Getting a “Handle” on Social Media

Week 30 - My sixth post for Applied Practice in Context:  Professional Online Social Networks 

I've written about my involvement with social networks before, especially with Twitter.  This latest post, to meet my post-grad requirements, outlines my use of a range of networks for professional learning, as well as giving you some great reasons to be involved yourself.

It can be tough for some educators in New Zealand.  Many of us live outside of the main cities and it’s a major effort, time-wise and cost-wise, to access the courses and workshops we see advertised on the web or in the Education Gazette. That’s why the online networks I engage with have become my “lifelong learning” lifeline.

Twitter 

I like being @mrs_hyde; she is embraced by a learning community which has similar values about teaching and learning. Literally; hugging and shrieking has become the norm for edutweeps who meet for the first time.  When we meet face to face, chances are we have discussed, assisted, debated, laughed and empathised with each other already.

I follow global educators on Twitter who share their own and others’ ideas and articles.  This provides me with a wealth of education readings about the latest pedagogy.  In addition, I can directly contact the experts who I would never feel I could approach in real life. I’ve had conversations with some of my education heroes like Steve Wheeler, Richard Gerver, Nigel Latta and Grant Lichtman. 

  

I’ve been able to engage in webinars, like last week’s discussion between Keri Facer and our Edchatnz star, Danielle Myburgh.  I read some of Keri’s work on futures thinking for my literature review and it was a bonus to hear her speak on the same topic.  This one was at 7.00pm on a Wednesday night; I’ve been known to sit up in my pyjamas to listen and contribute to a northern hemisphere webinar at 3am!

I’ve got a wealth of knowledge about other schools in New Zealand. My classroom really doesn’t have walls.  I feel like I am part of a virtual staffroom and know “who does what” in New Zealand: innovative learning environments, makerspace, Minecraft… This has led to school visits or online question and answer sessions.

I’m a regular participant in educator chats like #edchatnz, #aussieED and #ldrchatnz.  These Twitter chats are fast moving discussions between global educators.  Using Storify, and the hashtags, I curate these chats into slideshows to read later, save links and serve as evidence against the Practising Teacher Criteria. There’s usually a Devil’s Advocate - I’ve had a turn at that - to challenge our thinking.

I’ve used Twitter as my “lazyweb” to use the collective personal professional knowledge of others to quickly glean information. Or advice.  Other leaders on Twitter are great help mates.

Google+

While I’ve dabbled with Google+ in the past, I have put it to good use during my postgrad studies with MindLab. We share a community with our cohort, to share links, discuss assessments, ask questions and reflect on each others’ blogs.  I have two accounts: one is for school, one I keep separate.  In each one I have set up collections to curate readings I find on the internet. I am a member of other communities too: coding, Google Apps, Literacy, Minecraft. It’s been useful for setting up a study group community too, especially for our literature review.  

The Virtual Learning Network

I first started using this because I was the ICTPD facilitator for our cluster, and the VLN was the platform for sharing learning and recording evidence for our milestone reports.  I found that I could connect with other cluster facilitators and elearning experts for advice; what Melhuish calls “group genius”. I was one of the people who responded to her survey for her thesis:

“Two areas where participants felt the site most successfully met their needs were the ability to explore topical issues and being able to connect with other colleagues". (p.95)

I had my turn as guest speaker in webinars and enjoyed participating in forums.  My most active group is our #connectedrotorua group page.

Facebook

While my aim has been to keep Facebook for social interaction with family and friends, an addition last year meant that I changed my mind. Two teachers from Auckland began the NZ Teachers (Primary) group which has in turn spawned a number of other professional teacher groups.  These are great help sites for locating resources and creating discussion.

LinkedIn

Although I am a member and “link” with a range of professionals, I don’t venture into the discussions as I do on the other platforms.

Blogger

I love Blogger because I love writing. This is my reflective portfolio, where I make sense of the ideas from my discussions and readings. I tag my posts with the Practising (Registered) Teachers’ Criteria. I then use my other social networks to share my posts, using the hashtags #edchatnz, #edblognz and #MindLabED.  I encourage students to have blogs and share these using the #comments4kids hashtag. 

Key features of social media that are beneficial for teaching and learning:

Ubiquitous personalised learning.  I love that I can organise where and when and how I want to learn. Social networks are always awake, even if it’s somewhere else in the world.

