One of the clear facets of the Australian Curriculum is the requirement for teachers to explicitly develop skills in the students. These skills include both the subject specific skills as well as what are now termed the general capabilities (another name for interdisciplinary skills).

The challenge for teachers is figuring out HOW they are going to be more explicit about developing the required skills. Part of the challenge is that, for the most part, teachers have operated with the HOPE that students will develop the required skills by practicing or participating in activities. Well … to a certain extent this does develop the skills but in a world of performance this is insufficient.

K. Anders Ericsson has pioneered the research into deliberate practice. One of Ericsson’s core findings is that skill expertise has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times.  An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback. Another important feature of deliberate practice lies in continually practicing a skill at more challenging levels with the intention of mastering it.

One of the structures that we use as we facilitate teacher’s Australian Curriculum planning is the formative rubric. We use the structure of a formative rubric (see the Rubric Student Version and the Rubric Teacher Version) to support the teachers to unpack not only what the skill chunks are at different stages of skill development, but to provide a structure for teachers to articulate the explicit approaches they will use to develop and challenge the students. Our experience is that teachers have a ‘light bulb’ moment and suddenly it all becomes clear.

The thinking behind the formative rubric is this. Expert teachers generally know what level of skill a student is displaying in the way they are demonstrating in their work. However, this is an instinctual thing with teachers which they address when they see it. If we are going to actually support the students in developing a mastery approach we have to move this from an anecdotal ‘on-sight’ approach to explicitly articulating what it is we are looking for, the evidence that we require them to produce to demonstrate that they are at a level, and the strategies we will be using to develop their skill. Once we have captured this information suddenly the process of developing visible feedback mechanisms that the students drive becomes much easier. The result is that performance increases, the more competent students have a structure that can extend them, teacher’s have more time to support the struggling students, and the students begin to have tools that allow them to become independent learners.

It does take time to articulate it well as it challenges the teachers to get really clear about WHAT demonstrable behaviour it is they are looking for. I have attached a sample rubric for research so you can get an idea of how we unpacked one skill at a year 8 level.

Another benefit of going through the process is that the teachers suddenly realise their mastery of a particular area and can coach and give away their understandings and mastery to others. Win-Win really!

Any thoughts or comments?

I have this belief that the planning documents need to lead teachers through the thinking and behaviour you are trying to encourage in them. They are not just to capture information (although this is an important part of the process). How the teachers fill in the documents will tell you a lot about their current thinking.

So when you look at HOW the teachers fill in their current documents, their detail, their use of the current planning documents, and so on … their actions will reveal their mindset and understanding and how much they value the process of planning. It will identify gaps in their thinking and possibly their understanding. It could also identify gaps in rigour and the discipline of planning.

In designing the process of planning I would want to make sure that the documents and the planning process lead the teachers through the thinking I want them to undertake to develop a coherent, cohesive unit that meets the school’s pedagogical focuses. There is a step by step process you want them to go through. If you look at Jay McTigue’s Understanding By Design approach the planning templates are filled in a particular order and the process takes one through the process.

Now I, personally, am interested in performance – enabling both teachers and students to perform exceptionally. When you look at the performance of people there are four major areas which get in the way of them performing successfully.

• They don’t know WHAT to do
• They don’t know HOW to do it.
• They don’t know WHY they do it?
• Or there are OBSTACLES beyond their control

When I look at many school planners … there is a lot of identifying WHAT to do. Most of the HOW in teacher unit plans are very vague to my “Engineer” oriented brain. The WHY comes from having clear Key Understandings. Obstacles can be addressed via “common misconceptions” or the teacher identifying the common barriers to progress (whether they be understandings or skills or whatever) and identifying strategies to support students to overcome them.

If I am looking at Planning Documents (whether they are house plans, learning plans, game plans for a sport, plans for an organising a conference, etc) I really want to be able to see; 

• WHAT is the goal and WHAT it will look like when it is all completed (goal skills, understandings)
• HOW will we get there (what tools, skills need to be developed, resources, learning strategies, and the explicit steps to get there)
• WHY (how it links to past learning and future learning, big picture)
• OBSTACLES (what could be some potential obstacles and HOW we will overcome them)

The planning documents should be clear in showing this. When I see this information we can then be clear that the event is going to happen (whether it is a unit, house, conference, bridge, or whatever). That is what plans are for.

