Derek’s Blog

I spent the day today with teachers from seven Nelson schools that are in their second year now of an ICT PD cluster programme, and then this evening, participated in the executive meeting of a professional organisation I belong to  (the Distance Educational Association of NZ – DEANZ).

The cluster meeting affirmed my confidence in the professional integrity and ability of those teaching in our schools, and also affirmed my beliefs about the effectiveness of well designed professional development that is based on addressing both individual and collective goals.

The DEANZ exec meeting caused me to reflect on one of the key parts of my address to the Nelson teachers – what it means to be an education professional. I was inspired to include reference to an article in this morning’s Christchurch Press by John Fletcher (an old colleague of mine from the College of Education days when he was the head of the secondary division). In his usual eloquent and well informed way, John  expresses his concerns about the government’s national standards for schools, focusing his attention on the role of teachers, as professionals, in taking responsibility for establishing and maintaining high standards in the work they do. Fletcher quotes a section from the Marshall Report, (Department of Education,1978) that lists three key characteristics of a profession:

1. The acquiring of specialised knowledge by study, training and practice, and the recognition if this qualification by a degree, diploma or membership of a professional body,
2. Maintaining high standards of achievement and conduct in the practising of the profession, enforced by disciplinary provisions,
3. Accepting that, while a person practices a profession in order to earn a living, this consideration should take second place to serving the interests of the client.

If ever there was a time for those of us working in the education space to stand up and be counted as professionals, this is it. But that means more than simply saying so or making lots of signs and banners. It means being deeply and completely committed to fulfilling the three basic tenets of being a professional as outlined above. Sadly, there are a few within our ranks who fail to do so – as there are in all professions. But that is one of the responsibilities of the profession, first to support those people to ’step up’, or, if such efforts fail, to put in place procedures that remove them from the profession.

Failure to do so means that we might as well forget about being considered a profession and professionals, and accept a role merely as ‘public servants’, government employees who do the bidding of our employers, in much the same way as factory workers do for theirs.

Came across this interesting slideshow today titled 21 things that became obsolete this decade. Makes for an interesting browse – several of the things mentioned I’m sure will provoke responses like “but I still use that regularly!’, while others are things that I think there’d be common agreement are definitely a thing of the past.

The thinking point here is not so much what the technologies are per se, but the behaviours associated with their use, and the direction things are heading – for instance, replacing maps and phone directories with up to date online versions that can also link you to other sources of information or create pathways for you to follow.

Got me to thinking about change in education, and why it is that our industry, at times, seems so slow/resistant to change. It’s not so much a case of adopting the innovation, as it is letting go of what we currently have – the following quote I read this week makes the point:

The problem is not how to get new innovative things into your mind, but how to get the old ones out. (Anon)

To put this in perspective, read the teach paperless blog’s response with 21 things that will become obsolete in education by 2010 – a challenge to conceive of some of these things disappearing in just ten years, but more important to consider why these things have been identified – I’m sure we could all write our own lists like this

Sitting here at he beginning of yet another school year (in NZ), the thought I’m pondering is, “what are the things I’m hanging on to that may actually inhibit or negate my ability to embrace or adopt an innovation in education?” It’s easy to look at the things that are bombarding us from the outside (eg standards, bullying, workload etc.), but we need to consider also the very things that make us ‘comfortable’ in our jobs, the things we’ve come to take for granted and rely on. So ask yourself, ‘what is behind the responses I have to the suggestions made about things that will become obsolete by 2010??

I’m always interested in what others have to say about the future of education, and enjoy pondering the future predictions made by various commentators. So it was with interest that I browsed the Education Futures Timeline today. According to the blurb, this timeline… “provides not only a glimpse into the past and present, but plots out a plausible future history for human capital development. The future history presented is intended to be edgy, but also as a conversation starter on futures for education and future thinking in human capital development.”

