Education for innovation

I have been doing  a lot of thinking about what the future shape of education might be. This began because we have some opportunities arising at work for curriculum change, fed by an appetite for some change. Recent events have offered additional insights that are tantalising to say the least.

Recently a number of us visited some of the folk at the EPIC centre in Christchurch. The insights gained form the visit and ensuing conversations were exciting to say the least, and perhaps the most exciting aspect of those conversations is the changing nature of society, and the need to promote innovation and wealth creation.

This started some ears back with Jane Gilbert's work 'Catching the knowledge wave' in which she effectively redefined knowledge for know stuff to doing stuff. For Jane knowledge had ceased to be a noun and become a verb. The EPIC guys want people who can work independently, people who are literate and numerate, but people who can think outside the square. These people are risk takers, not necessarily with wealth, but certainly with ideas.

I posed the question in a recent parent newsletter:

"I want to know how we produce even more innovative and creative people who become leaders in their fields. And when I mention fields of endeavour I have to confess to being agnostic. We might well be talking about the gaming industry or industrial chemistry, but equally we might be talking about the music industry or the law, the visual arts or languages and diplomacy."

As  a consequence I have been pondering how schools need to restructure to do this. The purpose of this post isn't to answer that question but to consider the circumstances in which that question must be answered. My own early thinking went something like this:

We want teenagers to be innovators, we want them to be risk takers (in terms of their thinking, they are already risk takers in many other ways). We want them to move beyond knowing to thinking. Of course this doesn't mean that we abandon knowing stuff. You can't think in a vacuum, you have to know stuff in order to be able to think about it. The question then is how do we encourage teens to get to know stuff in a way that is engaging, in a way that harnesses their natural risk taking behaviour in a safe way?

At this point in time I created this obstacle in my mind: education is currently judged by society by a series of outcomes best defined in terms of the assessment/qualifications system, in our case NCEA. We have to teach to the assessment in order to get the results that communities judge as a measure of a quality school and a quality education, so we are hide bound to stay with the current industrial model of education organised into time periods, subject specialists and classrooms.

The alternative is to have students organise and manage projects focussed on innovation and creativity. But hang on, most teens can't do that particularly well, so maybe we just have a 'select few' able to do this while the remainder conform to the traditional models?

Well actually maybe more teens can do this than we think. And maybe NCEA isn't the constraint we think it is at all, maybe it is the liberating mechanism with its modular approach. Maybe we have taken up the cudgel with NCEA (of which I am a fan by the way) by simply slotting it into the old industrial system. Maybe in fact NCEA is the system for the new era of innovation. I am increasingly of the opinion that we have allowed ourselves to become fixated with the process of assessment rather than the process of education and learning. It is from the latter two that innovation comes, not from the former.

I have much more thinking to do on this, but this is enough writing for one post. I have a friend who writes tediously long posts that I rarely read because they are just too long.

I found this blog post by Claire Amos "Navigating the space between educational paradigms"
challenging and interesting. You may too.

Why I think schools have a future

When I wanted to learn how to make bread, I looked on the internet, checked out Youtube, and talked to other more knowledgeable friends. I applied what I read, saw and heard. It seemed that you can indeed learn almost anything you want from the internet.

At today's GAFE Summit 2015, one speaker made the same assertion during a part of his address in which he raised the question of the relevance of schools in the future. He said (and I paraphrase here, which translates to 'I may have completely misinterpreted his actual meaning'): 'Motivated learners can learn anything from the web'. The implication seemed to me to be that schools may well have no place in our future, at least not in their current form or format.

This is a question I've been pondering for some time. I've come to the conclusion that there are two critical assumptions behind the assertion that they may not have a future, and they are as follows.

1. Schools only teach knowledge and skills.
2. All learners are motivated.

The first begs the question of what schools actually teach, actually an enormously complex question. I recall having an argument with an 'old school' colleague that went something like this: 

Him: 'I teach <his subject>'

Me: 'You teach boys'

Him: 'No I teach <his subject>'

Me: 'No you teach boys'

You get the picture. This discussion went straight to the heart of the matter. In the secondary environment our subjects are in part merely a 'vehicle' through which we teach what we would now describe as the 21st century skills of critical and creative thinking. Of course content matters. I often find myself saying to others that a 21st century education is about thinking, but you can't think in a vacuum. You have to have something to think about. I find myself more than a little irritated by the NCEA 'haters' society which claims that under New Zealand's NCEA assessment framework content no longer matters. 

However in fact we teach even more than that. The New Zealand curriculum includes a component on values, and of course the key competencies. These are all things that we teach, many of them not just in the classroom but on the sports field on the concert or drama stage etc We teach them by virtue of ur interpersonal interactions with our students every day. This is one of many thingsthat make teaching such a demanding profession: we are being ';judged' every minute of every day as students take meaning from our non verbal communication as ell as the words we say.