For me, planning documents should begin with the end point (the destination) – the WHAT

1. What are the key understandings (achievement standards) I want the students to gain by the end of the unit? This will link into what they already know and the WHY of the unit.
2. What skills am I wanting to be developing through this unit (both subject specific skills and core competencies/general capabilities pertinent to this cohort of students)? What thinking do I want them to do?
3. What content will be the vehicle for this journey?

Knowing all of this … what could be a culminating event where the students can summatively and authentically demonstrate their understandings and skills to achieve? What does this look like? feel like?

We now get to the HOW

So now knowing the WHAT … what would be the list of steps I would take to have the students successfully accomplish reaching the end point having developed the skills and grasped the understandings?

• What tools will I use when?
• What resources will I need when?
• What graphic organisers?
• What incursions or excursions?
• How will I hook them or engage them?
• What questions could I formulate to begin and to guide them through the process?
• What could be common misconceptions of barriers for these students? How will I support the students to overcome these barriers?
• What structures will I use to support the students and myself to facilitate the process?

This outline of my thinking is WHY I would include documents such as a check list, and formative rubric in the planning documentation. This would address part of the how.

When you look at your planning documents you really want to be able to see the whole picture and process.

Do you see this in your school teaching / learning plans?

This week’s blog comes from Narelle Wood. Narelle is our Australian Curriculum expert and has worked extensively across a range of schools in supporting powerful learning in the literacy and English domain.

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An indulgence of mine is jigsaw puzzles. I will sit for hours trying to complete a particular section and it has got to the stage where I have sat at the table for 2 days straight to complete one. I recently completed one of penguins standing on a sheet of ice; there is not much colour in Antarctica. By the time I had completed the puzzle I had the usual self-satisfied feeling of solving a problem but this was muddled with feelings of frustration and annoyance. It’s safe to say the lack of clarity in what I was trying to achieve diminished the normal enjoyable experience. I have come to realise completing a jigsaw puzzle is much like learning; fitting smaller pieces together to see the bigger picture. Where we sometimes fail as educators is in not giving our students sufficient information to complete their learning jigsaw puzzle.

I’ve came to this realisation when I was teaching Literature in 2010. I had a small and reasonably capable class. What was new for me was that the students knew how they learnt and demanded, nicely, that I teach them in the way they knew worked best.

Early in the year I had spent some time with the Year 11 Literature teacher and we had mapped out a very detailed scope and sequence chart. Walking into each class I knew what outcomes needed to be addressed and how they related. The route altered occasionally to respond to the needs of my students. But the students were demanding me to share that curriculum map with them. They wanted to see the big picture as well as the small details on each individual piece, and they wanted to know how it all fitted together.

The demand first appeared as; “what are we learning this for?” I refrained from biting and explained the benefits of deconstructing poetry; we were skill building. Each lesson I faced similar questions. Exasperated by the seemingly constant challenges I finally took in the scope and sequence chart and all the other curriculum documentation, sat down with the students and explained it.

The exercise, initially, was really a way to shut them up, but to my surprise and delight, they were generally interested. The questions asked about the curriculum were intelligent and insightful, and in most cases questions that we had posed ourselves in developing the curriculum documents. I also found it interesting that the students were surprised we had gone into so much detail; we had mapped out when and what meta-language they would learn. When I explained that meta-language was a significant component of Literature, you could see the pieces fit together. No longer was euphemistic language something that Miss Wood just liked to talk about, it had a purpose.

I thought, initially that the interest was because of the stereotypical students that take Literature – the more bookish or academic types. So I decided to experiment on my Year 9’s; in a completely ethical and educationally sound way of course. I did the same activity. I had a greater range of the so-called academic ability and I was curious to see their response. It sparked much debate and we did get stuck on “why write essays” for about 30 minutes of the 45 minute lesson. They too had some very interesting and well formed arguments about their learning and its purpose in their lives.

What both experiences showed me is that students are interested in their education but we, unwittingly at times, limit these opportunities by limiting the information we give them. This is like asking them to complete an extraordinarily detailed jigsaw puzzle with no pictures, instructions or clues – an overwhelming task for even the avid jigsaw puzzler.

