Learning Conversations

There seems to be a fair bit of talk at the moment about how we should / could change our education systems to more closely match the needs of modern society.

Will Richardson is wondering whether change can only come about in our lifetimes by starting a new system from scratch. Whilst Kyle Brumbaugh, in his comments on Will's post, talks about political change from within.

Clay Burrell wonders whether there's a way "to leave the daily farce of gradebooks, attendance sheets, tests, corporate and statist curriculum, homework assignments, grade-licking college careerist “students” (and parents), fear of parents and administrators, and fear of inconvenient socio-political truths - and at the same time, to make a far more meaningful impact on the lives of the young?" Ric Murry, although seemingly tongue-in-cheek, puts forward a proposal for an International Online School of 21st Century Literacy.

Lucie deLaBruere has given a wonderful example of a fifth grade teacher, nearing retirement, who is constantly "looking for opportunities to engage kids in authentic learning.

Kent Cheshunt has examined the samba school model in Brazil, which:

• Are voluntary
• Allow for significant choice
• Don’t allow for infinite individual choice
• Provide for intergenerational interaction / teaching / learning
• Provide for collaboration between novices and experts
• Provide authentic tasks / learning experiences (making costumes, choreography, learning to dance, …) within a real-world context (preparing to perform in the next carnival)

I was talking to a friend today, who is currently training to be a teacher, about the impact of ICT on teaching & learning. The 2007 review of the research evidence by Becta is less than positive about this impact:

While the evidence does seem to support the view that there has been an impact on learning and teaching as a result of the introduction of ICT, it has not yet reached the point where it can be said to have transformed the educational process.

The report goes on to argue that this is because...

...teachers fail to appreciate that learning and teaching through technology requires a new approach to pedagogy, to planning and preparation and to how the curriculum is perceived.... The evidence is that [day-to-day teaching practice, teacher-pupil relationships and teacher-teacher relationships] cannot and will not remain as they have traditionally been.

The problem is that we're trying to put new wine into old wineskins. Our whole education system is built on an Industrial model of society (see Sir Ken Robinson's brilliant TED talk for more on this) which doesn't match the current state of much of the developed world. Not only that, it's built on the idea of a closed classroom that has little direct connection with the outside world. To be honest, up till now, It's been a pretty successful model. A good teacher can get excellent results (based on existing measures) with no reference to ICT at all.

Where it starts to fall down is with people like Graham Wegner who has noted that "while his own learning [has taken] off at an unprecedented rate [since discovering Web2.0 aka the Live Web], he struggled to work out how to utilise these new tools and methodologies into his own classroom." Once people start to use ICT to make connections outside of their organisation, a whole new world of learning opens up. And this new world struggles to fit inside the current education & CPD models. It's a world that is "authentic", it's challenging, it's personalised, and it requires new ways of handling knowledge & information.

So, let's take Will's idea and run with it for a while. This is something I've been considering for a while... in the context of small, remote schools (eg. on the Scottish Islands) which are currently unviable. Without them the communities break-up, but they are too expensive to maintain.

There are already precedents for this type of thinking. The UK's Open University being the main one. We need to consider, from the ground-up, what a school-level education system will look like. From the ground-up because we cannot just change one thing (add in technology for example) without considering the system as a whole.

Philosophy

Why is education important?
What are we trying to achieve?
What do we believe about how people learn?
What does society need from an education system?
What is the role of society?
What does the individual need from an education system?
What is the role of the individual?

Curriculum

What skills, knowledge & behaviours do children need to be effective individuals in our society?
What curriculum will meet what we believe about education?
What alternative curriculum models are available? (eg. Tasmania's Essential Learnings, or the RSA's competence-based curriculum)

Assessment

How can/should we measure the effectiveness of our system?
How can individuals demonstrate (simply) to others their successes within the system?
How can we support learners' progress towards their (our?) goals?

Management

What resources (people, places, equipment) will we need to make our philosophy reality?
Where will people learn?
Where will people support learning?
When will people learn?
When will people support learning?
How will we know the support is effective?
How will we know the resources we provide are effective?

Administration

What records will we need to keep?
How will we keep those records?
Who will keep those records?
Where will they be?
How will the records be used by appropriate people?

Accountability & Funding

Who will pay for the resources required?
How will they know they are getting value for money?
Will it be a charity (accepting donations), a business (making a profit), or government-funded (because society thinks it's a good idea), or a mixture of all three?

Once we've agreed the questions we can come up with answers that will become a new system, suitable for the 21st Century.