150 years on and still Darwin’s theories cause debate!

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“Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.”

It’s hard to believe that it’s 150 years since Charles Darwin published “The Origin of Species” – almost older than public schooling is in Australia – and yet the debate still rages in some religious schools [Age Newspaper Article titled “At the Crossroads” 25/2/08].  

Victoria is, I’m informed, the only state in Australia where it’s not compulsory to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution – believe it or not!

The Guardian Newspaper has a site well worth visiting: Darwin Bicentenary.

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Teen Writing – some positive research

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I was reading a recent research report titled: “Teens, Writing and the Internet”. The summary which I have linked makes for easy reading and quotes in my view some positive information:

  1. 85% of teens engage in social forms of writing [i.e. text message or email] whilst 60% of them do not consider this writing.
  2. 8 out of 10 parents believe that”good” wriritng is more important now than 20 years ago.

Perhaps the question the research raises is how can we connect the enthusiasm of our youth for informal technology based writing with classroom experiences that illumates the power of well organised, well reasoned writing?

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Composite Classes – a pressure point- at least in East Lothian, Scotland.

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I have just read a post and added a comment on Don’s log which I thought was worth a mention. Don is the Acting Director of Education and Children’s Services in East Lothian, Scotland.

School organisation it seems is an issue or a pressure point, as Don puts it, around the world. Can I make a plea – lets see the big picture of what our children need in the 21st century, please.

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Why use protocols when looking at student work?

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We posed this question at a team leadership meeting last year when we discussed the quest to personalise learning more for our students?

Perhaps one answer came after we introduced the idea to staff last week – it’s a bit like moderating student work except I might get more of a say.  Using a protocol certainly provides a process for everyone to provide feedback in a more structured way. But I think it does more.

To quote a group of educators from Los Angeles: its a safe way to deprivatize their practice and take the loneliness out of teaching.  When educators learn protocols (i.e., diplomatic processes that make communication safe and productive for looking at student work and discussing professional challenges), they feel empowered to solve their own problems and less “alone” in meeting the diverse needs of their students.

In week 1 we set the context for introducing this initiative. Our team leaders led groups of teachers in a shared reading , viewing of a video and a discussion about using protcols.

After some teacher feedback we have planned to model the strategy in session 2 and then provide an opportunity for teachers to try it using a shared piece of student work.

A great site for articles and resources is: Looking at Student Work

We would be interested in some advice from teachers who have used protocols to deprivatise their practice and get feedback on how to personalise teaching for their students.

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“iNet” online conferences

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I recently posted a comment on an iNet online conference.

iNet is an international network of schools committed to innovative change that supports improved student learning.  

The online conference had a focus on “curriculum redesign” and posed a question on school organisation matching the needs of learners in the 21st century.

My comment reminded me of a phrase I recently heard which describes schooling that continues to be designed along the 19th century process line systems – smoke stack schooling. I think the image is powerful for it evokes in our environmentally conscious 21st century age the need to change or perish.

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Parent Information Evening

Last week at our parent information evening I spoke for a few minutes on our school’s vision and why we might do things that are different from their personal images of primary school. I used this video to demonstrate how the world was changing and what the implications might be for their children as they competed for jobs in an international market. The video, which was developed by a team of American high school teachers to stimulate discussions on the future, is an updated version of what I showed the staff some 8 months ago. I have embedded the video in my blog as a resource for parents.

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Government’s Blueprint Summit

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Last week I was invited to participate in the Government’s 2 day summit on the new Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Development.

The move to construct a seamless framework for early childhood education and care so that children can transition into schooling is long overdue and applauded. Some of this hit the news recently with headlines reading preschool children receiving reports.

Perhaps the more controversial parts of the Blueprint relate to schooling and three main thrusts:

  • tackling underperformance at a school and teacher level
  • attracting better teachers and incentives for schools do achieve better results
  • providing more information about school performance to parents.

The last point is tied up with Federal Government policies again recently reported in the newspapers. My take on this is that both levels of government are committed to providing some data that will enable parents to gauge school performance and perhaps compare schools without league tables.

The issue of school underperformance is one that deserves attention. Recent international testing results [PISA – which I have posted a previous comment on] clearly indicate we have some work to do in this area. Not all underperformance occurs in lower socio – economic communities but there is a strong tie and solutions need to be found in greater levels of equity funding as well as providing greater incentives for high performing teachers and principals to work in these schools. This is problem around the world and here in Victoria as well.

When I define high performance for teachers I look at higher levels of instructional skills and strategies that improve student skills and more importantly transferable understandings, a demonstrated capacity to seek feedback and learn, a willingess to try new initiatives and research their effectiveness, a committment to differentiate instruction for the individuals in our classrooms, effective caring relationships with students and an ability to engage our youth in their own learning. High performance attracts different definitions and I wonder what final definition is adopted here.