So, why do we not share the curriculum with students? Why do we not involve the students in writing the curriculum? Surely if we wish our students to take more responsibility in their learning we need to give them some ownership over what and how they learn.

The results of Robert Marzano’s 2003 research on school effectiveness strongly supports that a clearly documented and workable curriculum at the whole school level is the most important factor in student achievement. The documentation is worth doing for a large number of reasons. It provides:

• an understanding of where the students learning is  going
• allows the students to make explicit connections between subjects
• can allow them easier access to past learning by seeing the skills as accumulative rather than replacing old knowledge with the new
• it provides them a framework for reflection by asking them to self-assess where they are at in the learning sequence
• it is a practical demonstration that planning matters

Granted, it is a daunting task, especially if all the documentation needs to be student friendly. So, how do you complete a giant exceptionally complicated jigsaw puzzle? One piece at a time. I know the work I did made a profound difference to the way I approached my teaching. And I now live with hope that after students have long left the classroom they continue to ask “what am I learning this for?” and keep adding pieces to their jigsaw puzzle.

I thought this was such a great post that I would repost it on our blog for our readers. This is from David Ginsburg, a teacher coach, who writes for Education Weekly giving teachers fabulous coaching tips. It is worth checking out his blog (http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/coach_gs_teaching_tips/)

It’s fine to encourage students to speak up by telling them there are no stupid questions. Yet students’ willingness to ask questions has less to do with us encouraging them to do so than how we respond when they actually do ask questions.

Unfortunately, teachers often respond to questions in ways that deter students from asking more questions. Sometimes we do this by dismissing or barely answering their questions because “we need to move on.” Other times we do it more subtly through responses that would seem to encourage students to ask questions, such as “great question.”

How could a positive comment like “great question” deter students from asking questions? Simple. If some questions are great, then by implication others are not great. And it’s inevitable that kids will be reluctant to ask questions if they think their questions may not elicit our praise. From their perspective, then, there are indeed stupid questions.

A better approach involves reinforcing the act of asking a question, regardless how profound or simple a question may be. Rather than respond to students using evaluative words such as “great,” express gratitude to them for asking a question. A quick “thanks for your question” validates students, and supports the notion that there are no stupid questions. (You can always follow up later with private praise for students whose questions strike you as particularly thoughtful.)

My point here doesn’t just apply to students asking questions, but also to answering them. It’s important to avoid affirming students only when we agree with their answers, especially when there isn’t necessarily one right answer–such as when teachers ask students to predict, infer, or interpret while discussing literature.

All too often, however, we convey to students that there is just one right answer. At times we do this overtly, as when a teacher asked students what they thought the motivation was behind a character’s behavior. When a student said “love,” the teacher said “I disagree.” When another student then said “jealousy,” the teacher said “exactly.” Sometimes it’s not just our words but our intonation–”Really?!” Other times it’s not our words at all, but our raised eyebrows or other gestures. And again, sometimes we may deter students in subtle ways. I recall a teacher telling a student, “Great prediction,” and then saying to another student, “Hmmm, so you think she is going to accept the job.”

The solution, as it is for responding to students’ questions, is to respond to students’ thoughts gratefully yet neutrally. At the same time, it’s not always in the class’ best interest to say “thanks for sharing” and move on to another student or the next part of the discussion. But by first acknowledging students for sharing, we can then push the discussion to a more meaningful level. This may involve asking students to back up their answers by referring to the text. Or it may mean facilitating debate by asking students to react to each others’ thoughts–which can be far more constructive than us reacting to their thoughts.

For students to learn to their potential, they need to feel free to ask questions and share their thoughts. And they’ll never feel such freedom unless we as educators value their input rather than evaluate it.

The most challenging, rewarding work we do in schools happens when we have the opportunity to build a partnership with the school over time. We really love this aspect of our work. Through these partnerships we gain a deep understanding of the school’s culture and priorities, develop meaningful relationships with teachers and often we act as a consistent, driving force for change.

