Yesterday was a great Thursday – for learning.

Getting to work at 6.45am is a little different for me. I have colleagues at other schools – often Primary schools – who get to work at 7am on a regular basis. For me, living an hour away and needing, you know, sleep, I tend to get in a shade before 8am to begin the day after battling Sydney traffic. Sometimes I win.

Walking into a staffroom with just two rows of fluorescent lights on, I thought what a great location for a zombie movie. Then I thought… there’s someone else here… and indeed there was. A colleague who was busy marking so that she could meet a student at 7.30am piped up and said hello. Whoever says teachers have an easy 9-3 job should really try coming to a school and doing it for a week.

Who’s at the desk next to you? I had been working with two of my colleagues on a History project with kids from two different History classes since late last term. Our students were investigating the similarities and differences between Australia and America in the 20th century, in particular: women’s rights, immigration, crime and indigenous issues. Almost completely done in their own time, the students had even added each other on Skype and Facebook in order to do the project over the holidays and weekends.

The students had to work in mixed groups – each group had students from each class. Using some basic driving questions for their research – some groups took their structure from them, others just used them as springboards – they were to create a presentation for their peers and teachers in which all group members could speak about what interested them from their investigation and could use the presentation slides to make switching speakers more fluid. (Instead of the usual “oh who’s speaking now… oh it’s Maddie…OK Maddie up you get… ” etc.)

So the students spoke in their allotted spaces (decided wholly by them) and gave the audience – a mix of their peers and other teachers who had been invited – a very compelling and educational overview of the various comparative facets of the 20th century.

The main differences were that instead of emailing slides to each other, the students used Google Docs, linked to a wikispaces site, to collaborate in real time in their notes and presentations. (I learned that Google Presentations actually allow full-screen, fully animated/transitioned slideshows – awesome) Also, the students had to negotiate their roles and were only expected to ask teachers for help as situations arose. Negotiation is a key part of collaboration.

The other major aspect to this project was that one of my colleagues, and thus an entire class of this mixed group, actually live in Pennsylvania USA. That’s right. The other side of the world (kind of). Different timezones, different curricula, same passion. The reason our kids had to add each other on Facebook and Skype was that it allowed them to talk and collaborate synchronously and work on their projects asynchronously as their work demanded.

Therefore, yesterday’s Skype session was happening with co-presenters from the USA and Australia – live – on a shared project. Our girls didn’t get any marks for it (though they’ll get public recognition and merits galore) and the vast majority of the work was done in their own time. They said they loved it and they did a damn good job in presenting the information clearly and in an engaging manner.

It was a fantastic project for my colleague from my school as well as my colleague at another school and our respective groups of students. Please, I implore you, try to get authentic audiences for your students’ projects. You might have to play around with timezones and tools, but it’s worth it.

Who’s at the desk next to me? The entire world.

So floating on an air of happiness (and, yes, relief that it all worked) I was then involved for the rest of the day in meetings with Seqta, a school management system based in WA. We’re moving through the process of culling down to a few options from which to select the system our school will move to for the foreseeable future. A big choice but one that will benefit the staff and make our pastoral care of students – amongst other things – much more rich and effective.

I left the meeting to chat about Trotsky with my Year 12s. They are such a great class. They actually laugh at some of my jokes – which is kind of them.

Then back to more Seqta talk and after lunch, off to a school on the north side of the Harbour Bridge to chat about the impact of BYOD/1:1 on teaching and learning.

Some interesting and challenging questions for schools:

• When so many students already have devices of their own and can outpace whatever the school can provide, why have a 1:1 school program? Personally, I believe BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) will become more rapidly accepted as schools shift from providing hardware to providing infrastructure
• What are the equity issues for students who cannot afford to bring their own device?
• What real impact has the Digital Education Revolution had on learning in the classroom? Has it actually benefitted or hindered sound teaching and learning practice?
• Should technology be used at home more than at school? To connect students with each other, with information and experiences that are separate to the human interactions that schools are surely meant to facilitate.
• Where is the research? I know a fantastic bloke who is completing research into the impact of the DER, but how many others are out there actually researching and gathering empirical evidence on the impact of the DER. Otherwise, is it all just anecdotal? And further, is it therefore redundant evidence due to the differences between schools? (culture, approach, philosophy etc)
• Should schools have ICT policies or ICT philosophies? I believe teachers need some kind of foundation to manage their classrooms effectively, but I don’t believe in putting down on paper what might be irrelevant in two years.

Yep – it was a belter of a discussion.

Finally, I had the pleasure of attending TeachMeet USyd at the University of Sydney. Hosted capably by @amymcburney (who I am sure I will be on her way to leadership roles soon enough) we had presentations on:

• Gifted and Talented Education
• Oxfam and real opportunities for participation by students in social justice
• Classroom ideas for History, Maths and English (from praccies!) including how to use The Voice to explain price change to Year 7 Mathematics students.
• Teacher wellbeing
• Using social media in the classroom
• Storytelling
• PBL (project based learning)

and much more.

Search for #tmusyd in Twitter as the conversation will still be going, I’m sure. A few people have Storify-ed it in order to capture the learning, including me http://sfy.co/q6bc 

It was fantastic to yet again see the power of dialogue between current and future practitioners. I think all pre-service teachers and their supervisors should have to go to a TeachMeet each semester in order to share and learn with colleagues in their region and thus add to the pool of awesome that is the teaching profession.

You want powerful learning that doesn’t cost anything but your time? And isn’t so haughty that it demands you sit listening to one person for an hour (even if you don’t like what you hear)? Do you wish you just had the chance to peek into a colleague’s classroom and ask what IS IT that they do to make their kids so engaged? Host or join a teachmeet like the one hosted by Amy McBurney and you’ll find out.

http://tmsydney.wikispaces.com or http://www.teachmeet.net for national events!

