Times’ equation.

Well the other part has had a very bad week. Significant for Tolley was the farcical fallout from a tiff with that frothing school trustees association person, Lorraine Kerr.

Kerr (Dominion, 27 August, 2010) was reported as asking Tolley ‘why she wrongly claimed the association was “extremely supportive” of national standards.’

I know – unbelievable given Kerr’s intransigent stand for national standards – but these are the kinds of success that come if we stick to our knitting and keep purling away.

Yes – it’s Monty Python territory.

Kerr ‘said yesterday that she had “never said” boards were supportive of the policy. Mrs Tolley’s claims about the standing ovation were “an awkward one to answer”. The ovation had been in recognition of her 21 years of service as a school trustee. “Possibly that’s a conversation I need I need to have with the minister.” ’

This cracking in the wall of support from the School Trustees Association is fraught with danger for Tolley. (There will be a kiss and makeup, but significant damage has been wrought.)

But it is Hattie’s response that is most enlightening. After the remark that teachers are ‘allowed to do almost anything’ he is described as a government adviser and then reported as saying that he ‘wants experts to monitor teachers against national standards because the Teachers Council has failed to do so.’

The issue at hand, beat up or not, was professional penalties for teachers with criminal convictions, but here we Hattie distorting it to one of teachers having their curriculum and classroom practice monitored by experts.

What manner of cognitive ability is this academic? The Teachers Council already works to a set of professional standards which provides guidance in the first place for principals and boards of trustees. Does Hattie not realise that we have schools out there, headed by principals and boards of trustees? It is these people who have the primary responsibility for the application of professional criteria.

Schools don’t allow teachers to do anything they want: those who lead them provide guidance, leadership and supervision. The professional standards are an excellent set of criteria for setting out expectations of teachers; they are not minimum standards (whatever they are). We do not need a central committee of experts appointed by the government in association with in academics monitoring schools intruding into what is the responsibility of schools. The Teachers Council has and should have a light supervisory role acting as a backstop. The system is already bureaucratic, impersonal, and ominous enough without the system being run by a non-democratic, unrepresentative, central committee of experts.

Hattie in short order achieves a dizzying illogic. He has just spent a couple of paragraphs saying teachers are ‘allowed to do almost anything’, that we’ve only been interested in minimum standards, and that to improve what he clearly sees as a problem he recommends replacing the present Teachers Council with one of his own making, and that we should change from our present policy of focusing on the minimum ‘to focus on excellence and effective performance’ instead. So far, so bad, but not yet illogical. Then in a bewildering dislocation he finds it possible to say we put ‘too much emphasis on problems’ when our ‘system was amongst the best in the world’. But he has just said that this same system allows teachers ‘to do almost anything’, which he saw as a major problem, and which only focused on the minimum, which he saw as another problem. Go figure.

Hattie has not allowed to penetrate his thinking a recognition that the relationship of teachers with their schools and the central authorities is at the heart of a system, and if we have a system amongst the best in the world, light supervision from the centre with the weight of responsibility borne by schools may be why our system is so good, and the American system he seems so keen to ape, so bad.

It seems that having successfully implemented national standards in New Zealand he now wants to implement something he calls national standards for teachers.

‘If we are going to have a future [My goodness, having just said we have amongst the best education systems in the world, that we focus too much on problems, he now seems to be saying we face complete collapse if we don’t act on his expert advice. This would seem to be the mother of all problems.] … we need to have experts monitoring teachers. What other profession doesn’t have a group of experts in charge?’

‘In charge’ that is a typical Hattie verbal coinage. What does it mean? A central committee of experts in charge. Obviously the education review office doesn’t meet the bill. What does it mean? Is he really meaning academic experts? He must be joking.

Hattie and Tolley are taking New Zealand education down a path well travelled to destination failure. When, in the ‘90s, teaching was separated from evaluation and called assessment, and the outcomes of learning, the artifacts of learning, the paper processes of assessment, became the focus of education, this resulted in power being transferred to education accountants (education review office), quantitative academics, and centralised authorities. Learning was stripped of its classroom time to unfold, its mystery, its natural complexity, its affective and moral components – and a narrowed version of literacy and numeracy became proxies for the curriculum. Experts, academics, and bureaucrats intruded into the relationship between teachers and children, bound as teachers were with learning formulae, high-stakes’ assessment, standards, unambiguous outcomes, extrinsic motivation, instrumentality, rules, restrictions, and codes.

So encompassed have we become with this authoritarian and centralised culture, this culture of certainty, of experts knowing best, that we find it difficult to recognise there is an alternative, an alternative, I suggest, that should start with our understanding of the curriculum, and on that understanding be constructed the way evaluation is carried out, from there the kinds of structures within schools to support that kind of teaching and evaluation, and from there the kinds of structures within the system to support schools.