Multidisciplinary and cross sector.  I remember a time when secondary teachers and primary teachers kept to their corners. Now we are found in the same virtual staff rooms. Social media has helped to de-silo learning.

Equitable. Learning does not belong to those who are able to pay.  It is available to all.  Besides the free availability of googlable information, many structured courses are free. The Edchatnz Mooc is an example.

Ako. "Ako" means having a mutual teaching and learning relationship.  Wellburn and Eib (Veletsianos, 2016) talk about the different roles we can take in social media; at different times we can play the “expert, amateur, audience, author, learner, and educator” (p.65). Youtube is another example of this in action. 

Interactive and creative. Rather than just receiving content, we are expected not only to interact, but to make content.  

Authentic. Teachers are harnessing social media not only for their own learning but to engage students.  Students blog for real audiences who can provide feedback and feedforward in their comments. They are participating in quadblogging, and Twitter chats like #NZreadaloud and #kidschatnz. 

Key competencies.  Social media engages us in the competencies.  We must learn how to operate in each environment; they each have their own literacy.  Twitter, for example forces us to be succinct. Thinking, relating to others responsibly, managing self and participating and contributing with others are all encapsulated in these networks.

The vision of the New Zealand Curriculum is for “young people who will be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners” (p.7). The “older” people need to model these attributes too.  Social networks provide a rich, attainable arena for professional discussion and development to enable this vision.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/4311427445 - cc license

Related Blog Posts

Having A PLN - https://dougpete.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/having-a-pln/

A Fly on the Wall of Virtual Learning - http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/a-fly-on-wall-of-virtual-learning.html

Species Twiducatus Edchatnz (No Birds Were Harmed in the Making Of This) - http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/species-twiducatus-educhatnz-no-birds.html

Reporting and Interviews...subtitled "I wasn't going to tweet tonight." -http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/reporting-and-interviewssubtitled-i.html

It's All About Connecting - #connectedrotorua - http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/its-all-about-connecting.html

#Edchatnz - Speed Dating With Twiducators - http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/edchatnz-speed-dating-with-twiducators.html

Attwicted to Learning - http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/attwicted.html

Using Microblogging: Twitter and Other Tools to Facilitate Teacher and Student Learning - http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/using-microblogging-twitter-and-other.html

References

Joosten, T.( 2013. October 22). Pearson: Social Media for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/tjoosten/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-27456257?ref=http://professorjoosten.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/pearson-social-media-for-teaching-and.html

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Silius, K., Miilumäki, T.,Huhtamäki, J.,Tebest, T., Meriläinen, J., & Pohjolainen, S.(2010). Students’ motivations for social media enhanced studying and learning. Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, 2(1), 54-67. Retrieved from http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/article/view/55/39

Veletsianos, G. ed. (2016). Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

Teaching the Teachers About Online Ethics

Week 29 and the fifth post for Applied Practice in Context:

cc public domain attribution

Everyone has a right to privacy, right? Even teachers. So what I put on Facebook is my business. Wrong.

I hear more about Facebook abuse than any other social networking tool, and as my community of practice is an intermediate, our method of controlling its use - or rather, abuse - is by blocking it.  Yes, I know  - education is better than control, and hopefully we will get there.  But right now, it’s easier to stop our students accessing it at school, especially as half of them are underage according to Facebook guidelines.

The issue is partly that adults don’t get it either.  Some parents are blissfully unaware that Samantha is posting posed shots of herself with pouty lips; or that she has collected friends like Weetbix cards, people she less than barely knows who can read about her every move. They come to us when Samantha receives insulting putdowns from Jessica and Alana.  You see, it’s easy to be a big brave bully online, not having to look your victim in the eye and waiting for adulation from other kids in the peer group. (NB I realise that the person is bullying, not the tool, so we work on that too, with programmes like PB4L and Kia Kaha.)

We counsel parents and their children about security settings and making sure that the former are aware of their offspring’s online life.  I hold regular assemblies where I gather student photos from nonsecure accounts and display them across the screen (nothing risque of course).  I let the student body know about the ease of access, lack of control and right that I have to view their images, just as any stranger might.  It’s a strong message with desired results, based on a Learning@School conference keynote, from Australian cyber cop, Brent Lee.

Remember I said that adults don’t get it either? Well, teachers are adult.  They forget how networked we are.  I suggest that they don’t need to be friends with me as deputy principal, but we have mutual friends so a comment on a photo could turn up on my feed.  And they sometimes forget that some of their “friends” are parents or people who have friends who are parents. A comment can be misconstrued or turn into gossip very quickly.