Although it is very US-centric in its approach, (for instance, the NCLB legislation comes under heavy fire early in the timeline), the predictions that appear on the timeline certainly fulfill the intention of being ‘edgy’ and would most certainly provoke debate and discussion. There’s lots here that I’d love to see contested and expanded to understand how these predictions are arrived at – as it stands it’s simply a list of predictions set out on some sort of time-scale, but lacks

As far as a timeline goes I am also disappointed in how the historical development of education is treated – leaping from Comenius in 1657, to Dewey in 1900 and on to the early reform agendas of the 1980s in three huge leaps. To effectively understand what might lie ahead in the future it is important to have a good understanding of both the historical developments that have got us to where we are, and also the range of forces and influences that have come to bear on getting us there.

This is where I am a fan of the work of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education that they have published and updated over recent years. Using the Future Forces map as background, discussions about the predictions made in the Education Timeline above would be so much more meaningful and informed.

I had the privilege of speaking to the staff at Lindisfarne College at their teacher only day yesterday as they were working to prepare for the return of their students next week. While I was there they were also hosting the NZ Secondary School’s Choir, who provided some entertainment for us over lunch outdoors (see photo) – what an inspiring and talented group of young people!

Really enjoyed my day with this group of staff. The school has based a lot of its pedagogical approach on the work of Art Costa and his Habits of Mind, which provided the perfect context for a couple of workshops I took during the day on the use of ICT tools that support the development of thinking skills. Great to see a secondary school that has such a strong pedagogical focus, and staff within it enthusiastically embracing the intent of the NZ Curriculum and the key competencies.

I spent last week on the West Coast with my two youngest children, introducing them to the joys of the outdoors and a bit of tramping in a part of the world that I once lived and taught. On the way in to Karamea we stopped off at the last school at which I was principal – Granity School, located right on the beach front about 30km north of Westport.

When I took on the principal role at this school it was in serious need of attention. Due to a combination of unfortunate circumstances that included a significant change in the social infrastructure of the district and having had four principals in the year before I took over, the school was in poor shape. In addition to the evidence of student under-achievement, the buildings were also in a grave state of disrepair. It was quite a challenge, but together with the staff I had in the school and the support of the community, we did manage to make a significant difference for the youngsters attending that school. We did this through a range of strategies, including raising the level of community participation, strengthening channels of communication with parents, investing in property development to create a more inspiring learning environment, and by committing to a school-wide process of professional development to address specific areas of need.

My reason for reflecting on this is that I read this morning about new book based on 15 years of data on public elementary schools in Chicago. While many of the current approaches to school improvement focus on things like ‘quality outcomes’, ’standards’ and ‘effectiveness’, the researchers in this report identify five tried-and-true ingredients that work, in combination with one another, to spur success in urban schools. Based on a series of studies drawn from the database that the consortium has built up over the years, the five ingredients they identified are:

• Strong leadership, in the sense that principals are “strategic, focused on instruction, and inclusive of others in their work”;
• A welcoming attitude toward parents, and formation of connections with the community;
• Development of professional capacity, which refers to the quality of the teaching staff, teachers’ belief that schools can change, and participation in good professional development and collaborative work;
• A learning climate that is safe, welcoming, stimulating, and nurturing to all students; and
• Strong instructional guidance and materials.

It’s worth reading the review of the book, as it identifies the context within which these schools were studied as having similarities with what we’ve experienced in NZ over the past 20 years where move decision-making power was moved to schools. The key point the authors appear to be making is that success comes through attending to the combination of factors listed above – and that the inter-connectedness of these things at a system level means that improvement cannot be achieved through a single issue focus.

For me it’s a very useful list, and one that we’d do well to read and reflect on, and seek to incorporate its messages into policy development for the next 20 years of schooling in NZ! Perhaps in that way we can take a more holistic look at what our schools are about, working from the bottom up where appropriate, intervening with some ‘top-down’ support where required, and promoting greater, purposeful and strategically organised, collaboration among and between schools.