The advantages of having a relative outsider come into the school community are many – but one in-particular stands out to me. At a number of schools, I have reached an optimum level of integration into the landscape of the place. That is to say, I am known and familiar but am still objective enough to see the ‘big picture’ of the school. Because of this, I am able to ‘connect the dots’ of its people and culture in order to design suitable curriculum, engage teaching teams in effective planning and map the actions that will lead to culture shift over time. When speaking about this to a fellow coach recently, I referred to it as ‘standing across the street, looking into the school.’ Close enough to see everything, but with a wide enough perspective to see the whole picture. I strongly believe that there is not enough perspective in our schools – and that there is an urgent need for it. No matter how competent and skilled the internal personnel of an organisation may be, the fact remains that schools are like bubbles encasing small, intense communities that can become all-consuming to those inside them.

Our role as consultants who are practical and passionate about learning and teaching is clear in this scenario:

• Bring perspective and clarity to the development of school-wide initiatives
• Model positive, effective relationships with both leadership and teaching staff
• Bring global education experts and initiatives into the school’s sphere for discussion and application in relevant areas
• Promote a shared language of learning throughout the school community that reflects a highly consistent approach to culture and pedagogy
• Facilitate substantive conversations about developing evolving practice
• Skill the teaching team to provide progressive, differentiated challenges to students across a range of disciplines
• Support and facilitate exploration and application of teaching strategies that align with the general capabilities of the National Curriculum in order to promote deep, practical understanding of these transferable concepts
• View ourselves as lifelong learners who have as much to discover from working within a school community as we have to impart.

By modelling these practices, reinforcing the pedagogical beliefs and language that the school wants to build and nurturing real relationships with teachers, we are able to make a definitive difference. The relational aspect of teaching is often emphasised by classroom teachers and educational experts alike – and trusting relationships are undoubtedly at the core of education. But trust must also mean challenge, measured risk-taking and a strong sense of shared responsibility. This is vital when building a high performance school culture – both in terms of teacher-student relationships, and teacher-teacher relationships. As facilitators and coaches on this journey, we need to be deeply empathic towards those who are finding change confronting, but also to send high-expectation messages about accountability, openness to change and developing resilience in the process of dynamic culture shift. We are able to play this critical role because we occupy the space between school and society – and it is this ‘big picture’ view that can sustain schools through transition from what Sir Ken Robinson refers to as ‘industrial-age education’ to a twenty-first century learning community.

The final, critical piece of the coaching for change puzzle is to develop classroom teachers as coaches. One of my colleagues refers to this process as ‘doing ourselves out of a job’ and this is the ultimate indicator of our effectiveness. As we know, the best teaching is that which achieves genuine transfer of the skills we want students to build so that they can apply them to a range of real-world situations. To do as this a coach means being skilled in assisting teachers to develop the skills of meta-cognitive reflection so that they can monitor their mindsets and stay vigilant in evaluating the conscious and unconscious habits and practices that they bring to the learning space. Additionally, it requires us to be able to teach the critical skill of design to teachers so that they become strategic, innovative planners of curriculum.

At present, this seems to be the ‘missing link’ between organised professional learning and implementation of new teaching strategies. The professional conversation often ends after a ‘one off’ session and the ideas discussed remain ideas, nothing more. We must change the way we offer and access professional development so that we see consultancy as a partnership in moving the school forward and give teachers the real, ongoing support they need to be able learn, trial and reflect on their practice. If we can do this, the ‘bubble’ will burst and schools will become empowered places where people can not only see the possibility of change, but with supported, consistent effort, can embrace it with enthusiasm.

For those of you in the wider world who don’t get a chance to catch all of our newsletters I thought I would include this quick blog post to capture some of the resources that have dropped off our web page which might be useful for you. We are consistently researching and developing ideas, resources, thinking, viewpoints, templates, workshops as we work with schools. We rarely have the time to make them available to everyone (although you can buy our Resource CD from the shop which make life easier for you!). The following is a small selection of some of the materials and links you may have missed

Development of Worked Example Units

Some iPAD Learning Games

Power of Feedback Article

Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning

Four Differentiated Instruction Mistakes

The Five-by-Five Approach to Differentiation Success

Improving Teacher Practice – 6 Strategies to Improve Formative Assessment

A Culture of Leadership Jan 30 2012

Building an Exceptional Team Environment Jan 23 2012

Rubric Student Version

Rubric Teacher Version

Learning for a world of constant change revisited

What Great Teachers Do Differently

Teachers Make a Difference – Hattie

Five characteristics of an effective 21st-C Educator

5 Things to Practice in the Classroom

A Naturalistic Study of Insight

2012 Workshops and Other Offerings

I find it interesting and disheartening that the Australian media pick snippets of the Gonski Review like vultures and highlight those out-of-context elements such that the public debate issues that actually are not worth debating. Here is my snapshot of the 41 Recommendations and 26 Findings so you can get a sense of the report.

