Learning opportunities in community context

Theme 6: New kinds of partnerships and relationships: Schools no longer siloed from the community

Learning for the 21st century, it is argued, should support students to engage in knowledge-generating activities in authentic contexts. Students must learn to recognise and navigate authentic problems and challenges in ways that they are likely to encounter in future learning situations. However, today many learners encounter learning situations in which the “messiness” of the real world is simplified as contrived learning tasks with answers or outcomes already known to the teacher.

This implies that learning will require additional resources/support/expertise/input from a much wider range of people. Teachers ought not to be the only people from whom young people learn. As already argued (under the themes of personalising learning and equity/diversity), learning needs to be more connected with the community. Teachers still need strong pedagogical knowledge, but they also need to be able to collaborate with other people who can provide specific kinds of expertise, knowledge or access to learning opportunities in community contexts.

A final argument associated with this theme is that education and learning systems will not have traction to shift towards more 21st century approaches if this shift is not supported by the wider community. Public education is a collective good in which everyone has a stake. To be legitimate it must build our collective social and economic capacity and meet individual needs—immediate (and/or perceived) and future. To do both requires community understanding of, support for and contribution to what is being attempted. This “buy-in” could be achieved by engaging community members in authentic educational activities that draw on their expertise.

R Bolstad & J Gilbert (2012, pp. 5-6) Report to Ministry of Education, "Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective"

"Teacher-Driven", "Child-Centered" or a third way?

Theme 4: “Changing the script”: Rethinking learners’ and teachers’ roles

Twenty-first century ideas about knowledge and learning demand shifts in the traditional roles or “scripts” followed by learners and teachers. If the purpose of schools is not to transmit knowledge, then teachers’ roles must be reconceived. Similarly, if the learner’s main job is no longer to absorb and store up knowledge to use in the future, then learners’ roles and responsibilities also need to be reconceived. This calls for a greater focus on recognising and working with learners’ strengths, and thinking about what role teachers can play in supporting the development of every learner’s potential.

The idea of changing the scripts for learners and teachers is often shorthanded with phrases such as “student-centred pedagogies” or “student voice”, alluding to the need to engage learners (and their interests, experiences and knowledge) in many decisions about their learning. However, the idea of sharing power with learners can be met with resistance, particularly if this is interpreted as an “anything goes” approach in which learners are given complete freedom to set the direction for their learning. The challenge is to move past seeing learning in terms of being “student-centred” or “teacher-driven”, and instead to think about how learners and teachers would work together in a “knowledge-building” learning environment. This is not about teachers ceding all the power and responsibility to students, or students and teachers being “equal” as learners. Rather, it is about structuring roles and relationships in ways that draw on the strengths and knowledge of each in order to best support learning.

R Bolstad & J Gilbert (2012, pp. 4-5) Report to Ministry of Education, "Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective"

Knowledge - noun or verb?

Theme 3: A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity

One of the biggest challenges for education in the 21st century is that our ideas about curriculum are currently underpinned by at least two quite different epistemologies, or models of what counts as knowledge. The first view is the “traditional” idea of knowledge as content, concepts and skills selected from the disciplines to form the “subjects” or “learning areas” of the school curriculum. From this point of view, the learner’s job is to absorb and assimilate that knowledge into their mind and demonstrate how well they have done this through various means of assessment. It is assumed that this knowledge will be stored up for later use during the learner’s life.

The second conception of knowledge is associated with the Knowledge Age/“21st century” literature. In this view, knowledge is seen as something that does things, as being more energy-like than matter-like, more like a verb than a noun. Knowledge, in the Knowledge Age, involves creating and using new knowledge to solve problems and find solutions to challenges as they arise on a “just-in-time” basis. These ideas about knowledge have emerged in the world outside education—driven in large part by economic, social and political changes, often facilitated by new technologies.

The Knowledge Age literature argues that reproducing existing knowledge can no longer be education’s core goal, because (a) it is no longer possible to determine exactly which knowledge people will need to store up in order to use it in their lives after school, and (b) the “storing up for future use” model of knowledge is no longer useful or sufficient for thinking about how knowledge is developed and used in the 21st century. Instead, the focus needs to be on equipping people to do things with knowledge, to use knowledge in inventive ways, in new contexts and combinations. An individual’s stock of knowledge is important as a foundation for their personal cognitive development: however, for it to be useful as a foundation for their participation in social and economic life, the individual must be able to connect and collaborate with other individuals holding complementary knowledge and ideas.