Now, back to my week on the Coast – here’s a snap of me with my two children enjoying the scenery at the Heaphy Hut before we ventured off on another day of walking.

Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the World Wide Web, made the first proposal for it in March 1989, and on 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet.

That’s 20 years ago! So to commemorate, ON magazine has published a special edition that looks at the Web at 20 (PDF download). It contains a range of interviews with key people involved in the development of the WWW, exploring both the historical development and future directions of this phenomenon.

Contents include:

The mag is a a great read – providing all sorts of valuable insights for those who have lived through this development, and something of an historical record for those who have been born since and grown up used to it. In particular, check out what many of the people interviewed say when they share their thoughts about what things might be like 20 years from now.

I got to thinking, as I read, that this would be a great resource for use in secondary classrooms. What appeals is the emphasis on exploring the motivations and original intentions of those who first conceived of the idea of a WWW, and how those original ideas have been fulfilled (or, in some cases, superceded). The following extract from the introduction provides a taste of what I mean:

Future Focused - Equally important, they [Berners-Lee and Metcalf] both remain deeply involved in exploring how the web can be harnessed to address some of the greatest challenges we face as a society. Metcalfe’s vision for increasing the efficiency of energy distribution by emulating certain core characteristics of the Internet is compelling. Berners-Lee discusses how we can accelerate discovery and collaboration on a large scale by freeing data from today’s information “silos” and allowing it to be linked together via the Semantic web.

I’d be interested to hear of examples of this edition being used with students in this way – I’m sure there’s inspiration here for the next generation of thinkers and innovators.

The 2010 Horizon Report (International Version) has just been released and having been a part of the advisory group for the Australasian version, I’m fascinated not so much what the actual predictions are, but, knowing what the process is for coming up with these lists, understanding the nature of the discourse that will have gone into finding agreement on what is included. I am in full agreement with George Siemen’s comment, that the report’s authors have put together an effective process for brainstorming, discussion, and final selection – and that it would be great if this process could be developed to involve a far wider group of people.

Having said that, I am still interested to note what the similarities and differences are between the two editions.

Mobile computing has topped the list in both editions, while open content, which appeared in the Australasian edition in the 2-3 years to adoption category, is elevated to the 1-year category in the international edition. Apart from those two, the rest of the predictions are quite different:

There’ll always be lots of debate around what should be included and what shouldn’t – that’s really the value of such an exercise, along with the fact that the exercise itself acts as an educative experience for all those involved (which is why I agree with George Siemens that it would be great to find a way of involved heaps more people in this process.)

At CORE we’ve published our own “Ten Trends” now since 2007, drawing upon the experience of CORE’s staff to provide a glimpse of the ‘big picture’ within which we operate in the education system. Our aim is to provoke further research, investigation and discussion, in order to determine how they may affect the strategic planning within individual educational institutions and at a system level. This year we’ve tried an online process, modelled on the Horizon one, enabling us to tap into the expertise of our whole team spread throughout New Zealand. The results will be published at the end of this month – but as with the Horizon Report, I expect the significant value will have been to those who participated in their development more than to those who read them.

Speaking of predictions and speculation, Charles Arthur in the Guardian has published his list of Technology Predictions for 2010. many of the predictions would support the things identified in the Horizon Reports – particularly with regards to mobile computing (not surprising) – but I was interested to read his thoughts about e-books. Seems to me that everyone is pursuing e-books at the moment, with the Kindle reader pushing the pace among other things. I for one an being inundated with links to e-books that people are encouraging me to read, and several of my professional colleagues are looking to publish their materials in this format. Arthur isn’t so certain – he predicts:

Despite all the excitement at CES about ebooks and ereaders, and the subsequent excitement about Apple’s iTablet, they won’t show much growth in revenues compared to 2009. Free ebooks are fine, but they’re just a sop to people who have ereaders and consequently no cash left.