• The report was created entirely to address “a funding system which is transparent, fair, financially sustainable and effective in promoting excellent educational outcomes for all Australian students”
• So the report is about exploring whether our funding system is equitable for ALL students to promote excellent educational outcomes. This is something worth debating. As Australians are we standing for an equitable educational system for ALL Australians?

• The finding that Australia has had a decline in overall student performance is based purely on the comparison of 2 years (2000, 2009) PISA data and TIMMS data. Although Australia still ranks in the top 10 of OECD countries, the assertion of the decline is based on more countries now outperforming us in the PISA test.
• The report indicates that the PISA data shows a trend of greater stratification of performance, thus an increasing inequality from top students to bottom students.
• In looking at what is in the report there is no statistical analysis of variance that can occur year to year. Any statistician knows that it is critical to include variance to know if the data shown is statistically significant or not. While the results do not indicate that the report’s assertion that we are in decline is wrong, I am not satisfied that it is showing the full picture.
• While there is much collecting of data about literacy and numeracy there is little around the broader schooling outcomes such as outlined in the Melbourne Declaration “all young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens”
• This is a big missing in Australia as most of what is spoken about in the media and Government is the easy to measure factors such as literacy and numeracy but they are a small part of a very large picture.
• The report goes into much detail how the current funding approach is inequitable. The following are just the highlights of the report’s findings:
• The current funding approach is illogical, inconsistent and not publicly transparent
• There is an imbalance to how federal and state governments fund public and private schools
• There needs to allow systems to redistribute and reallocate resources at the local level, with enhanced accountability
• Funding is not based in any educational rationale
• Funding needs to reflect the educational challenges faced by the system or school (e.g. Northern Territory remote schools vs Victorian schools) regardless of whether it is a public or private.
• There needs to be a national standard created against which the adequacy of a school’s facilities for 21^st century education is measured.
• There is a profound difference in the quality of facilities between schools and school sectors.
• Current planning processes are insufficient to respond to changing demographics and social needs. There needs to be greater systemic processes to involve communities and their schools in the process of developing and planning school facilities.
• Increased concentration of disadvantage in schools (regardless of sector) has a significant impact on educational outcome
• There is inequity in how students with disability are funded and there is a lack of nationally comparable data so that funding can be better directed.

When you look at the report overall you will notice that while Australia has a world leading education system, it does have issues. Against the framework of an equitable educational system that delivers excellent education for ALL students, the report states that major issues stem from an inequity in funding and a misplacement of funding to elements that do not maintain and develop the Australian education system. If funding can be redistributed in such a way to create as much equity as economically possible and targeting aspects that research has shown would make a difference then this would go a long way towards preparing ALL our children for the constantly changing future.

In its essence the report recommends that the federal and state governments have to develop the structures and systems to measure what is important, fund schools based on an equitable and transparent model that is logical and has an educational rationale, and to involve local communities and schools in the planning and development of school facilities.

What we will find in the short term is that the current Government and Opposition are focussed purely on getting the budget back into surplus in very tough worldwide economic conditions. This short term focus, while not counter many of the recommendations, will probably lead to political inaction rather than measured planning and action. A challenge for the many politicians is to break their cultural cycle of pandering to specific political interests and focus on the development of an equitable approach. For the public and the media it is about learning to focus on the big picture of education for ALL students in ALL parts of Australia rather than the narrowed debate currently occurring.

For those of you who are new to this blog, we spend a lot of time working with teachers and schools at  the fore-front of shifting their school learning culture and their pedagogy. This week we had an revealing experience with one of the schools we are working with. It is early days in this school and the individual is receiving push back by internal (students, certain staff, etc) and external forces (e.g. parents). By the way this is normal as schools’ shift their practice and habits. I thought I’d post the reply by one of our consultants to the individual who is responsible for being the beacon of change within the school.