Yesterday was indeed a great day for learning. Let’s see how much I can make stick!

This week, in addition to the normal excitement of my classes and the challenges of eLearning at school, I was fortunate enough to participate in three distinct learning experiences: a whole-staff Professional Development day at school, a Careers Information night at Macquarie University, and finally a fantastic teachmeet at the State Library of NSW.

Each experience had its own focus, structure and outcome. Each confirmed the reasons I became a teacher. Each – I hope – made me grow that little bit more.

First, our professional learning day at school. The focus was on differentiation and embedding ICT in the curriculum. Whilst I know some may have walked away overwhelmed, some underwhelmed, I feel that at the very least my colleagues and I could walk away with two things: new tech-related ideas to apply in our classrooms and a virtual and social space in which to develop robust learning programs.

New ideas came thick and fast from one of our teachers who recently attended the CEO Sydney Digital Showcase (though it may have gone under another name) organised by @simoncrook & co. She was impressed by the level of collaboration between CEO teachers, their depth of innovation – especially in primary classrooms – and their ideas for enhancing learning and teaching by using technology. After this excellent introduction to the ICT arena, six other teachers on staff ran 2 x 10 minute workshops on a technology they use in the classroom. IWBs, Edmodo, Diigo, flipped approaches and more were on offer and led to some interesting and challenging discussions about our capability to support such things in a strategic and whole-school manner. As always, I’m inspired when listening to my fellow teachers discuss and reflect on their experiences.

Second event of the week was the Macquarie University Career Information Night on Tuesday evening. I was invited to go by the President of the Education Society, @stephyadan – this is a student-run organisation whose responsibility it is to engage and connect budding teachers. Although the first presentation’s 40 minutes went a little too long for my teachmeet-induced ADHD, it was informative and clearly valuable for any pre-service teachers intending on teaching in a government school. Other presentations included an educational researcher from MQU, an education officer or Senior Aquarist from Sydney Aquarium, a teacher who worked overseas for several years and myself blabbing on about how awesome teaching is. I tried to argue that by connecting with different areas of teaching and learning early on, with bodies like @aitsl and their online resources like Teacher Feature and Illustrations of Practice, pre-service teachers can get a leg-up into what actually happens in a school even before they set foot in a staffroom.

The Prezi I used to distract people can be found at http://prezi.com/nv4lcg6hupxp/teach-now-and-for-tomorrow/ and includes a bit about my journey, some of my ideas about education, a few tips and a super cute message at the end. Don’t worry, it’s not a picture of me.

I truly wish I had had the chance to go to one of these Career Nights when I was a young teacher-in-training (which I still am by the way). It was highly informative, very targeted at what these students needed to know about systems and applications and reasons for sticking with what can be a difficult but deeply rewarding vocation. It is essential that all universities take on board this idea and make sure they are connecting their students with practitioners in the field so that they are as informed and connected as possible in their future endeavours.

Third, I had the privilege of walking the stone steps, through the columned entrance of the grand Mitchell section of the State Library of NSW last night. The reason for this was that a distinctly different kind of teachmeet was being held there. I helped to organise the event along with Megan Perry of SLNSW and Cameron Paterson @cpaterso from SHORE School. Both are magicians of organisation and have a deep passion for learning and history. History, in fact, was the focus or theme of the teachmeet, with many history teachers and education officers of historical sites, university professors and even @simoncrook from CEO Sydney offering their insights and imaginations to the 70+ strong crowd that met in the Dixson Room.

If you haven’t yet been to a teachmeet, please get involved. In Sydney, we use the http://tmsydney.wikispaces.com site to organise and communicate with other teachmeeters. Any teacher can host a teachmeet so long as they keep it free, fast and devoid of advertising. We heard about the Holocaust and how to teach it from Nurit Davidson of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (who happened to be in town on a speaking tour and offered to do a talk for us too!). We heard about techie ideas and solid teaching practice and challenging ideas that threaten to change the subject so many hold close to their hearts. It was fantastic to see such a broad spectrum of ideas as well as a diverse audience: all three sectors were represented both in the presentations and in the audience; primary teachers, secondary teachers, pre-service and higher ed sat together and chatted, sharing ideas; we also had several heads of History departments in attendance, hopefully now spreading the word about teachmeets to their minions.

I’m sincerely grateful and amazed at my colleagues from another campus, who give up their time, experience and energy to stimulate each others’ teaching spirit.

To catch up on what as discussed, check the following twitter feeds: #tmsydney #tmhistory #tmAChist and/or #histedchat. You can also visit http://tmsydney.wikispaces.com/TeachMeet+AC+History to see who was there.

To join or host a teachmeet yourself, go to the wiki site http://tmsydney.wikispaces.com and join in the beautiful anarchy that is teachmeet.

This week let me engage in three very different forms of professional learning. They all matter for different reasons but orbit the same omnipotent aim: to make learning as good as it can be for the students in our care.

THAT is why I love being a teacher. THAT is why I love taking control of my learning. You should too.

The blog post below composes the 2nd of 3 blog post assessment tasks required by my current postgraduate unit in Educational Psychology at Macquarie University.

 

FOHS720 – Module 2 Blog Post

In what contexts or situations does a ‘community of learners’ seem to operate most efficiently?

What conditions need to be established to ensure optimal learning outcomes? and Why didn’t it work so well in at least one of these learning interventions?

Can you find any applications of modern Vygotskiian theories in your field of work?