Both Ministers, the senior executives of DEECD, representatives of schools, universities, students, parent and union groups  and the early childhood education sector were present at the summit. I was able to provide some feedback on the initiatives:

  • develop data collection systems that have a simpy interface but enable teachers to drill down and look at a range of factors about students and their performance.
  • see this Blueprint as an extension of the work that has gone on before – the next phase if you like – not something new or threatening.

Most teachers I know who entered the profession to make a difference with our youth are caring and committed people however the role has changed and demands greater things of us all. Most of all it the profession needs to be supported, acknowledged, valued [which includes paid at an appropriate salary] not only by the parents and students we serve but by the wider community that includes business and government. My hope is that the new blueprint which I commend people to read and provide comment on,  will not only tackle some of the underperformance and early childhood issues but provide an opportunity to engage the wider community in the bigger debate – education for the 21st century.  

Perhaps the final comments come from a student representative in one of the workshops and Sir Michael Barbar who gave a video linked presentation.

Sir Michael, who was a senior advisor to the Blair government on school reform, gave three lessons:

  • The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.
  • The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.
  • High performance requires every child to succeed.

His presentation was inspiring and worth a post on its own.

The student with the final comment made a passionate plea for high quality teachers saying that “education is not done to us but with us – hear our voices.”

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A Webinar on Transforming Building Plans into Student Results

I recently enrolled in a webiner from The Leadership and Learning Centre which is located in Colardo, USA. I learnt several valuable lessons:

  • In America most schools are called buildings and so the title refers to transforming school plans into student results and here I thought I was actually looking at physical buildings plans.
  • That when I get an email saying the conference is starting tomorrow [USA time] it actually means I’ve got to be up at around 1.00 am to participate.

I did get the Powerpoint presented at the webinar and it makes several really good points worth noting that will inform my practice as a leader in a school. The last point has really challenged my practice.

  • The number of goals is inversely related to gains in student achievement
  • The “rule of six” – no more goals than you can monitor monthly – that is rarely more than six goals
  • If you don’t monitor frequently, it doesn’t make any difference how “important” the goal is – people will ignore it
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Design meets learning

Year 5/6 design

The teachers in the Years 5/6 team at Elsternwick Primary are faced with many challenges and questions when co-designing learning environments that stimulate and promote both collaborative and individual learning as well as the environment supporting students and teachers living a set of values: respect, responsibility and resilience.  

The teachers who are currently choosing furniture that best suits the variety of learning activities in years 5/6  are looking at the work of Mary Featherston, a designer,  to guide choices.  Mary worked with Wooranna Park Primary School to design designated yet flexible learning spaces [see above sketch] that are purposeful, respectful, responsive and evolving. Her research article describes this project.

I can recall one comment made by one of the teachers: “round tables give everyone an equal and respectful share in the work” or “student lockers can promote greater levels of personal responsibility”.

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Teaching for Understanding

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Have you ever struggled with teaching david-perkins-book.jpgdavid-perkins-book.jpgor assessing growth in learners understandings – I do? It’s easier to teach and assess skills. I like the example many people give of coaching a sports team – you teach skills that are observable – clear cut. They can either demonstrate the skill to a certain level or not. If you put in the effort you can learn the skill. This is quite likely one reason I like to coach basketball at school, domestic and representative level. I teach skills as well as offensive and defensive systems and you can see who can do it on the court – during games – its immediate and clear.

Learners understandings about various concepts we teach however are complex, often messy and certainly not that clear cut. I have taken to reading the work of David Perkins from Harvard University Project Zero who really delves into this work to try and get a better picture of how to do this challenging work. Its one of the more significant changes in education today.   

David Perkins wrote an article on teaching for understanding which I distributed to all teachers late in term 1.

The article prompted me to start reading his book: Smart Schools: Better Thinking and Learning for Every Child

His book, which I am still reading, describes how “fragile” knowledge can be if its either: missing, inert [people don’t use what they know], naive or ritual [just part of the school game].  Perkins present lots of information about how people leave school with too fragile knowledge and some poor thinking habits.

Some of his images and quotes really resonate with me:

” schooling minds is much more than schooling memories”

He makes a case against the trivial pursuit theory of schooling – that’s its a matter of accumulating a large repertoire of facts and routines – rather than

“learning is a consequence of thinking”

He argues that its better for students to understand something well rather than cover lots of facts in lots of subjects.

I found his thinking that lots of educators use the ability counts most theory quite unsettling. He argued that in many western countries which includes Australia – success in learning depends on ability more than effort – in contrast to many Asian countries.

I am currently rereading the chapter on working towards a pedagogy of understanding – which at first glance looks to affirm our work on inquiry learning – with the odd challenge or two. I expect a write another post soon on Perkins work particularly around making thinking visible.