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Hi X,

I experienced the same reactions (the whole range!) at the two schools at which I worked to implement Inquiry programs. Some of the students were very threatened by having to move outside their comfort zones – they had been very comfortable and used to the idea of the teacher doing all the work (in terms of the thinking) and them being positioned as recipients of information in the traditional classroom. They were very concerned about potential impact of ‘taking time’ away from traditional, discipline-based learning to develop the skills and competencies of inquiry. At one stage (I think I may have shared this story with you early in our planning last year) we invited parents and students to an evening meeting at the school to give us feedback about the Project – and it was very mixed, with strong opinions on both sides (and of course many who kept quiet on the issue). The bottom line was that, whilst we in no way minimised the students’ fears, we understood that we were the ones who had developed the understanding of the pedagogical principles underpinning the program – the students believed they knew what would serve them best in the ‘real’ world because that was their dominant experience of learning up until that point. You could say the same of many of the parents. We know what the research, the data and the experts say. Introducing Inquiry IS challenging, and I know, first-hand the feelings of stress, pressure and concern that teachers can feel during the process (particularly in the early stages of implementation).

The fact that some students are feeling uncomfortable is a good sign – it means that we have created something that is genuinely different and that there is obviously a need for, as the students must develop their awareness and competency in the skills needed for the twenty-first century world – skills and competencies that the VCE alone cannot provide. My understanding of the structure of the curriculum at your school was that the Inquiry Projects run separately from key disciplines like English and Maths so the students can be reassured that they will get their discipline-based, traditional preparation for the VCE in those subjects. What inquiry will do for them is develop the independent learning and coping skills that they will need to effectively deal with the stressors of experiences like VCE, university, living independently and later, to navigate the unpredictable and ever-changing jobs-market that they’ll be entering.

Without question, as part of my learning curve as I developed Inquiry in schools, the most important skill that I developed (out of absolute necessity!) was resilience. I had to look to collegiate support – particularly through those who shared my beliefs and an excellent mentor – to the research, to the work the students began to produce over time and to my own conviction that the work we were doing to transform learning into an active, thinking partnership was not only valid, but critical. On the odd evening, I would even watch video clips in the mould of Sir Ken Robinson’s ‘Changing Education Paradigms’ to remind me of our purpose and reasons for working to transform the student experience.

Rest assured that what you are all experiencing is very ‘normal’ and I have been there myself. We are already experiencing success because we are challenging staff and students.

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If you are a teacher or in the leadership team at a school who is out to shift the learning culture at your school – then expect the push back! You ARE pushing people out of their comfort zones and challenging their thinking. Unless the school  is aiming for excellence and being extraordinary then the school will naturally devolve into mediocrity. It is your job to keep the vision alive.  It is also the making of you as a leader of developing exceptional learning. It is not easy. It is not simple. You have to have the determination and the vision to be the one causing the shift. The results and difference for everyone  is profound in the end.

Until next time!

The following is an except from my book Exceptional that will be published later this year. For those of you who are first time readers – welcome. For those of you who are constant readers – welcome back for 2012!

Everyone has an opinion about education. I do. You do. Kids do. Parents do. Grandparents do. Teachers do. Politicians do. The media does. Radio shock jocks do. Billionaires do. There aren’t many days that I don’t hear some comment about education from someone. Unfortunately for a large percentage of the population much of it is misguided and uninformed.

You might believe that is a big statement – not really.

You have to consider on what people base their knowledge and understanding. Opinions are based on what people know from reading, listening, others people’s opinions, media, cultural background, and on their life experiences. Life experiences have the greatest effect on shaping our perceptions.

For example;