The idea of a ‘community of learners’, initiated and managed by a teacher, to achieve a common goal but doing so in a ‘jigsawed’ (Rico & Shulman, 2004) group-based structure seems to fit partially into a neo-Vygotskiian framework but both Rico & Shulman and also Beishuizen (2008) found difficulties in applying the theory effectively into practice. The teachers in Rico & Shulman’s article are aiming to redesign the learning experience of students for a specific unit with specific and closed outcomes. As indicated by Lave & Wenger, the function of a community of learners (between students) needs to be a joint enterprise to have maximum impact on learning (Smith, 2003). The aim of developing ‘self-regulation’ in the learners concerned as a result of their participation has, in the examples given, not been achieved. This does not mean that this approach would not work with a more systematic and sustained development over time (rather than a single experience from the learners’ point of view).

This is problematic as the learning is over-contextualised, indicating the being a community of learners can only happen when one is directed by a teacher and for a very specific learning goal. Rather than being a community of independent learners who can carry their learning with them, they are a community of project-partners who dissolve as a community at the end of the project. Having said this, the study does reveal that the teachers achieved their aims to some extent: to investigate “how fostering a community of learners (FCL) is influenced by the discipline of science, the teaching of science and the conceptions that teachers have surrounding these two topics.” (Rico & Shulman, p.159)

Rico & Shulman identified several reasons for this failure to achieve pure Vygotskiian learner self-regulation, including the meta-structures of curriculum and system demands on the teachers to teach particular knowledge and skills as set down in documents such as the National Science Education Standards. Also, the teachers’ own ability to rethink their design of the learning experience from teacher and content-driven to student and inquiry-driven was clear in the evidence of confusion and difficulties outlined in the article. “The teachers seemed to face a dichotomy between the goals of distributed expertise and the goal of individual students learning all of the scientific facts and concepts presented in the units” (Rico & Shulman, p.160)

Clearly there was a need to establish a common understanding of FCL, how it can be applied to a classroom with fixed requirements set down by the school, how students would best be prepared for the unit and how the unit would ‘look’ in practice. This would enable optimal learning outcomes for students and teachers in a high-school context.

Though their aims were noble, “the emphasis on research and discovery in FCL, and its constructivist bent, dovetails nicely with ‘science as inquiry’” (Rico & Shulman, p.163) it was clear that “what seemed to get in the way was the ‘school’ notion of science as a set of topics and facts to learn.” (Rico & Shulman, p.164) The teachers involved in the project had a “mistaken belief” (p.178) in the success of FCL more widely for teaching and learning, they had differing views about the implementation process and focus of FCL, and therefore showed that pure theory may not be directly applicable in the context of the contemporary classroom with its external pressures and different skillsets of classroom teachers.

On the other hand, it seems that a community of learners strategy works much more effectively in a higher-education context. This is shown through the varying success (though success all the same) of the two examples given by Beishuizen (2008) in which an undergraduate medical project and a postgraduate computer science project were undertaken with clear assessment criteria of the nature and impact of the community of practice model. It is clear that older students who have a more independent or mature engagement with learning are able to work collaboratively to achieve real learning outcomes with decreasing supervision and control by the teacher.

The focus, similar to Rico & Shulman, was to develop skills that will assist the students in future collaboration and independent learning (i.e. with lessening input from the teacher). In Beishuizen’s two examples, the neo-Vygotskiian concept of self-regulation was the overarching aim. Compared to Rico & Shulman, teachers made scaffolding (another neo-Vygotskiian concept) of processes and approaches a key component of preparing the students for collaboration as a community of learners. This, partnered with an ongoing support mechanism from experienced mentors made significant gains for students. “Experiencing a teacher who had to look for an explanation, like the students themselves, was new to them.” (Beishuizen, p.188) This enabled students to imitate the learning processes of their teachers when facing their own problems. This made a shift from a ‘belief’ to a ‘design’ mode of knowledge building, similar to Carol Dweck’s (2008) ‘fixed’ and ‘growth’ mindsets. The difference being that learners are able to become more aware of how to learn and that there is no fixed point at which learning has happened and is therefore ended. This links to the Vygotskiian concept of zones of proximal development, though allows for learners to move beyond that able to be provided by the teacher, into true self-regulated, independent learning.

The success achieved in the two examples suggests (in a very limited way) that learners at a particular stage of self-efficacy, maturity and with a ‘growth’ mindset, not including the flexibility that the university programs had compared to the high-school context of Rico & Shulman, are more likely to benefit from a community of learners framework. Perhaps ironically, the teacher plays a vital role in the success of the ‘community of learners’. The neo-Vygotstiian notion of ‘reciprocal teaching’ was also mentioned in both articles as an essential development of the community of learners.

Currently in teaching there are increasingly popular movements to utilise technology to develop and sustain ‘communities of practice’, another neo-Vygotskiian concept, espoused by Lave and Wenger. Using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as collaborative technologies such as wikis, face-to-face teacher professional learning networks (PLNs) can be supported and leveraged to maximum effect. For example, several discipline- or interest-based Twitter conversations have been started by teachers including #ozscichat (a regular Science-related chat for teachers on a Tuesday night, Sydney time), #ozengchat (a similar chat for English teachers), #histedchat (the same again, but for History teachers in Australia and around the world). These synchronous conversations as organised by ‘moderators’ who pose questions to those involved in the conversation, share ideas on classroom strategies, theories of learning and teaching, resources and possibilities/challenges faced by teachers at that moment in time. They exhibit many aspects of the ‘community of practice’ model in an efficient and very contemporary method.

Similarly, TeachMeet Sydney and other networks support teachers sharing ideas and practice in a face-to-face manner but utilizing technologies in order to carry the conversation and support beyond the events known as teachmeets. Teachers from all sectors, all levels of experience and all disciplines are regularly sharing ideas and resources in order to build capacity within the profession, but driven by teachers, for teachers. There is distributed leadership as decisions are made often by consensus and when an idea is raised it is debated rather than immediately approved or disapproved. The network is in a constant state of ‘renegotiation’. This enables many within the profession to ‘host’ a teachmeet and develop their own individual capacity but as part of a thriving network. TeachMeet Sydney demonstrates several characteristics of a community of practice.