With this in mind, the Board of Trustees decided to put together a social media policy, gathering documentation from Netsafe, from the Code of Ethics and from the Teachers and Social Media site.  We held a staff meeting on social media and the staff looked at the Code of Ethics and the draft social media policy more closely.  There was a lot of learning.  Many of them had no idea that they could not ethically post photos of their students working without specific permission or that there were dangers in publishing named student images.

We now have our Mokoia Matrix which is our digital citizenship and cybersafety hub, for all members of our community.  All teachers need to teach digital literacy.  That way they learn too.

References

Education Council. (nd). Code of Ethics for Certificated Teachers. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/code-of-ethics-certificated-teachers-0

Cleaning Our Cultural Lenses

My Week 28 and fourth post for Applied Practice in Context: indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice.

cc attribution

It’s pretty hard to keep your cultural lenses clean of preconceptions and your own cultural beliefs. I know that because I try and either get flack from some others in my inner circle (including family), or pull myself up when I realise that even though I haven’t said it out loud, I'm thinking something that is at the very least, thoughtless and at worst, xenophobic.

There, I've said it.  But I know I'm not alone.  It’s pretty much how humans have been right through history, dividing and conquering each other on the basis of difference and dominance, and now, in this new era of globalism we are only allowed to play out these innate feelings on the sports field. It’s about our need to belong and why we kowtow to fashions in clothes, sayings and activities.

I remember when I learned that it was polite to belch after your meal in Burma.  That was pretty much my first acknowledgement, in Form 2 Social Studies, that people didn't do things all the same.

But don’t judge me as a white middle class, middle aged pakeha female from the suburbs. Because yes, I’ve been a victim of that. I loved listening to Taiye Selasi’s Ted Talk about being judged by her ethnic origins instead of as an individual.

I'm a first generation Kiwi with and English mother and Dutch father, who lived in Jamaica for four years; at ten, my parents split and my mother, a sickness beneficiary, moved us in with her elderly mother in Christchurch. I benefited from a free education and subsidised university.  Most of all I believed I would go to university because my parents did.  I believed that was my path.

I can’t speak Dutch because my father believed that it was more important to be accepted as an enzed European, as many immigrants in the sixties did. I've listened - and laughed - when others have told me that Dutch people are all tight with money and have poor table manners. Did I mention that my father’s mother was German, had an illegitimate child and a brother who was potentially a Nazi?

I moved from the South Island to Kawerau in the mid 1980’s and it was like moving to a new country; instead of school houses called after the first four colonising ships, they were called after maunga (what?) and I was in Maungawhakamana. Panic; I couldn’t say it.  People played guitars at parties and the dialect was way different.  When someone died, the whole school closed for the tangi. I was in culture shock.

So I'm an individual with a rich cultural background, no better or worse than any other.  I share some things with those around me, and I bring some differences to the table. And I bring those differences into the learning environment.  My new learning is built on my previous experiences and it is the varied experiences that we must think about when we design learning activities for the class of individuals trusted to our care.  

Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, in the video, Teaching Tolerance, reiterates that our students are not “blank cultural slates” when they come to us.  Geneva Gay, in the same video, reminds us that, like Taiye Selasi, they are individuals with a range of experiences, local and socio-economic, that they bring to the classroom.

Like Russell Bishop, in his Edtalk on cultural responsiveness, they remind us that relationships are “paramount to education”. We must care about people and care that they learn; that is culturally responsive pedagogy.  Māori students, like other ethnic minorities world wide, have suffered from “deficit theorising;” the idea that some ethnic groups are less intelligent than others. It’s time to throw that nonsense out.

So what does cultural responsiveness look like in my school? We are an intermediate school in Rotorua, that draws from a mix of schools in the eastern suburbs.  Our student body is predominantly bicultural with a pretty even mix of Māori and pakeha and the full gamut of socio-economic backgrounds.  We also have students who identify with at least eleven other ethnic groups - probably more.

In the last five years that I have been there, work has been done to ensure that our strategic goals and “how we do things” match our vision, which includes the phrase: “Te Kotahitanga concepts as key to facilitating effective student engagement and achievement.”