• If you are a student and your Grade One teacher created with you that “mistakes are your friend” and then set up the learning environment to allow you to make mistakes and learn from them, then you would probably love learning all the time.
• If you are a student and you failed assessment under test conditions, despite “knowing the material”, how long would it be before you decide that you “don’t get it” and progressively build an opinion about you and school?
• If you are a parent who has had poor educational experiences you can unconsciously impart your beliefs and mindset to your children (“I’m no good at maths”, “school is hard”, “I hated homework”, “I couldn’t wait to leave school”, etc).  If you have an ingrained belief that maths is “hard” then, unless you deliberately tackle that self-belief as a parent, there is a pre-disposition for maths being “hard” for your children.
• If you are a “Tiger” parent with a strong belief that it is only by working long hours and doing lots of rote learning that your children will succeed, it is likely you will drive your children incessantly to perform academically – sometimes to the detriment of other skills.
• If were teased at school, perhaps bullied, maybe even had a humiliating experience, that would affect your perceptions of education and learning. This is the same if you grew up in a tough socio-economic environment.
• If you as a teacher believe that you don’t need to adjust your teaching practice and the way you structure learning in the classroom for different students and different generations of students (“I’ve been teaching this way for 20 years and it has always worked”, “I’ve always produced good results with my students … well the good students … the rest didn’t want to work and that’s not my fault”, etc) then this will affect how you teach.

Whatever the life experiences, people form a mental model or picture of the way that education is and then hold on to that – sometimes for a lifetime. And it is quite challenging to shift that mental picture when you have a lifetime of reinforcement from looking through the lens you have looked through for years.

I still vividly remember one student from my first year of teaching Engineering at university. He approached me to give him some one-on-one tutoring for a subject he had failed twice previously and he needed to pass it that year to finish his Engineering degree. I agreed, looked up the textbook and set a problem up on my whiteboard. My intention was to get a sense of what he knew and what he didn’t know. In my mind I thought I had a chosen a reasonably simple example. As this student approached the board to have a go at answering the question I heard him mutter to himself “this is going to be hard”. I stopped him in the moment and asked him if he realised what he had just said. He said “No”. I repeated back to him what he had muttered and said “That’s what we are going to go to work upon – your belief that it is hard. I am going to make sure you start to see how to think about the subject so you can make it easy for yourself”. It was an extraordinary learning experience for me as an educator because I really had to get into his world and understand what his misconceptions and understandings were first before having him step into my thinking and methodology. It took time and persistence on both our parts. And yes he did pass with flying colours when he took the exam again.

In this discussion I am not implying or asserting that people’s opinions are invalid. They all have some validity – at least to them and their personal experiences and understanding. For that student who struggled to the point of failing that Engineering subject twice, it was reality that the subject was hard – for him. However, that is my point really. Our opinions and beliefs are mostly personal. Understanding and experience on the small scale. People’s opinions are rarely built upon exploring and coming to grips with the context and assumptions upon which those lessons and understandings were built.

This is also true about governments and the media. How many governments have implemented change programs without actually looking at what the research shows works in schools and for learning (No Child Left Behind policy in the USA, Merit Pay for teachers, and so on)? How many millions of dollars have been spent on what looks good and is politically impressive rather than what actually works? How many media organisations report on education and learning from a very narrow perspective? How many rank or discuss the quality of schools based purely on standardised testing that only measure very limited outcomes of student abilities?

It is not easy or common to look at the context or assumptions within which you learn and understand things. These contexts are like the air that we breathe. They are often so invisible to us and just part of everyday living that we don’t think about it.  Shankar Vedantam discussed a number of these “unconscious forces that influence us” is his book “The Hidden Brain: how our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars, and save our lives”. We will go into much more depth about unconscious biases and mental models at another time. Suffice to say right now that people’s opinions are quite often not based on hard facts and research but hearsay,  personal experiences, and unchallenged underlying assumptions.

If we are interested in creating and building educational systems that will allow / encourage / support ALL young people to become exceptional then we have to go beyond the normal everyday opinions about education. Notice the emphasis on ALL. We need to look at the contexts and assumptions that underlie our beliefs and actions.

What do you think?

If you are interested in our work and research see some of what we do on www.intuyuconsulting.com.au

I was at a teacher’s conference recently and I heard Helen Smith of Mater Christi College in Victoria share the following story. I thought it was quite inspiring, moving and indicative of the journey that teachers have taken and continue to take in practicing their craft.

Helen Smith – Mater Christi College

When I was a young teacher
I did as everyone else did.
I wrote worksheets by hand and
ran them off on a roneo or gestetner
or I wrote them on the blackboard
and had students copy it down.
I had an answer sheet so all was good.
I was a sage on the stage.

Behind closed doors and in nice neat rows
I gave the worksheets to my students.
They completed them.
I marked them.
We did another worksheet.
Every lesson was complete in itself.
They got an education (of sorts).