In this regard schools as physical spaces in which people meet ought not to become redundant in my opinion. 

The second question is also interesting. I would agree that motivated learners are now able to find most things they want on the internet somewhere. However in the secondary system we teach adolescents. By their very nature these are young people who are finding their identities, finding their way in life, and they do so frequently by making mistakes. That's the nature of adolescence. Many of them are not as well motivated as we'd like in terms of their learning.

The usual response to that is that they must be allowed to follow their passions. However the problem is that they don't know what they don't know. How many times in our careers have we seen young people undertake a significant change of direction because of something new that they have learned in a class that they initially didn't want to be a part of, or as a result of an 'inspirational teacher'? I fear for a world in which people never read Frost or Shakespeare, never see the beauty of a geographic landscape or a simple mathematical proof. I am not a brilliant mathematician (I struggled), but I recall being spellbound when I saw the proof that for any two numbers on a number line, you can always find another number in between, regardless of how close the initial two numbers are. To my mind it was beautiful.

These are things that make us who we are, they are often life changing, and they are things that demand some form of human interaction. I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that schools may have their current physical or organisational format, but as social and learning organisations in my opinion they most definitely do have a future. 

Integrated curriculum

A friend spotted this article on curriculum reform in Finland and sent me the link.

The very idea of the total abandonment of traditional teaching subjects and their replacement with topics is certainly provocative. I recall writing a paper for my previous Head in the 90's in which I supported the notion of an integrated curriculum, one in which a lot of content was taught via topic based research and development.

However I don't think I am brave enough to suggest that we go as far as the Finns are suggesting with a nation wide reform.

I'm a little more conservative than that. For me the answer lies somewhere in between. The traditional subject/class teaching of key subjects such as English and mathematics to support the development of deeper learning of a broad range of subjects using an integrated topic approach.

I would currently classify myself as an anti 'Modern Learning Environments' crusader. I would however accept the label I heard from colleague Pauline Henderson yesterday as a pro Modern Learning Pedagogy proponent.

This needs a little more thought.

Course to discourse?

I've begun my year with my traditional online forum discussion using the forum tool embedded in our Intranet software package Moodle. The course I teach is NCEA Level 2 Economics, a course that requires deep thinking, and a lot of analytical writing. The literacy expectations of the course are well expressed by the fact that the three external standards all provide UE literacy (Writing) credits, while the internal standard we offer provides UE  literacy (Reading) credits.

The topic I choose is a discussion of the issue of the free market. It almost invariable ends up as a discussion of the libertarian paradox as we embrace issues such as power imbalances and inequality associated with markets.

My approach is always the same, The boys post in response to my fundamental question about the benefits or otherwise of the free market. As they post, I respond individually to every post written by every boy. However my response is NEVER to give answers, ALWAYS to pose further questions. My response to every boy is unique, asking questions that are specific to that boy's post, steering and guiding in a way appropriate to that boy's current knowledge (as revealed by his post) and the specific angle that the boy appears to be taking in the discussion. I think that this is a fantastic way to differentiate learning.

This year's result is strikingly more sophisticated than in previous years. I have been more careful about my responses, trying to make sure that I even more appropriately tailor each response to each boy. Regardless of the medium (online, on paper, face to face) this has always been true.

The result has been a significant amount of learning, created by constant (socratic?) questioning. At no stage have I given any of the bis specific knowledge/content, yet the learning has been apparent and significant. I asked the boys if they had learned much, and they universally agreed that they had.

Course to discourse? I'm not sure that I necessarily understand what that means, but I hope so.

Secondary schools and the work force

... a class-based theory of how and why we have a fundamental labour force imbalance.

Introduction

In this post I want to describe some thinking that has been 'brewing' in my mind for some time about the work of secondary schools in New Zealand for the past four or five decades.

My parents were 'great depression' children. They were born in the '20's (the 1920's) and grew up in the 30's. These were times when unemployment was high, when families struggled to feed their children, when children went to school without food or shoes (some of that seems a little too familiar at the moment).  My mother would tell me stories of what it was like to grow up in a working class family at the time, and these were common themes in her stories. This continued into my own childhood, we were a working class family.

The one thing my parents held to be true (if I remember correctly) was the value of education. They did not want us to lead the lives that they had lead. They believed that better eduction was the key to avoiding the poverty that they experienced as children, and so they pushed us to attain the highest possible levels of education that we could. Their own experience had been to be forced to leave school at the end of their Standard 6 (Year 8 in our terms) in order to get a job to help support their families (or maybe to be less of a burden on those families). They suggested that this was common at the time.

