Interesting read this morning to follow my last post – an article from Newsweek titled “the Creativity Crisis“. It begins with the assertion that for the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. This conclusion has been drawn after analysing the lifetime achievements of a group of 400 children who were a part of a study involving a series of creativity tasks designed by E. Paul Torrance back in the 1950s. The research found that those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tests of creative thinking grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers.

The Newsweek article cites a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. And yet it is declining (apparently), both in society as a whole, and in our schools in particular. The authors identify two of the possible reasons for the decline…

1. the impact of television and the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities
2. the lack of creativity development in our schools, there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.

While it’s easy to blame the school system for all manner of social failings, this is one that I feel we do need to consider more seriously. In her writing about The Neuroscience of Joyful Education, Judy Willis highlights the importance of novelty in our teaching, stress-free classrooms, and pleasurable associations linked with learning as essential pre-cursors to joyful learning and the development of creativity. She goes on to suggest that when planning for the ideal emotional atmosphere we should be mindful of the following;

• Make it relevant – when stress in the classroom is getting high, it is often because a lesson is overly abstract or seems irrelevant to students.
• Give them a break – students can reduce stress by enjoying hobbies, time with friends, exercise, or music.
• Create positive associations – by avoiding stressful practices like calling on students who have not raised their hands, teachers can dampen the stress association.
• Prioritize information – helping students learn how to prioritize and therefore reduce the amount of information they need to deal with is a valuable stress-buster.
• Allow independent discovery learning – students are more likely to remember and understand what they learn if they find it compelling or have a part in figuring it out for themselves.

Others, including Richard Millwood who has written about ‘delight’ in learning, emphasise similar conditions for learning – minimising stress and allowing for more risk-taking, learning from mistakes, discovery and so forth.

This is unlikely to be the case in classrooms (or our school system as whole) where the  emphasis is on high stakes assessment, fear of failure, and “getting it right”. I’m not saying that we oughtn’t be concerned with measuring achievement – but when that becomes the driver of what we are doing the likely result is that the conditions identified for the development of creativity will be less likely to occur.

Here’s my list of current practices in classrooms that need our urgent attention if we are to see the level of creativity increase again…

• a narrowing emphasis on certain sorts of academic work – literacy, numeracy, sciences etc., at the expense of the arts,
• curriculum design that is linear, mechanistic and focused on conformity and standardization
• the classification of human knowledge into things called ’subjects’ which are then taught in isolation
• the breaking up of the learning day into homogenous chunks of time that are then organised into a timetable to determine when certain subjects are learned
• the existence of ‘homework’ as a concept where separate tasks are assigned to be done ‘at home’ – as distinct from considering the flow of learning that can take place at school and continued at home and vice-versa

I’ve just read a fascinating publication from Microsoft titled “Interoperability: Improving Education” which came about as a result of 10 or so educators and ICT practitioners who were brought together by Microsoft for a meeting running alongside the annual NAACE conference held in Blackpool, England, earlier this year. The brief was to talk about the way that schools use pupil data. And the wisdoms that ensued are contained in an new Microsoft discussion document for school leaders and local authorities, “Interoperability: Improving schools” (download the PDF here).

The contents of this paper provide timely insights for NZ educators because it nicely ties together two pieces of work that are currently the focus of the Ministry of Education. First are the discussions about standardised testing, and the measurement of student progress and achievement, and second are the issues of interoperability as they relate to work being done around data interoperbility between LMSs and SMSs in schools, and the whole area of e-portfolios.

From its title, and the fact that it’s published by a technology company, you could be forgiven for thinking that the document is about a technology solution that will end all our woes. This is not the case. Instead, the document contains a summary of thoughts in response to questions such as:

• are we collecting the right data?
• what data should we be collecting?
• who needs, or wishes to see the data?
• can we easily move data to where it’s wanted or needed?

The context for the discussion is identified in this excerpt from the introduction:

The last five years has been dominated by discussions about common file formats, and competing systems which support data interchange standards. The International Standards community, through its work on file standards, has helped us reach a situation where students and teachers can easily share assignments, examination submissions and documents.

The same cannot be said for simple data interchange – for example, the simple requirement to automate the process of keeping a list of users up to date within a learning platform without a manual intervention. And those solutions which do exist for this appear to need customisation for each data relationship – between different learning platforms for example.

I believe that we are collecting the data within our educational systems that we need to deliver
improvement, but only those data items that are being seen as “part of the system”. We collect a core of formal learning data in our schools Management Information Systems, and through other systems we collect further datapoints – often disconnected from the core learning data – on health, achievement and engagement.

In the 21st Century, we are seeing a huge growth in learning and engagement outside of the formal education system. As we continue to build extensive connected learning communities, we need to find ways to see the holistic story of a truly connected learner, including their learning in school, in the community and individually. We need to move from a top-down data culture (ie we measure what the managers above us want measured) to an individually driven data culture, where the individual has more input to the data that tells their individual story, and where their past learning journey is used to support their future learning journey.

To achieve this we need to think outside of the strict confines of top-down, organisational data collection. We need to ask questions from a different perspective “How can students self-asses their skills and use that to improve their learning?” and “If we asked a student to tell us how they are doing at school, what data would they share with us?”

