teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...

A bit of a surprise in the weekly roundup this time not one post by Wes Fryer mentioned! Well, not directly anyway… Instead it’s the turn of Mike Muir’s Every One Learns blog - one that I’ve only recently come across - to take centre stage. Mike’s made some great posts this week which will be mentioned, along with the inevitable one from Christopher D. Sessums and a couple of others…

Here’s the list of the posts I’ll reference in this week’s roundup:

• Christopher D. Sessums - Pedagogy, personality, and reflective practice
• Cool Cat - Typology of cognitive pleasures in the classroom
• Connectivism Blog - Scientists and Artists: Who should design learning?
• Every One Learns - Teachers Aren’t To Blame
• Every One Learns - The Answer to Curriculum May Not Be Content (Part 1)
• Every One Learns - The Answer to Curriculum May Not Be Content (Part 2)
• Every One Learns - Fear and Disruptive Technologies
• Miles Berry - The potential of open source approaches for education
• Remote Access - Classroom planning with kids
• TILT vidcasts

Mike Muir is a professor of educational technology at the University of Maine at Farmington working with schools on ways to motivate underachievers and with several learning with laptop initiatives. In Teachers Aren’t To Blame, Mike sets out his belief that education has changed fundamentally: firstly because the world of work has changed; secondly because new digital tools have changed how students work and therefore how they learn:

So teachers are now working in an environment they didn’t really experience as students themselves, and probably weren’t trained for professionally. Even if teachers need to be the ones making most of the changes, the reason is that the rules have changed, not because they weren’t doing a good job.

So what’s the way forward? Mike suggests it’s through providing training, resources and time for teachers to be able to make mistakes and not blame them when they do. What a great approach - let’s hope some senior managers of schools are reading!

Another thing Mike’s discussed on his blog this week is something I too have been thinking about recently : curriculum change and the move away from content. In The Answer To Curriculum Might Not Be Content (Part 1), Mike talks of his work in recommending a new curriculum to be adopted in Maine. The problem, he says, is not in designing the curriculum per se, it’s designing it so that the ‘hard-to-teach’ kids can be successful. What he didn’t want to do was end up with a curriculum where these students are removed in order to study a different curriculum because of their behavioural difficulties:

Our answer in the past was that we made DIFFERENT courses for our hard to teach kids. If they can’t do Algebra II (especially since they probably had a hard time with Algebra I and Geometry), why don’t we offer a Shop Math or a Life Skills Math. If our hard to teach students can’t do American Literature (especially since they probably had a hard time with freshman comp and lit), why don’t we offer “Sports Literature.”

But I don’t think this approach has been very successful. I think we didn’t address the root problem; all we did was remove our hard to teach kids from the high status curriculum they were struggling with.

What if instead we designed those high status courses in such a way that the hard to tech kids could be successful with them? What would a Physics class look like where every student could leave the course understanding important Physics principles as outlined in national standards? What would an Algebra II or Calculus class look like that every student could leave having met the standards outlined by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics? What would a course look like where even the hard to teach kids could master the themes of Shakespeare or Whitman?

None of the answers to these questions are to do with content but to do with skills. As I’ve said before, in an increasingly information-rich world, it’s not the content we need to be getting across (as much) it’s the skills to be able to find and use that information effectively. I like the way Mike finishes Part I of this two-part post:

The definition of insanity is doing the same old thing and expecting different results. We know that a high status curriculum (taught the way it has always been taught) doesn’t work for the hard to teach kids. We have to teach the content differently.

The situation is exactly the same in England and, I fear, the same in most Western cultures.

The Answer To Curriculum Might Not Be Content (Part 2) addresses the problem that Mike has identified and I too have witnessed and perhaps, on occasion been guilty of myself, of teachers believing that certain students are incapable of following a particular curriculum. I must say however, in my defence, that by the time some students get to 14-15 years of age it’s something of a crisis-management situation as you know that they’ll not be staying on post-16 and you need them to learn something. That’s why the vocational options tend to be taken up mostly by those who have ‘fallen off’ the main curriculum, for whatever reason. Dealing as he does with both underachievers and with laptop initiatives, Mike makes the link to those who say that 1-to-1 laptop initiatives ‘make no difference’:

If there are a lot of schools where 1-to-1 is working, doesn’t that prove that it is at least possible that 1-to-1 works. In fact, if we know that it is possible that it can work, then we have to look at why it isn’t working in some places. If it didn’t work in most places, then we could say that it didn’t work in the girl’s school simply because “it just doesn’t work.” But if it works a lot of places, then you have to ask the question, if it isn’t working in this school, is it because they didn’t make it work? The fault may not be with the laptops. It may not be the new element; the disruptive element. It might be what the school did or didn’t do.