To them, a university education was the ultimate, and they pushed us in that direction. Now for our generation they were probably right. I gained a university degree and went on to teach, beginning my career in 1979. We were a generation of new teachers who possibly came from those working class origins, the product of a generation who held this aspirational belief in a university education.

I 'm not suggesting that these attitudes were unique to working class parents (whatever that may mean), but I think that they had a significant impact on attitudes towards education.

This is relevant background to what I believe to be the root cause of a significant labour market condition in  New Zealand.

Theory

The over-riding value was (and still is) that the higher the education the better. A university degree is the best education that anyone can aspire to, the best that money can buy. And here is the root cause of the problem. As a child of depression generation parents, I too grew up to believe that the higher the level of education the better. When I began my teaching career I took this belief into the profession with me, and for a while continued to perpetuate this view with my own students. I would counsel students to aspire to a university education. There was an unintended consequence of our beliefs. It created a 'hierarchy' of jobs and activities.

This situation has been exacerbated by the EFTS based funding formula for universities. More students means more funding. This incentivises the recruitment of more and more students.

In my opinion we now have too many people equipped with inappropriate degrees, and too few people trained in what 30 years ago might have been called the trades. The result is that I pay anything between $100 and $200 an hour for a plumber, or an electrician or .... you get the picture. These charge-out rates to some degree represent a skills shortage, one which we have seen exacerbated with the massive increase in housing demand driven by Auckland's growth and Christchurch's rebuild.

What am I theorising as the root cause? The desire of a generation of working class parents to ensure that their children would not be subject to the deprivations that they had experienced, and the belief of that generation that education (well, a university education actually) was the key.

Since the 1970s ( and maybe earlier) we have had ready access to university, with the belief that a university education is the right of every child. I support the belief that everyone should be able to access a university education. With regard to universal access we still have much to do of course. Cultural and socio0economic barriers mean that some groups do not actually have the same opportunities as others. The 'tail of under achievement' is something that we need to address.

I am challenging the belief that it is in society's best interests that everyone should have a university education. The introduction of tuition fees has not slowed the growth in university rolls. Nor until now perhaps has the increase in the level of the bar required to access university.

The 2015 drop in the numbers of New Zealand students gaining a UE qualification is probably the result of the latest lifting of that bar. The lifting of the bar took the form of requiring students to achieve Level 3 NCEA in addition to a literacy and numeracy component, and reasonable achievement (14 credits) in each of three level 3 subjects. Universities have found that students who entered their halls without Level 3 NCEA tended to have a much higher failure rate in their first year.

This is in my opinion a far better rationing mechanism than the imposition of ever growing fees. The growth in fees disenfranchises those from the very working class from which people like me have sprung. If instead the bar is created in terms of ability, with subsequent lowering of costs to students gaining entry,  then perhaps we are more likely to get the most useful populations of university students from the perspective of New Zealand society, and the economy.

So, summarising, I am suggesting that we have had a generation of secondary school teachers who had come from  a 'working class' background who have pushed students into a university education. The result is that we have had too many students attend universities and too few take up alternative forms of tertiary training/education. The result is that we have a serious labour market imbalance. We also have a university system that has grown beyond what we can support. Instead of funding high level research, and the education of our academic best, we fund a much larger population of university students who take on large debt for possibly little gain. We also have a shortage of people wiling and able to work in trades, and other non academic work. Arguably we may also have a less entrepreneurial society than we need.

Evaluating the argument.

1. Where's the data? Is it true that a majority of secondary school teachers recruited in the 60's and 70's came from 'working class' backgrounds?
2. What were school leaving ages like ion the '30's and 40's? Was it in fact a typical experience, or something only forced on a relative few?
3. Were real wage differentials large enough in the 60's and 70's to justify the belief that a university education would make someone better off than say a trades apprenticeship?
4. How significant is the current wage differential? If it is real, does it really represent a longer term shortage in labour markets, or is it merely a short term phenomenon?

This post is the result of some thinking. Research may already have been done that might prove or disprove the 'thesis'.

But .. I was just thinking.

What matters most?

What sort of society do we want to live in? Regardless of your particular persuasion - Christian or Atheist, Muslim or Hindu, this is a question you have either thought about, or ought to have thought about, at some time. And at Christmas time, as stories come out of children who have no Christmas, we see the national past-time of welfare bashing develop momentum ready for the post Christmas frenzy.

Like it or not, we have vulnerable people all around us. I believe the view that you can judge the quality of a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable members.

Apparently it is difficult to attribute the sentiment to any one person. For example:

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi

"A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying," ~Pope John Paul II

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.~Samuel Johnson, Boswell: Life of Johnson

All of these quotes I found with a simple Google search on http://askville.amazon.com/measure-civilization-treats-weakest-members-accurate-quote/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=4718239

It is with a paradoxical degree of irritation then that I read and hear some incredibly intolerant views expressed by others in society. News stories of those unable to help themselves regularly evoke responses that range from intolerance to outright belligerence with accusations that include 'idiots', 'bludgers', and other labels I'd rather not print. So how come we have vulnerable people in our society?