I am currently enjoying being a part of separate discussions (online and offline) around each of the issues identified above – but perhaps there’s good cause to reflect here and think about how timely it might be to work like this think tank, and engage in some robust discussions that actually  link both parts of the equation?

Perhaps it would allow us to reach similar conclusions as the English did as a basis for moving forward:

The answer, as it emerged in discussion, is that there‟s arguably too much emphasis on one kind of data. The current pattern of top-down accountability, it‟s suggested creates an emphasis on classroom attainment at the expense of skills and competencies. Or, as Sir Mark Grundy puts it,  “We’re measuring the wrong things.”

I’ve been in the UK for three weeks now, and am about to board a plane home – wonderful trip, great people, lots of good contacts etc. but feel I’m ready for home now

I’ve blogged previously about the conversations I’ve had here about standardised testing and league tables as they’ve been used here in England – but it’s taken me until now to fully understand exactly what the purpose of league tables is. All was revealed just a couple of nights ago as I was relaxing after a series of meetings in London, watching episode 4 of the latest series of Torchwood on TV – the spin-off of the popular Dr. Who series.

I won’t spoil the programme for you, but just to share the excerpt from which I gained this profound understanding.

The context: An alien force is threatening to destroy the entire human species unless earth surrenders 10% of all the children on the planet to them.

The dilemma: How to select the 10%

The scene: members of the English cabinet are meeting to discuss the options to resolve this seemingly impossible situation, when one of them comes up with a solution that meets with general approval.

The script (abridged):

MP1 – we need to resolve the following questions, “how will be select the 10%, how will we transport them, and how will we sell it to the voters?”… We just need to decide what criteria we’ll use for selection.

MP2 – it could be random… if the criteria we use is demonstrably fair then we could defend ourselves…

MP3 – so you’re willing to risk your kids to make it look fair?

MP2 – so how else do we choose?

MP4 – we could do it alphabetically

MP3 – oh yes, thanks Mr Yates!

MP5 – could we limit it to just one loss per family? Every second born child…?

MP6 – that would take more time than we have.

MP5 – so, it would have to be one school at a time.

MP2 – (after several seconds of tense music) Look, I’m going to say what everyone else is thinking. If this lottery takes place, my kids aren’t in it.

[much debate and argument ensues, then the final piece from one of the MPs:]

MP2 -… the first responsibility of government is to protect the best interests if this country, right? Then let’s say it. In a national emergency a country must plan for the future, and discriminate between those who are vital to future stability and those who are not. Now that we’ve established that our kids are exempt, the whole principle of random selection is dead in the water. Now look – on the one hand you’ve got the good schools, and I don’t just mean those who are producing graduates. I mean the pupils who will go on to staff our hospitals, our offices, our factories -  our workforce of the future! We need them. Set against that you have the failing schools, full of the less able, the less socially useful – those destined spent a lifetime on benefits, occupying places on the dole queue- and in the prisons. Should we treat them equally? God knows we’ve tired and we’ve failed, and now the time has come to choose, And if we can’t identify the bottom 10% of this country’s children then what on earth are the league tables for?

Footnote: Sadly, the episode is only available for viewing on the BBC website if you’re resident in the UK, so I’ll have to wait for this series to reach NZ. It’s a pretty ‘black’ series, with an ending that’ll leave you aghast, but the plot with it’s interesting treatment of the perennial ‘world at war with aliens’ theme introduces some interesting new twists.

Whatever your position on national standards it is difficult to disagree with the tenor of the quote at the top of this post – it’s the implementation of processes to meet this aspiration that will cause debate.

I unfortunately missed being able to attend the meeting in CHCH earlier this week when the MoE consultation roadshow came to town to inform local teachers and principals about their plans for introduction national standards. From what I’ve heard in conversations, through the Twitter community and in phone calls and skype sessions I rather wish I’d been able to attend.

Consult: to deliberate together, to ask the advice or opinion of
(source: Merriam-Webster dictionary)

interesting when I Googled the word Consult, and when I went to the dictionary definition, advertised links appeared on both pages for the TeamUp page inviting parents to have their say on national standards. Kudos to whoever it is in the MoE that has strategically positioned these ads in these places – I hope they’re successful in drawing out helpful responses.

Consultation is an oft-used idea whose meaning has unfortunately shifted in many circles to become synonymous with “tell”, “brief”, “explain”. So it was of little surprise I read tonight in the Education Week an article titled Subject-Matter Groups Want Voice in Standards that draws attention to the response of various teacher representative groups from across the US to the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

I see many similarities to what we’re currently going through here in NZ – I’m arguing here not for or against national standards, but for a more determined and inclusive approach to the process of consultation to ensure that what we end up doing is informed by the wisdom, experience and thinking of as many people as possible. You can see some of that debate emerging already in the Education Leaders forum.

A comment in the report by Kent Williamson, the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English, stood out to me. Williamson states his general support for the introduction of national standards, but is emphatic about the need for consultation with the profession. He says;

“… one lesson from that era was that “top-down reform doesn’t work” in drafting standards. Without the involvement of professional organizations, he said, teachers might come to regard the Common Core process with the same level of mistrust with which many view the federal No Child Left Behind Act.”

I agree.