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Easter on the Delitate River

delatite.jpgOver the Easter break I was fortunate enough to spend a few days on the Delitate River. While I was cooking a bbq at night it was great to look up and see the bright stars in the sky. It was a great time to just sit and read or walk along the river bank and enjoy the sound of running water.   Tori said it was great fun swimming in the river although it was  really freezing and we only wore our bathers and a t-shirt. [typed by Tori my daughter]  After such a short but hectic term one the change of scenery is just the thing to top up the energy reserves. I have a few school construction site variations next week to work on which is perhaps worth a post on for those principals who are just starting major works on their site.    

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Mentoring at Monash University

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Yesterday at the invitation of a colleague I joined him at Monash University as he started a Masters in Education course.  As I walked from the car park I was struck by the both the number of students [I’m told there are 70,000 students and over 500 staff at Monash] and the general intent shown by the students as they made their way to class. A little lost I was picked up by one of the librarians: “Are you here as a Principal for the Masters Course?” she asked. I think the tie gave me away.   I was asked by my colleague as his mentor to attend several sessions which looked at mentoring, the use of library and IT facilities as a student and what one might choose to investigate as a research project as part of the Master Course.  I think the library and IT sessions showed me how much some things had changed: i.e. the use of electronic portals and digital online blackboards to get all the notes, references, online journal articles etc.. and how much I had forgotten about how to write papers citing in the correct ERIC terms references used.  I’m looking forward to some challenging readings and interesting discussions ahead in the next 2 years.  PS Roland Bath was tonight’s reading for the students [Learning by Heart]. I heard him speak at Harvard last year and was really interested in his work. He starts the chapters in this book with some great quotes – two of my favourites being:  “You cannot discover new oceans unless you risk losing sight of the shore” or  “We must be the change we wish to see in the world” [Gandhi]

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Student Writing: a focus for improvement

j0422793.jpgWe have just completed a whole pupil free day looking at our instructional practice on student writing. Anne Hammond, our resident literacy coach had us look at persuasive text for most of the morning: where you would find it, how it comes in different text forms [e.g. editorials, songs, advertising, and letters to the editor], its purpose, the social context surrounding the text and the possible world view of the author. She encouraged teachers to let go of the view that longer text pieces were better, that students needed time to practice and refine a particular piece, that in the gradual release of responsibility to students they needed to be able to select the text form and not be told to all write e.g. poems that rhyme and that the purpose was all important.  In the afternoon we looked at the place of spelling or word study. Anne took us through what I would term a constructivist process where after children had listed words with a particular sound from a text the teacher was reading and had grouped them according to some letter pattern they then developed a hypothesis or a rule. They went inquiring in other texts for words with the same sound and then regrouped and retested their original hypothesis. This appears to me a far more powerful practice than telling students a spelling rule and then giving examples from a text book to use the rule. We finished the day making some common commitments to each other to change our practice e.g. teach the craft of writing and not focus on the surface structure quite so much [lateral accountability] and wrote one personal goal for ourselves in our reflective journal. A good day.   

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What’s your vision for schooling?

This week after our staff meeting I have been reflecting about the dialogue on what value we as teachers bring to the deeper learning our students need in the 21st century. We watched a pod cast of Richard Elmore saying that in fact through the dominance of our literal recall tasks we are sucking the learning from the student not really engaging them at all – let alone challenging them to think analysis or synthesise.  Now granted that Elmore is giving an American perspective – I believe the work here at Elsternwick is different – our reading curriculum from an early age teaches children to comprehend, to bring their knowledge of the world to understand the text not just simply decode. Our inquiry focused curriculum also has a process that not only engages student’s prior knowledge but challenges them to apply their learning.  Perhaps some of our challenges lie in shifting the community thus school cultures in not hankering for the past when things look different from their own experiences.  

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Instructional tips that might make a difference

At this week’s leadership meeting I introduced John Hattie’s article on building teacher quality. We began talking as the instructional leaders of the school of our individual journeys to making a greater difference in student learning. Hattie explores this learning journey from novice to expert. The conversation turned to some key influences over the past few years and with some sense of relief and excitement they began to list some key instructional strategies our coaches: Anne Hammond and Kath Murdoch had supported them in learning. Two tips they shared that struck a chord with me were about proofreading in student writing [student writing being a focus for our school in 2008 / 2009] – when teaching students to proofread for spelling get them to start from the bottom of the page and work up [thus not focusing on the meaning] and when giving senior students feedback on writing [if its spelling focus] write sp in the column and get them to do the work, find the error and work out its correction – its about student ownership and work – remembering also that if the writing purpose is not bound for publication then don’t over correct – students take in small bits of information – focus and specific feedback on a few items rather than a page of red marks.   The team leaders then carried these thoughts forward when they presented at the annual parent information night – one using this quote  from Shelley Harwaynne (from the teacher’s college writing project in New York)We let children paint their faces, swing around poles, blow bubbles, build cubby houses, go down the street in their ballet dress or superhero suit and we accept them as children. So when we look at children’s writing we must accept them as children and their writing as children’s writing.”

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