References

Beishuizen, J., (2008). Does a community of learners foster self-regulated learning?, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 17:3, 183-193

Dweck, C.S., (2008) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, New York, USA: Ballantine.

Rico, S.R., & Shulman, J.H., (2004). Invertebrates and organ systems: science instruction and ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36:2, 159-181

Smith, M. K. (2003) ‘Communities of practice’, The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm . Last updated: 30 January 2005.

This week saw the death of Margaret Thatcher. As much as I could, I wouldn’t like to get into an analysis of her rise or her time in power. That’s been done to death. I’d like to pick up on a theme that is critical to my life at the moment: the position of women in society. It was highlighted this week in many, many…many articles and discussions.

Having a female Prime Minister, Governor-General and, for a time a few years ago, Premier of NSW, it was overwhelmingly obvious to some that the glass ceiling(s) had been smashed, never to be reconstituted by a metaphorical, but so very friendly, O’Brien’s Glass worker. Those who often praised the now well-established equality of opportunity for women now breathed  sigh of relief that they could now get on with life as it always has because there was a woman in the room too. Argument over. Pressure off. I am concerned about this relaxed and finite view of the issue.

Now that I am teaching at my second girls’ school, I am conscious that I must cater for the learning needs of my students in a different way to those of my colleagues in other schools – be they co-educational or boys’ only. Not that I think that tagging students as ‘going to a particular school’ means they fit a particular profile (see last post on tension between individual in a social-cultural context) nor that girls’ cannot do exactly the same things as boys [please don't be pedantic and go down the bio-pyshical arguments in your comments - I know they have differences].

I present lessons in a way that is hopefully relevant to those students in my care. Each student is a learner and is a bundle of ethnicity/faith/assumptions/experiences/knowledge/skills etc. I do not pretend to be an expert in girls’ education, though I do intend on becoming more knowledgeable about how best to cater for them.

However, despite this.. awareness.. of my current educational clientele, I worry about how they view current public derision and often revolting assaults upon women in terms that are clearly gender based. It is truly cowardly and utterly hurtful to attack someone based on their gender. Being of a particular gender does not automatically dictate skills, capabilities, potential or anything else.

I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have had strong female role models and positive relationships with women over my life. My mother, sisters and wife are all strong, intelligent, driven people who have shaped my beliefs about women for the better. At the very least, I personally hold no assumptions about what women are or are not capable of doing. Just like it would be silly for me to think that all men are capable of greatness, I do not think all women will gain high office or achieve ‘success’ in a public way – just like not all men do – but the women in my life have proven to me time and time again that women do not need to compare themselves to men in order to judge their role in society.

In Year 10 History class this week, we had a great discussion – initiated by my students – regarding whether teaching was a ‘woman’s job’ and the idea of perception, culture, generational change and gender divides. For them, one of the most challenging questions I put to them was: can women teach girls better than men? A VERY heated debate followed. I’ve never really cared much about whether I’m working with women or men in education. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, interests and ambitions. What I do know is that I love being involved in a vocation that cares about the whole person, the action that person can take in society and the way society impacts that person. Is that a gender-bsed thing? I don’t know.

Unfortunately for the women in my life: my family, friends, colleagues and, most importantly for this post, my students, they saw this week that people who are honest and good people and who hold very real scars because of the policies of Margaret Thatcher seemed not able to help themselves in using gender-based expletives in their protests and abuse. See the great article by @bairdjulia on this in today’s SMH.

I do hope that my students can grow to be resilient and strong women in the face of this kind of mindless, neanderthal abuse. You can disagree with someone, you can even have deep seeded anger towards them and still not resort to punishing them for their gender. Just because someone is of a particular gender does not mean they are the same as all the rest. Slogans are cheap and quick and diminishing. Time to get arguments that work for longer than 5 seconds, folks.

NB: This post relates to current context of most Australian schools in terms of 1:1 laptop rollouts called the Digital Education Revolution, announced in 2008 by the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Two concepts that are making my brain hurt a bit at the moment. One is about learning the other is about technology, but I think they are linked.

First, the paradox that we are – I hope – coming to terms with the fact that school education is actually about individual growth within a socio-cultural learning context. This is seemingly an obvious statement but I think sometimes we get lost in a discussion which is ‘either/or’ rather than both: we either focus heavily on individual achievement or on the environment a student learns in but rarely at the same time.

Most theorists agree that at some level we learn individually, by being exposed to new stimuli and environments, by processing it and reshaping it as memory which we then apply to new stimuli and the process continues. Learning, from the student perspective, occurs within the mind of the student and is influenced by the environment, stimuli, and others.  Depending on the effectiveness of the pedagogical power of the teacher (their choice about the methods and strategies to help students learn – whether restricted to one method or expansive, dynamic and responsive to student abilities, interests skills etc), depending on the resources available, depending on many things, the individual experience of a student may vary greatly – and often this shows very little in test scores.

At the same time, other theorists (calling all neo-Vygotskiites) argue that learning occurs mostly in a social process, rather than only within the mind of the learner. There are various streams of theory from scaffolding (very much like direct instruction) through to cognitive apprenticeships and communities of learners and communities of practice. A common thread is the understanding that even if learners are on the periphery of the ‘action’ or focus of the task being conducted, learning occurs because students observe and share and understand based on what they experience as part of the group.

So, how do schools now cope with the increasingly expansive demands of thousands of individual learners arriving at schools every day? Our current approach – for the vast majority of schools – is to do the same thing for each kid in a particular year group at a particular time. Why? I fear mostly because of compliance for the authorities rather than compassion towards who the learner is.