The person sitting next to me did the same.
Her worksheets were not my worksheets
But she had an answer sheet so all was good.
Her students completed them
She marked them
They did another worksheet
Every lesson was complete in itself.
They got a different education.

They were all considered equal
And we thought that they were good.

In the next year the teacher did some revision
and some students were deemed clever
and some were deemed not.
The students had learned different things.
They did not have the same words
with which to learn
And they felt let down.

When I was a little older
we developed a scope and sequence.
God bless the Scope and Sequence.
We could now ensure that
everyone covered the same material.
We saw that it was different
and we saw that it was good.

I wrote worksheets
and I ran them off on the photocopier or
I wrote them on the whiteboard
and had students copy it down.
I had the answer sheet so all was good.
I was the guide on the side.

Behind closed doors and sitting in a U shape
I gave the worksheets to my students
They completed them
I marked them
We did another worksheet
Every lesson was complete in itself.
They got an education (of sorts)

The person sitting next to me did the same.
His worksheets were not my worksheets
He had an answer sheet so all was good.
His students completed them
He marked them
They did another worksheet
Every lesson was complete in itself.
They got a different education.

They were all considered equal
And we thought that they were good.

We had fixed the problem
and we were happy.

In the next year the teacher did some revision
and some students were deemed clever
and some were deemed not.
We had covered the same material
But at different times,
at different strengths
and at different expectations of quality.

The person sitting next to me
set standards very high
and I did not.
The students still did not have
the same words with which to learn
And they felt let down.

Here I am, an old teacher.
I am trying something new.
I am no longer writing worksheets
where I already know the answer.
The students always knew
that all they had to do
was read the teacher’s mind.

Now I ask the question
to which I do not know the answer.
Together we search for meaning.
I have become a meddler in the middle.

I no longer run things off.
I put them on a wiki, a flipchart, a website or email
I write them on the Interactive whiteboard
but they never copy it down.
They access it later as they need it

The doors may be closed
but the classroom is not.
We are in touch with the world
and doors don’t mean a thing,
(except they keep out the cold).

I pose the question.
Together we
analyze, synthesize, summarize
evaluate, formulate, annotate
predict, reflect, suggest
exemplify, apply and classify.

The learning is not over when the bell goes.
Now, every lesson is another phase
of the continuum.
Because every subject uses the same words
And because we all speak the same language
The students are able to discover
the skills for lifelong learning
Across all disciplines
Over all years.

The person sitting next to me does the same.
We know this because we do it together.
We agree on the skills, the task and deadlines
We create a range of activities
that broaden the learning experience.
She learns from me and
I learn from her.
Together we are “better” than
“good” by ourselves.

Every lesson is different
because every child is different
and everyone’s approach is different,
but because we use the same words
our students will all know how to
analyze,  synthesize, summarize
evaluate, formulate, annotate
predict, reflect, suggest
exemplify, apply and classify.

And when the work is done
we teachers meet.
We share the work of the students
and agree
On what is good and what is not.
The students know it doesn’t matter if
he is tough
and she is soft,
The grade is the same
and the comments are just.

In the next year the teacher will do some revision.
As always, there will be students
who are deemed clever
and some are deemed not
That has been the way
and is the way of all human life,
but they now will all know what it means to
analyze, synthesize, summarize
evaluate, formulate, annotate
predict, reflect, suggest
exemplify, apply and classify.

In that year the teacher will build on these skills.
She will focus on
Comment, compare, contrast
Derive, describe, design
Identify, infer, investigate,
Show, state and solve.
Together we can see that this is good.

We take turns creating the unit,
building on pooled ideas.
Strengths are shared
Strategies are broadened.
Weaknesses are weeded out.

My work
And the work of the person beside me
Has moved from writing another worksheet
to building a program of learning,

I write a unit
once in a while
because we all take turns to lead.

And we found an Atlas that helps us describe and manage that world
And the students will be able to see
that they have skills
to face the world in that Atlas.

And so will the teachers.
Maybe one day, before I retire
I might be able to claim I am but
A shepherd in their shadow.

In conclusion then,
You may heed what I say, or not.
If you do, then welcome aboard an exciting ride
If not, then only consider
working with us for a while,
because
“Together” enables “better”
than “good” by yourself.