This mahi includes time spent talking with local elders from our haukāinga, Te Roro O Te Rangi, as a staff and Board, about tiro ā-Māori ki tōna ake ao and our local stories.  At our marae at the beautiful Hinemoa Point, we were gifted a pepeha for our school and learned about the importance of our children understanding their connections and relationships so they don’t feel adrift as “tamafreakies”; the concept of tangata whenuatanga.  It is no coincidence that placenta is also “whenua.”

As a staff we unpacked “Tātaiako: Cultural Competencies for Teachers of Māori Learners.” We discussed the concept of manaakitanga in detail and talked about the protocols we wanted to have in place, like always welcoming guests with a pōwhiri or whakatau. Our rumaki teacher, with students, demonstrated the kaupapa Māori of her room and the students talked about the elements that confuse and frustrate them when they go into other learning environments: people sitting on tables, food placed under chairs.  

I shared my learnings from my NAPP2012 inquiry on Māori student achievement: tuakana teina and the importance of being able to revisit new learning as is done in kapa haka.

Whakapapa right back to Ranganui and
Papatuanuku on which every rumaki student
can find their ancestoral line

Most important is respecting the language and learning correct pronunciation, essential when building relationships with students.  I get this completely.  My name is Annemarie, pronounced Ann-eh-marie, but I have people tell me I'm wrong! They have no idea how important this is to me, because I have inherited this name through my European origins from people who meant a lot to my parents. Twenty six years ago I remember a colleague standing up in a staff meeting to challenge the principal who continued to pronounce whānau as “far-now”, rather than “far-know”.  We hear these mispronunciations daily; ironically, even Mike Hogan makes this error in his Edtalk on cultural responsiveness.

This year when we appointed the new rumaki teacher we called on Te Roro o te Rangi kaumatua to help with the selection.  They are represented on our committees and on the incoming Board as a coopted member.

Are we doing as well in our classrooms? We have had a large staff turnover in the last year and obviously we need to revisit our previous learnings.  While we include certain kaupapa as “the way we do things here”, I know that there is a lot of variation within the staff because of the cultures they come from.  We include He Reo Tupu He Reo Ora in our learning programme and I believe our teachers are good at making relationships with students.  I love what our rumaki teacher is doing but there are Māori students in other classes and those from other ethnicities, including those with little English, in the school.  This term we held a whanau engagement meeting to bring in families of our target writers so they could create shared learning maps. We are on a journey.

This statement from Milne should make us stop and think:  

The model of education that exists in New Zealand is that white page.  It is important for our children that we start to create our own “colouring books” in our communities.  We come to the conversation with the lenses of our own cultural background.  We need to try to clean those lenses and focus clearly on each of the students in our care.



References

Bishop, R, Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T. & Teddy, L. (2009). Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing Māori students in New Zealand. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5)734–742.

Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Edtalks.(2012, May 30). Mike Hogan: Culturally responsive practice in a mainstream school. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/43097812

Findsen, B. (2012). Older adult learning in Aotearoa New Zealand: Structure, trends and issues. Presented at Adult Community Education (ACE) Conference.

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2),106-116.

Savage,C, Hindleb, R., Meyerc,L., Hyndsa,A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198

Shaw, S., White, W. & Deed, B. (2013) (Ed.). Health, wellbeing and environment in Aotearoa New Zealand.South Melbourne, Australia:Oxford University Press.

Teaching Tolerance ( 2010, Jun 17).Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTVjJuRaZ8

Ted Talk. Selasi, Taiye. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local?language=en

Unitec. (n.d). Unitec Learning and Teaching Booklet. http://www.unitec.ac.nz/ahimura/publications/U008817%20Learning%20and%20Teaching%20Booklet.pdf

Image retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/soap-bubbles-eye-glare-stains-light-1192339/

Current issues in my professional context

My second post for the Mind Lab paper: "Applied Practice in Context":

"Stoll (1998) defines school culture as three dimensions, the relationship among its members; the organisational structure including the physical environment and management system; and the learning nature." - Mind Lab Class Notes, Week 26.

"Culture describes how things are and acts as a screen or lens through which the world is viewed." - Stoll, 1998

 “the way we do things around here” - Deal & Kennedy, 1983

“a real school is what I attended when I was a child” - Metz, 1991

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yoda 

“The force is strong in this one…”

Our school is typical of many schools in New Zealand and probably the Western world.  Built in the 1970’s, it was open plan, with four classrooms, sans doors, which opened out onto a central space with a work area, art supplies, benches, storage and sinks - an early “maker space”.  