Second, I had a bit of an epiphany today. Many schools are in the process of deciding what to do in the post-DER world where funding is almost completely NOT guaranteed by governments for the purchase, maintenance and infrastructure to support 1:1 laptop programs (for this post I mean the process of a school purchasing or leasing batches of identical machines and giving them to students, collecting them at the end of a set period of time).

I don’t know the details, but I get the feeling that government schools are, as is so often the case, at the mercy of blanket decisions from the top and thus whatever 1:1 purchasing arrangements signed off from the top brass. Non-government schools are a little less restricted, Catholic systemic schools tending to be able to be more flexible but still clustering schools and making mass decisions for whole campuses. Independent schools are, by their nature, more able to make independent decisions that suit their student populations and their buying power.

I want to stop the analysis of DEC/CEO/Independent there because the epiphany I had was that actually what happened in 2008 was NOT that the Feds made a long-term commitment to putting the same machine in the hands of every student in Australia, but that they smashed the idea that technology was not necessary for a contemporary education. By putting ANY machines, en masse, into schools, and in the hands of students, it created a cultural shift that made students and teachers dependent on technology to truly achieve contemporary learning goals.

So the focus really isn’t the machine, it’s the cultural shift that has now happened – just try taking a laptop off a teacher who has used one in school for the last four or five years. Try banning new teachers from bringing technology into their classroom and see the look of despair.

That frustration with the wireless going down or the LMS not working did not exist before 2008 in most schools. That’s just five years ago.

Now it’s quite natural for teachers to be delivered PD as a webinar rather than in person. It’s almost passé for teachers to suggest that students upload or download files from an LMS or internet location. It’s certainly not acceptable for students that teachers are beaming with pride at their latest 40 slide PowerPoint presentation – but it has pictures!! – we’ve moved on

So, thinking ahead, how to bring together the individual-socio-cultural learning experience and the onset of a post-DER world in which there is not just demand but expectation that schools facilitate technology-supported learning and teaching?

My suggestion is that the school becomes a hub of learning – not the exclusive centre or jail of ideas – where students visit for scheduled lessons which form part of courses but these aren’t blockaded by age. Students who can learn “Year 10 Italian” – especially native speakers – can do it even if they are 12. In that classroom, yes, there will be older students and possibly younger students but the teacher will curate information to suit them. And, surely, the student will curate their own information so that they can achieve learning growth in their own way as well as that shared with their class.

Technology can facilitate this. Tablets that make hand writing as easy on the screen as on paper will both capture that writing and also turn it into text or record the lesson as it progresses via audio – all this will save to a part of the portfolio chosen by the student and accessible by the teacher and parents of the student. Learning will be a constant process, not halted by assessments and exam blocks but pushed forwards by vigorous and engaging assessments for, as as well as of learning.

The scary thing? The paragraph starting “My suggestion” is already happening in some schools. I visited one in Victoria about four years ago. The paragraph after that? You can do it with an iPad and certain apps like Evernote – or just using Siri into a Google Doc or use Microsoft OneNote.

It’s like we’re waiting for permission from someone… but the ice has been broken. Now we just have to dive in.

This week my school got serious about finding a way to store, use and connect information generated by and for our students. We’re looking into several School Management Systems (also variously known as Information Management Systems, Student Management Systems, with additions such as Learning Management Systems and so on).

The solution, I think, is to find a product that covers as many areas of daily school life and information sharing as possible so that everyone at the school can access the information they need at the right time and in a secure way.

Currently, most SMSs are modulated (and you can purchase individual modules without having to purchase the whole package) but several services are now integrating everything from pre-enrolment through the students’ academic, pastoral and cocurricular life, through to alumni activities. Though it does lock a school into only having one product, it seems like a sensible solution rather than the horror stories I have heard where schools need to wait for one package to talk to another package which finally feeds information through to where teachers, students and parents actually need it.

My focus is on the teacher/user-end experience. The software can’t be too convoluted so that simple tasks become complex, such as marking the roll online. Easy access to key areas such as daily notices, student information profiles and online learning management areas are key from my perspective.

The thing is, a lot of the learning management can now be done using free or open source software that stores information up in the Cloud. Many subscription services now offer this option too. What implications does this have for a school? The question clamouring in my mind over all the others is: should the school simply provide stable, fast and endless wireless internet access?

Logically then, should all the software/hardware choices be put back on teachers and students to solve in their own contexts?

This is more then BYOD – this is BYOL: Bring your own Learning.

The tension between what is possible and the demands of the every day are clear to anyone currently teaching in an Australian school. Here are some dichotomies to consider:

• Student owned and supported devices or school-managed devices?
• Packaged, static software platforms or open source/flexible DIY solutions?
• Hyper-controlling security structures or open, ethics-based policies?
• Cloud-based information storage or on-site storage?

Who would have thought that teachers would need to consider these issues ten years ago?

You see the big idea bugging me at the moment is: if MOST parents of MOST students in MOST schools are already buying extra devices for their kids – be they tablets or laptops or smartphones – and they are able to purchase the latest and greatest, how can a school possibly hope to accommodate that rate of change and diversity?

I’m starting to think we can’t. Yes, every child needs to have access to some kind of device on a consistent basis but where does my school fit in to that issue? One-size-fits-all just doesn’t seem to work anymore. School communities need to decide what solution works for them and their students, not based on what kind of funding they get but based on what kind of education they want to be known to provide.

 

This post is a tad more theoretical than most previous entries. It was drafted as an assessment task based on readings regarding the benefits/issues associated with the Direct Instruction v Constructivist debate on best pedagogical practice. Please give feedback and let me know if you think there’s anything missing. Forgive the highly narrowed vision and scope for the readings – it is not a major task and I think I may have overdone the word count by about 200%.