So, let's try to put some thinking straight. Here's one perspective.

A common view is that people at the bottom of the 'social heap' simply don't want to help themselves. That's interesting. It assumes that we are all the same. It assumes for example that we all have the same abilities, or the same personality profiles. It assumes that we have the same risk profiles, or the same 'intelligence' (whichever model you prefer to use to identify those measurable attributes that we call 'intelligence'). That's not just tricky, it's downright untrue. At the risk of lecturing, any attribute of a naturally occurring population is spread across that population in a normal distribution.

Without that we wouldn't have this:

or this:

But just as there are those at the top of the pile, so there are those at the bottom. That's why we see this:

and this:

I am not suggesting anything here other than that we don't all have the same capabilities. Some of us are born with more short twitch fibres than long in our muscles making us more suitable to one type of running over another. No amount of training is going to make a sprinter out of someone with the wrong muscle twitch fibres, for example. (See the work of Stephen J Gould in his book 'The mismeasure of man' for an alternative view about the normal distribution though).

There are also arguments abounding about 'nature vs nurture' and the impact of each on our development as adults. And of course there is the argument that birth doesn't have to define destiny, that any of us is capable of changing our position in life with the right application.

L

However, laying blame is the easiest response. You might even label it the 'lazy' response, but it doesn't help the situation in any way shape or form. 

Those in wheelchairs don't chose to be there. I'd also venture the generalisation that those living in poverty don't chose the live that way either. Don't get me wrong. I am not stupid enough to suggest that every person who lives in poverty is incapable of helping themselves. There are always those that choose not to help themselves. 

Consider the accusation that those at the bottom of our supposed social heap should get off the bums and work. Let's get them all to start their own businesses. Well, starting your own business requires a good idea, a huge work ethic, and a risk profile that accepts risk. 

How does that look? It depends on the personality type model that you use. Here's one:

There are many different models of personality type, and argument amongst psychologists on the validity of any or all of these too. The point is that we are different. Not all of us have a risk profile that lends itself to new ventures. There are those amongst us who are risk seekers. There are those amongst us who are more risk averse. It seems reasonable to assume that the willingness to accept risk will be distributed normally across the population, like any other attribute. Why have I never started up a business? I am relatively risk averse, simple!! For some of us simply changing jobs, or even accepting a job, is a 'risk' that pushes us too far.

If we talk about accepting employment from others, the economist might argue that there are no jobs for them, or that there is a mismatch between the skill sets of job seekers and the job market. We could equally argue that the drive, the 'get up and go' required to search out a job isn't equally distributed amongst us all.

However my argument is that we mustn't generalise across everyone in any of our artificial categories. As I said earlier, laying blame is the 'lazy' response, but it is not a helpful response. A more productive response might be, what can I do to help? How could I change the situation? Maybe I 'pay it forward' with a coffee for someone else in the coffee queue. Maybe I donate some long unused clothing to the City Mission. What matters in my opinion is that we generate a more caring society.

Every human being has value, every human being has talents and skills, every human being has something to offer to society. The bigger and more challenging question, the tough question, is how we get more and more of those at the bottom of our social pile to see their talents and skills? How do we encourage more and more people to be the best they can be, and make the best contribution they can to the society in which they live? And how do we care for those most vulnerable in our society?

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi

One year of BYO laptops

There it is - the end of our first year with BYOD .. well BYO laptop to be precise. What do I think I might have learned?

1. Laptops make a difference.
2. Staff will shift their practice when they are good and ready, and not before.
3. Laptops make a difference.
4. Staff will shift their practice when they can see some advantage to themselves - reduced workload, more efficient work flow and maybe, just maybe, improved learning for their students.
5. Laptops make a difference.
6. Many people (staff and students) believe that 'elearning' is delivery using electronic media.
7. Laptops make a difference.
8. Many people (staff and students) believe that staff delivering content is true learning.
9. Laptops make a difference.
10. Laptops enable engagement in ways not possible without them. Teachers can engage with students in ways that are difficult to achieve without laptops.
11. Laptops make a difference.
12. Laptops enable feedback in detail and volume that is very difficult to achieve without laptops
13. Laptops make a difference.
14. Life would be incredibly tedious if not boring for any student if all teachers in their lives did the same things with laptops every day.
15. Laptops make a difference.

Hmmm... is there a theme there? Of course I say all of this with no quantitative data at all to support my arguments. I did say this is what I THINK I have learned. Let's look for the data.