What this means for the school curriculum is a shift in what is “foregrounded”. Instead of simply assuming these capacities will be developed through engagement with disciplinary knowledge (the traditional view), there is a shift to focusing on the development of everyone’s capabilities to work with knowledge. From this point of view, disciplinary knowledge should be seen, not as an end in itself, but as a context within which students’ learning capacity can be developed. While the use of the term “learning areas” in The New Zealand Curriculum[1] (NZC) document signals this, it is clear that this has not changed underlying thinking for many educators. It seems clear that the work of building a 21st century education system must involve supporting educators—and the public—to understand the paradigm shift in the meaning of such apparently common-sense terms as “knowledge” and “learning”, and how this might change the way curriculum is interpreted into learning and teaching experiences.

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R Bolstad & J Gilbert (2012, p. 4) Report to Ministry of Education, "Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective"

School-Wide Emphasis on Task Goals - TARGET

TARGET explained

• Task
• Authority
• Recognition
• Grouping
• Evaluation
• Time

Why Does Motivation Decline in Secondary School?

Why the decline in motivation at high school?

• contextual/environmental factors OTHER than puberty

• changes in classroom learning environments (different to primary school)
• instructional practices and educational policies in high schools
• e.g. comparative student performance (exams, assignments)
• students become convinced ability is fixed, expending effort demonstrates their inability to others

• change in authority relationships

• high schools are
• less personal
• less positive teacher-student relationships

• positive teacher-student relationships are associated with student achievement

• adolescents seek opportunities for developing a sense of self-efficacy and autonomy
• adult power is constantly challenged

• secondary schools are generally very regimented places with explicit power hierarchy
• greater emphasis on teacher control and discipline
• fewer opportunities for student decision making, choice and self-management

• with little opportunity to take charge of their own learning and motivation, many adolescents simply oppose or withdraw from engagement
• Primary schools emphasise the fun of learning, captivating students intrinsically in activities
• many secondary classrooms are 'crushingly dull places'
• Little real stimulation in classrooms -> students engage in a range of more stimulating non-academic activites
• It is not a case of adolescent student lacking motivation, but rather of investing their motivational energy in the wrong activities for the lack of something better at school

Using computers to teach children with no teachers

A 10-year experiment that started with Indian slum children being given access to computers has produced a new concept for education, a conference has heard.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10663353

Read the article above - we just need to be the 'granny cloud'! Very inspiring, we have to get out of the way, so kids can learn.

Jill: Actually I found the outcome from this experiment very useful. It's called SOLE or Self Organised Learning Environment. And there are now quite a lot of applications of this that we can learn from. You can see an English one in Dec 2012 for instance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiGbfhnvT4Q

Expectancy-Value Theory in the Classroom

Why do some kids sabotage the classroom? They would rather succeed at getting the negative attention of teachers and peers than fail at achieving the teacher-set goals. I guess involving the kids in the goal-setting should help with this? Other ideas?

I realise that if a child often gets negative feedback (at home, school, wherever) they may think they will always disappoint expectations - the whole place of expectations is touchy - we have learnt that as teachers we must have high learning expectations, because it affects how we interact with the kids (e.g. how much 'wait time' we give a certain kid to answer a question) - but if a kid is sure they will fail to meet any expectations we place on them, I see that somehow they have to be part of naming the expectation (a development of self-judging). Any thoughts?

Coping strategies that kids use when trying to avoid failure and keep their sense of self-worth intact. Three common types:

• self-worth protection
• self-handicapping strategies
• defensive pessimism

Competition makes this problem worse, or classrooms that emphasise relative ability or performance goals.

Learning for Mastery or Performance?

Which do we foster? Which is better?

After reading this, watch the DRIVE video on practical videos tab.

Should we write school reports to the parents, or the student?

Dear Student, 

Traditional Measurement vs "Authentic" or Alternative Measurement

I think we need to be able to discuss these terms confidently for our IOI/EOI etc.

Traditional Measurement Includes

• Essay tests and assignments
• Short answer questions
• Projects
• Objective tests (e.g. multiple choice, matching, true/false)
• Practicals, simulated tasks and role plays
• Work sample assessment (e.g. practical teaching block for student teacher)
• Oral presentations

Alternative or "Authentic" Measurement Strategies as they are now being called (because they assess in within 'real' contexts of learning)

• Focused evaluation (defined below)
• Pupil profiles
• Journals and portfolios
• Work samples
• Peer evaluations and self-assessments

Focused evaluation is now hailed as very effective, see this description:

A summary of authentic assessment