From my criticisms of the present pernicious direction of education, by considering the opposite, you can judge some of the characteristics that would constitute the basis for an alternative system. If I had to describe the basis for the curriculum I am suggesting, I would say it was the feeling for approach to mathematics, to science, to reading, to writing, and, of course to social studies. A feeling for based on children being provided with time to gain a grasp of their topic, to explore their topic, to gain sufficient control of the knowledge or ability to develop a feeling for their topic, and eventually to use that knowledge and feeling gained to be creative and imaginative. The topics would be guided by aims not outcomes or objectives and run their course with a light touch.

This feeling for is not to be confused with enthusiasm; a feeling for is of a different plane from children just feeling enthusiastic about their topic. In mathematics, children would have to get into a topic, a real life topic, which drew on their abilities in a contextual way. In language experience, there would be an actual experience, and in science, it would not be a download from the computer. As for evaluation, to evaluate it properly, to stop the evaluation process distorting the teaching and learning, you would have to be there. On such a foundation would I build an education system intended for children and teachers, not academics, politicians, and bureaucrats.

A final word to the Tolleys and Hatties of this world.

An alternative system would not bleat on about excellence, excellence is not something to be aimed for; it is simply and elegantly, an outcome of good teaching, of teaching for wisdom, of what it is to be good, beautiful, and true. I do not recognise those qualities in what Mrs Tolley or Professor Hattie say about education or the way they say it. Nor do I recognise a celebration of variety, indeed, I recognise a stifling uniformity.

We should all be mindful of what Albert Camus wrote about the danger of certainty: ‘Democracy is that system devised and maintained by those who realise they do not know everything.’

The barbarians of certainty have long been within the walls and occupy the citadel, can we work together to expel them?'

Thanks for your insight Kelvin

Be wary of 'research says', 'best practice' and 'data driven' 'buzz words' writes Dean Fink

I have just had an e-mail from Canadian educationalist Dean Fink to let me know about a website and blog he has recently established. Dean is well known in New Zealand and has been very encouraging about the potential of the New Zealand Curriculum. He would be less impressed now with the new government's imposition of the backward locking National Standards and associated nonsense.

I hope he doesn't mind but the following is an extract from one of his first blogs.

Visit Dean's website.


'Let me outline', writes Dean, 'three words or phrases that agitate my crap detector – “the research says”, “best practice” and “data driven” instruction, leadership or whatever.

Whether you agree or disagree with my analysis, I would like to hear from you about any words or phrases that have hidden meanings or at least attempt to distort the real meaning.

The one that excites me the most is “the research says”. It is a phrase that is right up there with “the Bible says”. In university one of my very clever friends used to quote selected sections of scripture to encourage young woman to do things that they otherwise might not want to do. Of course the young woman saw through his scheme.

The phrase “the research says” is thrown around very loosely at conferences, political meetings, and in more than a few books and journal articles.

I would suggest that as consumers of research we become much more clever and start asking questions like – what research? Who is the author(s)? What is his or her personal stake in the research (for example are they promoting their own money-making scheme)? Has the research met the standard of professional adjudication? And perhaps the most important question, who paid for it? In a climate of publish or perish for academics and diminishing revenue for universities, research grants from foundations, corporations and governments become the life blood of individuals and institutions. We have had many examples of researchers either ignoring negative findings, or pulling their punches in scientific research related to medical or environmental research, it stands to reason then that research funded by organizations with a monetary or political interest in research results will exert some, and I suspect in some cases a lot of pressure to get the ‘right’ answers. If this happens in other fields then I’m sure it happens in education.

My message is not one of distrust, but one of caution – be an informed consumer of educational research, including mine.

“Best practice” falls into the same category.

Who decided something is ‘best’? It assumes we have arrived at nirvana, that the practice can’t get any better. It can be good practice, even great practice in certain contexts, but is the practice appropriate in all settings. Is it equally suited to all children, or is it ‘best’ practice in the hands of all teachers?

I learned about the limitations of ‘best’ practice many years ago. I wrote a curriculum for senior students in history for which I received a great many plaudits from my colleagues and requests to use it. The curriculum worked very well for my students who always attained very high grades on provincial history examinations. I allowed it to be circulated freely to anyone who asked in the belief that it would help the field. After a year of its being handed around, the history inspector for the province thanked me for my generosity, but suggested I be more circumspect in my distribution. He said “you wouldn’t believe how badly it is being butchered by teachers without a strong background in the field.”


The third phrase that really ‘bugs’ me is ‘data driven.

Don’t get me wrong data as evidence for decision-making whether it is at a school, classroom, or individual child level is crucial, but the phrase ‘driven’ suggests that we can take human beings out of the equation. In spite of valiant efforts to make education a linear, rational predictable enterprise that technocrats love, we humans keep screwing it up.

Education is inherently non linear, non (not ir) rational and certainly unpredictable. We sometimes don’t know how successful we are for years. My friends Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley have written an excellent piece that I can’t top entitled Data Driven to Distraction. I invite you to read it at http://www2.bc.edu/~hargrean/docs/EDWeek_Data_Driven.pdf.

Now it is your turn, I’d early love to hear from you with your educational “weasel” words and phrases or your critique of my suggestions'

Good stuff! Plenty of 'weasel words' in New Zealand these days!