Copyright, and particularly file compatibility arguments, will continue to dog ereaders and ebooks, while the popularity of physical books will grow: more physical books will be sold in the UK in 2010 than 2009.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see on this one.

Finally, I was interested to read Jeff Houck’s summary of 50 Things we know now that we didn’t know this time last year which is full of interesting tid-bits he’s gleaned from various new sources from 2009. Reading a list like this makes one realise just how quickly our knowledge is expanding and changing!

More than 20 years ago I taught on the West Coast were I was told a yarn about a tree-feller who had an inenviable record for the number of trees he could fell in a day with his axe. A salesman came to town selling chainsaws, and was able to persuade the tree-feller that he could increase the number of trees he cut down by using a chainsaw. The a tree-feller duly bought a chainsaw and headed off into the bush. At the end of the first day he returned to town where the salesman inquired how things had gone. The tree-feller reported that he’d managed to cut down about the same number of trees as he had with an axe, but that he expected to do better the next day.

The following day he returned with reports that he’d only managed to cut down half the number of trees he normally would have, and on the third day this had fallen to around a quarter. The salesman, keen to ensure his reputation wasn’t tarnished, offered to help the tree-feller perfect his technique with the chainsaw. Taking the chainsaw in both hands he dragged on the starter rope and pulled, and BBRRRRRrrrr – the chainsaw roared into life. At which point the tree-feller leapt back in amazement – “what’s that noise?” he gasped.

An oldie, but a goodie The point of this parable – nothing changes by simply inserting a new piece of technology!

I thought of this story when I read a news item this morning from the UK, where Government Minister Vernon Coaker, on opening the BETT education show, used his speech to trumpet the Government’s plans to provide 270,000 free laptops to low-income families, which were announced earlier this week. In his speech he claims that having access to a laptop in the home can boost children’s GCSE scores by two grades.

Now if this is the case I’d certainly be interested in seeing the evidence. Don’t get me wrong, I am a BIG supporter of students having access to a personal digital device that can enable them to connect to the internet and express themselves digitally – it’s just that I’ve been around long enough to see the claims and counter claims that are made for (or against) the introduction of new technologies in education.

I can recall my first job as a lecturer was to get my students to survey the number of OHPs in the schools they were about to begin a practicum. The responses were the same – every school had been provided with OHPs by the (the) Department of Education, but these students found the majority unused in back rooms, or covered in books and papers in the front (or back) of classrooms. Similar reports exist where there has been a roll-out of interactive whiteboards and computer labs.

My (recurring) theme here is the need to consider professional development in all of this. And I’m not talking about short sessions to teach people where the buttons are and how to save and edit etc. I’m talking about professional development that is connected to practice; focuses on the teaching and learning of specific academic content; and helps locate the technology use within the teacher’s context, and is connected to other school initiatives.

The problem is, PD is expensive, and you can’t measure it in terms of the number of “widgets” that are purchased – which is why, it appears, in governments all over the world, we see investment in things, not people. We need to see a change in priorities.

Mr Coaker may well have evidence to support his claim – if so, we need to see it, and when we do I’ll wager that the actual laptops were only a (albeit important) part of the picture that led to the rise in achievement.

I’ve  been reviewing some of the material I’ve gathered over recent years as I prepare for some of the staff development days I’ve been invited to contribute to at the end of the month when schools are about to begin, and came across this report that was released about this time last year. Titled professional learning in the learning profession, it examines what research has revealed about professional learning that improves teachers’ practice and student learning.

The problem of how to maintain a highly skilled and effective workforce in our schools is a complex issue, and there no easy answers. this report provides some useful insights, however, of the key principles that should underpin any approches to professional development in our schools or at a regional or national level.