The debate between direct instruction (as espoused by Kirschner et al) and other methods of teacher-led instruction or ‘pedagogies’ is a contentious, political issue within Australian schools and systems. The pressure from governments and other bodies for schools to “improve” (Garrett, 2013) and provide increasingly better results for students is immense. The three articles provide an interesting and multi-layered snapshot of the debate as it stands today. There are several key themes to the debate that this blog post will explore: the theoretical stance of each article, the learning process, the role of the teacher in learning, the role of the student in learning, and finally, the purpose of learning.

Each author has a distinct stance or perspective on the type of instruction that is most effective for learning. Their differing definitions of learning shall be discussed later, but essentially Kirschner et al (2006) holds that direct instruction requires “…providing information that fully explains the concepts and procedures that students are required to learn as well as learning strategy that support that is compatible with human cognitive architecture.” (p.75) By fusing several elements into a single definition, it would seem that Kirschner et al are suggesting that methods that do not fully explain the learning-to-be are not compatible with human cognitive architecture. This is a stance refuted by Schmidt et al (2007) who specifically argue that Problem-Based-Learning (PBL – defined later) is “…potentially more compatible with the manner in which our cognitive structures are organised than the direct guided instructional approach.” (p.91) Finally, the stance of Deanna Kuhn does not subscribe wholly to either the direct-instruction (DI) ideology nor to the PBL ideology, but stands aloof to argue that “…we need to focus our attention on what sense students are making of things if we hope to influence their behavior.” (Kuhn, 2007, p.110) Clearly some subject areas (discrete disciplines) are more suited to a DI model – such as mathematics, science, law and medicine as explored in the articles. In summary, all three approaches relate to the cognitivist explanations of learning. The debate is over which sub-approach (DI or constructivist) has greater learning gains and is thus more worthwhile to implement.

This leads into the second theme apparent in all three readings: the nature of the learning process. Both Kirschner et al and Schmidt et al use the information processing approach to compare and contrast their instructional methodologies. The argument is acute when focused on the heaviness of cognitive load on students’ working memories. Despite Kirschner’s (2006) restrictive assertion that “[l]earning… is defined as a change in long-term memory…” (p.75) both the authors of this article and Schmidt et al actually agree that it is the application of this learning (rather than the ability to ‘remember’) that actually indicate that learning has, or has not, taken place. The difference – most vehemently identified by Kuhn – is that there is little discussion of the assessment of learning, what is being learnt or the group of students (assumedly in subject areas) is being ‘instructed’ for much of Kirschner’s argument. It is both logical and proven by several studies cited in the articles that in controlled experiments conducted with a specific learning goal in mind and a specific method of achieving that goal, that direct instruction will prove more beneficial. It is a self-fulfilling prediction. Schmidt et al expand the notion of learning to include the procedure by which students would – with increasing independence – approach a similar problem to that initiated by the teacher. This, in turn, includes their interaction with other students (collaboration), the teacher, and the information. Kuhn goes further to suggest that learning will only occur when students have the motivation to learn about the subject matter. This suggests that learning is not just a relationship between teacher-student-information but also requires the student to understand and interact with their own reasons for learning as an essential part of the process.

Therefore, it follows that the role of the teacher in the learning process is, depending on the stance of the author, critical in at least some way to the students’ progress and development as a learner. Within a DI model, the teacher becomes a conduit for guidance, delivery, assessment and progression to further learning. The student cannot learn and cannot progress without the direct and constant intervention of the teacher. The PBL model holds that students will learn with the teacher as the person who sets the goals and perhaps models or instructs as needed, but then moves to a more peripheral role in which guidance is given if and when the students need it. Kuhn rightly argues that there needs to be balance between the two (and other) instructional models so that students are the focus of learning and the teacher is adapting and modifying their practice to suit those who are actually in front of them. Seemingly, although the teacher is at the gateway of learning in the DI model, it appears that they are nothing more than a worker who imprints a specific mould of understanding on the student, regardless of their own skills, interests, expertise and preferences.

Kuhn actually argues that Kirschner et al “…ignore the question [of fulfilling the demands of the students’ needs]…the assumption…is that others will make the decision of wha tis to be learned and as educators their task is to identify the most efficient way in which this learning can be accomplished.” (Kuhn, p.110) Kuhn’s article is the only one of the three that places the learner at the centre of the process and argues that the teacher and educational institution or structure that exists around the learner must facilitate the kind of learning suitable to that student and respond to how students value what activities are provided to them. Kirschner also frames the progress of learning in the binary novice-expert relationship by which all students are novices that require direct instructional intervention to achieve mastery or expertise in a specific field. One of the key examples given is that of chess players achieving a particular level of expertise. This ignores one of the fundamental aspects of cognition that they themselves describe: “[cognition] is no longer seen as a passive repository of discrete, isolated fragments of information that permit us to repeat what we have learned.” (p.76) In the very example given in the next paragraph, a discrete set of memories is used to “reproduce” a specific result. In the words of Schmidt et al, “the outcome of comparison studies depends on the type of assessment used.” (p.96) Whilst students do learn in discrete subjects, it is hardly useful learning if it cannot be transferred to other areas in increasingly complex and sophisticated ways. Merely expanding and increasing the amount of information stored in our long-term memory is not sufficient to say that learning has occurred until it can be challenged, evaluated and applied in different circumstances. The student is not merely a repository of memories, therefore learning is more than just establishing long-term memories as Kirschner et al purport. Schmidt et al explore the methodological limitations of Kirschner’s article in depth (p.95-96)

This connects to the final theme: the purpose of learning. If the purpose of learning is to repeat or reproduce an action in an identical situation to that ‘taught’, DI will achieve its own goals well. If the purpose of learning is, however, a lifelong process of evolution of knowledge and skills, it does not require the usurpation of DI for PBL or other methods on the constructivist spectrum of methodologies, but rather a “balance” that acknowledges that “there is a place for both direct instruction and student-directed inquiry.” (Kuhn, p.112) Kuhn explores more widely what Schmidt et al explain are other important elements of learning i.e. interactions between the learner and others (collaboration), a process, an expert and the information (p.93). She is able to widen the scope of learning not just as a process by which students achieve a goal at the end of a specifically designed activity, but that “…[schools] should teach students to use their minds well, in school and beyond.” It is clear that Kuhn’s fear is that some instructional models work effectively when the teacher is accessible, but lose their effectiveness beyond a specific context.

