Keynote – Pam Hook

The second keynote for Learning at School was delivered by Pam Hook entitled “teaching & learning: What is happening in the ampersand”.

Pam challenged our thinking with the statement, “How can we have so much compulsory teaching going on, but kids are leaving with so little learning?” We need to be thoughtful about the way we teach the status quo is not good enough. “Thoughtful rather than panic mode” tweets Jo Fothergill

Pam put up a slide comparing the concept of ‘Teacher as facilitator’ versus ‘Teacher as activator’. These two ideas fascinate me, what is the distinction between being a facilitator of learning and an activator of learning? One sounds passive the other active, one sounds very exciting. I have never heard this before. I want to be an activator of learning. What does this actually mean? How are they different? What do they mean to you?

The New Zealand Curriculum is the way of looking carefully at our practice and bringing clarity. The principles are non negotiable. All curriculum should be consistent with the principles. You can explore more of Pam’s thinking on the curriculum at her wiki. This wiki is set up for people to join in and collaborate around thinking on the principles.

An interesting exercise would be to ask teachers in your school, “What do you thinking learning is?”

When asked this question, one teacher remarked, “my students will know that they’re learning when I smile at them”. Pam asks, how helpful is this to students if they want to know where to go next?

Ask your students what learning is? Sometimes they are better at answering this question than we are. We need to help our students look at their strengths and weaknesses whilst learning. Effective learning occurs when both the students and teachers can explain, what they are doing and how well it is going.

Tinado on Twitter asks, “I’m trying to work out the meaning of the title of this keynote, especially the word ampersand – the & symbol? Any thoughts?” We would love to hear from you in the comments.