I was intrigued by the the opening paragraph in the introduction that sets the scene for much of what is reported (emphasis mine):

“Decades of standards-based school reform have helped identify what students need to know and be able to do… But educators and policymakers are recognizing that it is time for Standards-Based Reform 2.0. We need to place a greater priority on strengthening the capacity of educators and building learning communities to deliver higher standards for every child. Enabling educational systems to achieve on a wide scale the kind of teaching that has a substantial impact on student learning requires much more intensive and effective professional learning than has traditionally been available. If we want all young people to possess the higher-order thinking skills they need to succeed in the 21st century, we need educators who possess higher-order teaching skills and deep content knowledge.”

So here are a couple of important messages for everyone from leaders in schools through to our national policy makers :

1. we can’t skimp on professional development in our budgets
2. what we do must be strategic, future focused and measurable in terms of impact on student achievement

Key findings from the research include:

• Sustained and intensive professional development for teachers is related to student achievement gains.
• Collaborative approaches to professional learning can promote school change that extends beyond individual classrooms.
• Effective professional development is intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice; focuses on the teaching and learning of specific academic content; is connected to other school initiatives; and builds strong working relationships among teachers.

The report also notes that over 90% of U.S. teachers have participated in professional learning consisting primarily of short-term conferences or workshops. While teachers typically need substantial professional development in a given area (close to 50 hours) to improve their skills and their students’ learning, most professional development opportunities in the U.S. are much shorter. It also states that U.S. teachers report little professional collaboration in designing curriculum and sharing practices, and the collaboration that occurs tends to be weak and not focused on strengthening teaching and learning.

Similar concerns are expressed in other international studies, including New Zealand’s own INSTEP research and programmes. As educational leaders we must take note of what the research is telling us. Cutting back on investment in PD simply because it is an easy target, and not “mission critical” is a very unwise move. Similarly, PD that is ‘hit and miss’, and not strategically linked to the goals of the organisation is also a waste of investment.

The organisation I work for is committing significant resource this year to designing and providing the sorts of programmes that will effectively support schools in their strategic approach to PD. In doing so we’ve had to include some short-term workshops and seminars to meet the immediate needs as expressed by teachers and principals, but the real value lies in the longer term engagements. It will be interesting to see how widely these are adopted.

following on from my post of a couple of days ago abut the impact of digital technologies on learning, this e-book from project RED provides some useful insights into what is working in schools that are using technology effectively. A piece in the introduction puts this in context:

There is a tremendous gulf between schools that are committed to preparing students for success in the 21st century with help from digital technology and those who are still taking a “wait and see” attitude about the role of technology in the classroom. In response, project RED has conducted a survey of technology transformed schools across the country to find out what’s working for them and to show how technology can save money when properly implemented.

What will it take for technology to transform learning and schools, just as it has transformed homes and offices in almost every other segment of our society? In this eBook, Project RED — a national research and advocacy effort — shares preliminary results from a survey of technology-rich schools and takes a look at what past research and current observation tells us about the keys to successful technology implementation.

I found the section on Dynamic Leadership of particular interest, especially this quote on pages 11-121:

“In summarizing several years of research on the impact of Maine’s Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), Dr David Silvernail, director of research for the Maine International Centre for Digital Learning at the University of Southern Maine shares findings about effective leadership:

1. There must be a clear strategic vision and plan
2. Teachers must receive strong, meaningful and sustained professional development and support
3. Technology must be appropriate to the task and focused
4. The technology must be used as a learning tool
5. Assessments must match learning with technology
6. There needs to be clear evaluation and research plans developed early in the initiative.
7. It is important to articulate and manage expectations

Nothing particularly new in this list – pretty much mirrors the findings of the research that has been carried out in the NZ context – but these are lessons we should review and be reminded of regularly, in order that we don’t simply revert to taking the “wait and see” attitude referred to in the introduction.

In particular, I would STRONGLY endorse the second bullet point above – the need for strong, meaningful and sustained professional development and support for teachers. At a time when we face financial constraints and cuts are being made, it is easy to “pick off” PD activity as an easily identifiable area to save money – but the impact of this can be devastating, not simply in terms of the effect on individual teachers and their professional growth, but also on our schools as environments within which we nuture young minds and talent.