The importance of these debates lies in their practical application in schooling. The challenge to find the ‘right’ method with which to teach students is sometimes an obsession that teachers or schools take to extremes: either because the school/system is highly invested in a particular ideology or approach, or the individual teacher is. The limitations associated with the somewhat exclusive positions of Kirschner et al and Schmidt et al (though the latter admits to some elements of direct instruction as being required at times within PBL) is that they ignore the reality of learning and schooling in which diversity and multi-faceted approaches are required because of a multiplicity of individual learners. Kuhn’s argument that “a teacher cannot change a student’s belief system or way of thinking unless the student wishes it to be changed” reacts to this exclusivity, but is itself naïve in thinking that students are not conditioned by the very models and systems themselves to ignore or overcome their own motivations in order to ‘succeed’ within their context – regardless of what instructional model is applied.

This debate is critically important to all educators and learners in the 21^st century. Students have increasing access to information, more varied and in which digital technologies can facilitate a more engaging and effective learning environment (Write, 2010). Therefore, teachers need to be aware that their instructional models and design must be more attuned to the learning goals of the student, rather than the teacher and be targeted to the evolution of students’ skills and knowledge – beyond that required by a specific task or activity. This is an incredible challenge to teachers who are now monitored with professional standards, school or system based structures and expectations, as well as the wider expectations of the school community and society. Students are no longer only learning within the confines of the classroom, in tandem with what teachers instruct, but anywhere, anytime. This requires students to be equipped with a complex array of skills and knowledge-acquisition practices that they value and can apply in different circumstances. They need to be able to analyse, evaluate and assess their own learning practices in order to confirm or challenge their learning in new situations. The best method of instruction, and the very role of the teacher in the modern learning environment, is therefore an area of critical debate.

References:

Garrett, P., (2013) Back to better schools for NSW, http://www.petergarrett.com.au/back-to-better-schools-for-nsw/

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R.E., (2006). Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching, Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86

Kuhn, D. (2007). Is direct instruction an answer to the right question? Educational Psychologist, 42 (2), 109-113.

Schmidt, H., Loyens, S., Van Gog, T., and Paas, F., (2006). Problem-based learning is compatible with human cognitive architecture: Commentary on Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 91-97.

Wright, N. (2010). e-learning, Outcomes and Pedagogy: What does recent evidence have to say? In D. Gronn, & G. Romeo (Eds) ACEC2010: Digital Diversity.

 

Today I checked my Twitter feed over breakfast to see that a colleague from Country Kildare, Ireland, had mentioned me in a Tweet overnight.

Tweet from @noeleenleahy

Noeleen and I had organised that a group of students from her school, St Wolstan’s Community School, and my previous school, Brigidine College, St Ives, would collaborate to produce an informative website about the life and impact of St Brigid.

After a few Skype sessions, many emails flying back and forth and lots of work in the background from the both of us as well as teachers and students at our schools, we enabled our classes to build a highly informative and interesting website that explores the origins and nature of the Brigidine tradition as well as its impact in Australia through the Order of Brigidine sisters.

As great as it was for our young investigators and publishers to explore the content of the project, it was thrilling to see our students so keen to engage with various aspects of 21st century learning: creation of new information, collaboration, global connectivity, authentic audiences and critical information analysis skills to name but a few.

The greatest part of the whole project? It wasn’t to measure the students, it wasn’t to give them a mark. Students could be included in the collaboration process to explore their strengths as learners and were able to develop an understanding of the process of developing a project online.

Happily, there was some official recognition for students (and for @noeleenleahy too!) as the project was entered into the Irish School Internet Awards 2013, specifically the Junior Spider Awards. And, to ice the cake completely, they won!

I feel honoured to have been a part of the project and hope to continue this kind of collaboration with Noeleen and others around the world!

Check out what our students put together by CLICKING HERE.

This week saw a new aspect of my professional journey expand to include the first unit in a Master of Research degree. This Educational Psychology unit has already stimulated my interest, and my fear that perhaps I will begin questioning a lot of things I do as a teacher and that schools do as the castles of education we hope that they are.

Reading the blog posts and paper in preparation for Week 2, my thoughts surfed the waves of research and history to explore the ways in which education has been influenced by psychology over the past 100 years. The blogs A Brief History of Education and Educational Psychology – History, Contemporary Views of Learning and Motivation, Issues and Controversies narrated the ways in which education has grown, evolved and changed – especially due to the impact of psychological research. Thinkers and researchers such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Thorndike, Binet and Piaget all appeared, as my brain dusted off their mental statues that had sat in my memory since first year uni.

Peter Gray’s article, A Brief History of Education, challenged me to think about several key areas and assumptions that we have about education and schooling.

One of the key themes throughout the article is that every age moulds education to their own standards and values. It’s a symbiotic but often one-sided relationship, where social, political and economic needs of the present determine the experience students have in the near future. Rather than merely identifying timeless, human skills and knowledge that young people need and seeking to deploy professional and empathetic educators to engage students in such, it seems that – even from the Agricultural revolution so many thousands of years ago – those in power have sought to use education as a values delivery system. Perhaps this was the right or entitlement of groups and individuals in power, but is it still the case? And if so, is it a truth that can’t be challenged?