Likewise, if there are places having success with hard to teach students, doesn’t that suggest that there are ways to reach hard to teach kids?

He then proceeds to give examples of ‘hard-to-teach’ students being taught in ways which lead to success. I must take issue with this to some extent, though. Due to the ‘intervention effect’ (those who feel like they’re being treated specially are likely to do better) and the fact that they’re likely to be getting better teaching than normal, it’s no wonder their results were better. I’m all for people doing what they’re best at and for students learning in the best way for them. For many this doesn’t mean a ‘fully inclusive’ education - it means being taught in a place and by people which means that they can reach their potential.

Finally from Mike for this week is Fear and Disruptive Technologies in which he references good old Wes Fryer (well, he had to feature somewhere, didn’t he?!) in which the latter bemoans the ‘reactionary, statist’ leaders of schools who have banned the use of iPods and other gadgetry students carry around with them everywhere nowadays. Interestingly, Mike mentions a conversation with Gary Brown, an Australian regional IT Director who had a rather different view from these American school leaders:

At his schools, about 95% of the students had cell phones. Did they ban their use? No. They purchased a system to push school announcements out to the phones. Some of the teachers use them for quizzes (kind of like the “clicker” student response systems). Now 100% of their students have cell phones. Their cell phone abuse rate? According to Gary, 0%.

This is exactly what we should be doing: using the tools which have available to make learning more interesting and relevant to students. I think some people in positions in authority have forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager! The more a figure in authority tells you that you can’t do something, the more you want to do it…

Talking of the use of educational technology, Miles Berry in The potential of open source approaches for education mentions in passing the, “‘you don’t need to know how the car works, you just need to drive it’ culture which we hear promoted through official channels.” He’s put this very well as this is exactly the attitude by leaders in many schools in which I’ve spent any length of time. Teachers don’t allow students to use their mobile phones because they don’t understand how they can be used in teaching and learning; they don’t use blogs and wikis because it means letting go of total control; and they don’t accept non-traditional ways pieces of work for assessment because that isn’t ‘the ways it’s been done’ before. As I’ve mentioned before, the more you publish league tables and give people targets in education, the more teaching to the test you’ll get, and the less true learning will take place.

An example of what could, and perhaps should, be done is given by Clarence Fisher in Classroom Planning with Kids. He mentions a discussion he had with his life (also a teacher) about an idea he of using a wiki with students to plan their own curriculum (to some extent):

In the end I, we came up with an idea of how this might happen:

- A list of outcomes would be given to kids before a unit begins. A list of assignments used in the past may also be given to them, as well as some “thou - shalts” that the teacher insists must be completed during a unit. As well, kids need a list of possible forms of representation that could be used to showcase their understanding of a topic. This is not a big deal as I do this already.

- This discussion could begin in the classroom as a whole. We tossed around the idea of a “planning committee” consisting of a few students, but that didn’t seem fair.

- Whatever grows out of the initial discussions for unit planning could be posted onto a wiki. Once it is here, the discussions could both widen and focus. They could widen to include kids, teachers, parents, etc. from other places. There is no reason they could not have input and their ideas used as well as any others… This still ultimately is my classroom and it is my responsibility to ensure that outcomes are met and that students learn, so this is not an abdication of responsibility. I would still have the final say about what happens.

I think doing this on a unit - by - unit basis would be the best way for this to happen. Planning with kids each week would be onerous and inefficient. This is a process that would have to happen slowly in a well structured way, with a gradual release of responsibility for the kids to have some success and a voice.

This sounds like a great idea: having students involved in the planning process not only gives them responsibility for their own learning but allows them to structure it in a way which may be more conducive to effective learning than would otherwise be the case. Of course it would be a risk on the part of the teacher - as Clarence says, the buck stops at him meaning that it has to be ‘freedom within a framework’ (as I’d probably put it).