If looking at the history of education and education systems tells us that we morph and mutate the educational experience to suit the times, then are there in fact any universal truths about education and schooling? Are there any elements of what we do and how we do it that are true no matter what year or country or system we are currently in? In a “post-modern” age, can we even accept the theory that argues there is no single truth?

Another element of Gray’s article was that there has always been a tension not just between those in power and those under their social command, but also a tension between those who have the best intentions (there’s a saying about that isn’t there?) and those who have a sadistic passion for punishing students either directly through violence or indirectly through the structures put in place around the learner. I would like to think that in an age of transparency and professionalism that we are smarter and more creative in our ability to motivate students, but even within ‘motivation’ is a plethora of theories about what works and what doesn’t. If you are interested in motivation and want something to inspire you to look further – check out this video by Dan Pink at TED 2009. The key question is: who is winning the battle between what society and bureaucracy believes should happen in schools and what is best for the learner? (I know – ideally they are the same)

In keeping with this idea of relevance and timeliness, how much time do our current learners spend in school learning? There are obvious benefits to non-academic pursuits such as sports, extracurricular activities, pastoral and spiritual activities (if the school is inclined that way). Even if it is just for the student to decide what they are not interested in pursuing. The key difference for a student in 2013 compared to even a student in 2003, and of course dramatically more so than 1963 or 1903, is that the access to learning opportunities no longer resides only behind the parapets of our castles of education. Walls – whether physical, mental or cultural – prove no defence against the individualisation, consumerisation and globalisation of traditional learning: ‘concrete’ knowledge and basic skills. Are our castles crumbling because of a little device in students hands? What, then is school for if they used to be for the transference of knowledge, skills and values but now exist in a world of fluid knowledge, rapidly changing skill-set requirements and shifting and competing values?

Finally, another theme to sprout from Gray’s article is the idea of power in education. Power has always been in the hands of adults – and not all adults, just a chosen few – who dictate how other adults and then the students in their care are to learn: what, when, how and why. This is made official through institutions and policies that seek not just to document what goes on in a school (an important and useful process, so long as it is not cumbersome) but to make schools do so in a way suitable to those institutions and structures. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. How many work hours now go into compliance and accreditation compared with 20, 30, 50 years ago? Is this necessary? Perhaps. Is it valuable to education? Perhaps. As a New Scheme Teacher in the New South Wales system, I can easily say that going through the process of accreditation does not make me a better teacher – the reflection and mentoring that can go on in the context of accreditation can be, so long as the school has the funds to support that – and the idea that because I am accredited makes me a good teacher is a false argument.

The second post relating to educational psychology explored the ways particular theorists and researchers have influenced what goes on in schools. As a history teacher it’s always interesting for me to read the path taken to the present.

The idea that stood out for me is the constructivist theory of cognitive apprenticeships. There are apparently many models that I will now have to go off and learn about, but basically the aim of the process is that students become more independent (but not isolated) learners who take responsibility for the application of what they have learned. This translates to what the Cognition and Technology group at Venderbilt University call ‘anchored instruction’ – I would argue that this reflects the ‘flipped classroom’ approach to learning that so many teachers are now deploying as part of their pedagogical framework in technology-rich environments.

As I want to explore the nature and value of technology use for teaching and learning, there seems to be much to learn from educational psychologists.

So as I gaze out from my castle of education this week I think my mind will not just be focused on the day to day tasks of promoting effective use of ICT in the classroom. My mind’s eye will be regularly glancing at the horizon to see what is possible and maybe, just maybe, how the castle(s) should change  so that the truth is simple and timeless: learning happens here.

I’m inspired. And I’m lucky.

I’m inspired because from a very vague idea about exploiting the wave of change about to wash through New South Wales from the swell of the Australian Curriculum. The way to exploit it?.. Piggyback a bunch of teachmeets that can actually encourage teachers to share ideas for teaching and learning rather than focus solely on content. I am already involved in some groups and events delivering ideas on new or renewed content areas and that’s great too. But, more importantly, teachers need a forum in which to share their ideas and spark new experiences in the classroom (and beyond) without the constraints of content chaining them down to the typical conversation about what we are teaching rather than how or who we are teaching.

In Sydney a keen bunch of educators are inspiring me by their keen interest and leadership of four bigger-than-normal teachmeets. Each of these are anchored or flavoured to be themed to one of the four key subject areas that will steamroll across NSW schools from 2014. English, Maths, Science and History will form the background music for quick-fire presentations that challenge our pedagogical and learning-focused theories and practice. This is inspiring. Teachers of all subject areas are actually being encouraged to present as there is plenty of room at each of the venues for ideas to fly thick and fast throughout the brief time the teachers will have together.

I’m also lucky. Lucky to have several amazing people in my PLN who are happy to take up the various roles needed to make these more complex teachmeets happen with as little confusion or angst on the night as possible.

A normal teachmeet need only be a small number of people in a pub having a conversation, but these larger events allow more people to share more ideas in a different space to what teachers are used to. English at the Sydney Theatre Company, History at the State Library of NSW, Science at Taronga Zoo… these are all spaces where teachers can break rules and challenge ideas without feeling constricted but be supported by a larger number of colleagues than usual.

There are three things a teacher can take away from a teachmeet: a new idea, a new colleague or some inspiration. Hopefully those who take part are able to carry all three with them and keep the buzz going.

TeachMeet Sydney is just the front for a dedicated and informal network of teachers who volunteer their time, energy and creativity to providing the physical and mental space for collaboration. I am inspired and I am lucky to be a part of it. And I want you to be a part of it to!

Take a look at the TeachMeet Sydney wiki page http://tmsydney.wikispaces.com or www.teachmeet.net for more information and please be active in your professional learning – take control of it!