There’s actually a lot of people talking about curriculum change and development. Perhaps a revolution is coming, or perhaps it’s just Spring and therefore the time of the year that people tend to talk about these things! George Siemens, in Scientists and Artists: Who should design learning? at the Connectivism Blog, criticizes the over-scientific design of curricula to the detriment of ‘artistic’ input. Not everything quantifying is worth quantifying, and things that cannot be quantified are sometimes more valuable. This, I suppose, isn’t what senior leaders want to hear though - it doesn’t make their job any easier!

I feel it’s important to understand (and be able to measure - though I would like to extend measurement beyond simple dollars) the impact of training and learning. Unfortunately, the “scientists of learning” have the dominant voice in the learning space. The artists aren’t being heard.

If the scientists role is one of determining best approaches to instruction (through empirical research, qualitative and quantitative analysis), what is the role of the artist in the learning space? I believe the artist is the individual who sees the magic in learning. He/she may not know exactly why something worked well, but can see (and dare I say, feel?) that the learners are changing, growing, and developing. The artist of learning sees beauty in the dialogue, in the interaction, in the connections formed between what is known and what is becoming known. The artist sees (and accepts) the beauty of uncertainty, and values learning as both a process and a product. In creating a learning environment, the artist splashes the magic of learning across the entire canvas of life. Tools are used like paint brushes to create the desired painting of learning. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, courses (yes, even an LMS), conversations, communities of practice - these elements are all seen as pieces in the learning experience and ecology.

I do like these meme of ‘learning ecologies’ which seems to be pervading the education blogging landscape (I really dislike the term ‘blogosphere’…). The idea of creating an environment for learning which can continually change, develop and adapt is exactly the right metaphor for what should be happening in classrooms and schools all around the world.

Whilst I’m on the topic of metaphors, I must mention Christopher D. Sessums post this week on Pedagogy, personality, and reflective practice. Like me, he’s a bit uneasy about putting students (or indeed anyone) in pigeon-holes:

I have always had a problem with the concept of learning styles. Some people claim to prefer visuals, others claim they learn best by listening. The reality is, people learn best by doing, by getting their proverbial feet wet and hands dirty.

Exactly. To say that some people are ‘visual learners’ or ‘kinaesthetic learners’ is a bit of a nonsense if believed wholeheartedly and pseudo-scientifically. Whilst it can be a good heuristic, it doesn’t tell the whole story: teachers have to take much more into account than this simple way of categorizing students. Chris references Roger Schank who has come up with the following metaphors for different personality types:

There’s the diver. She wants no explanations. She wants to jump right in and figure it out.

There’s the questioner. He wants to see all the possibilities before jumping in. He’s uncomfortable getting started until he gets an answer to every possible question he can think of.

There’s the explorer. She is a combination of the diver and the questioner. She doesn’t commit as quickly as the diver; she prefers to move cautiously, seeing what’s possible before committing. The explorer prefers a certain degree of hand-holding or guidance each step of the way.

There’s the little brother. You gently guide him along to point where he has to do something, then you stand back and gently encourage him along. He takes a bit of nudging to get him to act.

Metaphors can be useful for getting a handle on ’soft’ ideas, ones which are prone to change, development and moulding by external forces. However, like any idea or concept followed blindly, they can be dangerous when ripped out of context and used pseudo-scientifically as a cure-all or explain-all.

Although I haven’t got time to go into as much detail as I’d like, the Cool Cat Teacher Blog has a post on Employing cognitive seductu-cation in the classroom (Typology of Cognitive Pleasures in the Classroom). In this post Vicki Davis talks about 13 types of ‘cognitive pleasures’ that can be aroused in the classroom. Briefly, these are…

1. Discovery
2. Challenge
3. Narrative
4. Self-expression
5. Social framework
6. Cognitive Arousal
7. Thrill
8. Sensation
9. Triumph
10. Flow
11. Accomplishment
12. Fantasy
13. Learning

…but you really should go and have a read of the whole post for yourself if you’ve got time! (and if you’ve got even more time, have a look at Kathy Sierra’s original blog post on Creating Passionate Users which inspired Vicky’s post)

Finally, and this really will have to be quick, the TILT (Teachers Improving Learning with Technology) blog has ‘vodcasts’ available (podcasts with video). These deal with the use of educational technology in easy-to-understand ways and currently cover things such as Using Excel in the classroom and Web-based applications for students and teachers.

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