When I got there at the start of the millennium as a trainee primary teacher, it was still like this, but teachers stayed in their cells and there was a lot of self consciousness and irritation when the neighbour’s noise and activity intruded on others. Once a gimme that all contributing schools contributed to the annual intake, this decade was one when a lot of students headed into town to the Catholic College; a “grass is greener” syndrome, which I have to say, I was part of.

Roll on August 2010 and I returned to the school, this time as Deputy Principal Curriculum. There was a different principal, and an interesting dichotomy: staff who had been with the school for a while, several since its inception, and another group which had been there for only six months. They, like me, were still trying to find out “how we do things around here.” And change was difficult to bring about. There was one change that stood out: doors on the classrooms and transformation of the central space away from the shared work station to an open common room.

I’d already learned in my first assistant principal position, that the folk who populate a community of practice don’t necessarily appreciate the breath of fresh air you bring when you open the door to new ideas. Stoll (1998) talks about the importance of understanding the school’s culture, and the important roles of history, socioeconomic status, location and national education policies. “The way we do things here,” is a very strong force.  I pinned a poster to the notice board above my desk:

“God gives you the people you want, not the people you need, to make you into the person you need to be.” (Unknown)

There were some divisions on the staff. National Standards had not been taken on board (some would say that was a good thing). The assessment system lacked robustness. Teaching was more about the teachers than the learners. Too many students were driving into town to school away from one of our local schools.  

There were some strong and noble traditions: a belief that intermediate education is an important area; that sport and fitness is intrinsic to the well being, physical and academic, of the emerging adolescent. That students need to be exposed to a range of subjects before they get to high school. That independence, fortitude, leadership a teamwork are important qualities and are to the fore in the week long camp in Term 4, where students are under canvas, and in Term 4 when the students opted for an alternative education activity. The school was also renowned for its kapa haka success.

I saw my place as strengthening the academic side of things; well, it was what my title said I did. We have made a lot of progress on improving teacher knowledge and pedagogy; we still have a way to go. I learned that even a small step is still a small step forward. 

This year has seen another large turn over of staff; some have retired, some moved on to their own greener pastures. A principal who takes over a school inherits teachers and “the way things are done around here.” It takes time to build a shared set of values in incumbent staff; it’s easier when you get to choose the staff who will carry forward the vision you have for your community of practice. 

The local community has returned to the school as has regard for the quality of our education.

A shared vision is the key: it becomes the internal driver from “the way we’ve always done it,” or “this is how we do it here,” to “this is what we want and need for deep learning to take place” and that strong force for change. 

Innovative learning environments and practices are the topic du jour in the educational world. Digital technology is no longer a novelty. These are our next challenges. There is an old saying now, that while the world has changed technologically, should Rumplestiltskin awake after a hundred years, he’d still feel at home in a school.

As an early adopter, I’ve had to learn patience. And it’s not just with my colleagues’ rate of uptake of new technologies. It’s about how difficult it is to ensure there is equity for all students, especially when our catchment includes each end of the decile system.

Our new teachers have made an interesting change to the scales. They’ve come from communities of practice where cloud based learning is the norm. Suddenly, it’s “how we do it around here,” and the force for change has swapped directions.

The next step will be to see what happens to those classroom doors as teachers begin to collaborate more. One of our electives is a makerspace. It’s time to return to looking at that vision and deciding how we want to write the next chapters in the reflective journal of our community of practice. 

- Stoll and Fink (cited in Stoll, 1998) identified 10 influencing cultural norms of school improvement including:

“1. Shared goals - “we know where we’re going”

2. Responsibility for success - “we must succeed”

3. Collegiality - “we’re working on this together”

4. Continuous improvement - “we can get better”

5. Lifelong learning - “learning is for everyone”

6. Risk taking - “we learn by trying something new”

7. Support - “there’s always someone there to help”

8. Mutual respect - “everyone has something to offer”

9. Openness - “we can discuss our differences”

10. Celebration and humour - “we feel good about ourselves”” (p.10)

References

Hongboontri, C., & Keawkhong, N. (2014). School Culture: Teachers' Beliefs, Behaviors, and Instructional Practices. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(5), 66-88. Retrieved from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2332&context=ajte

Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. Resnick, J. Levine, and S. Teasley (Eds.). Perspectives on socially shared cognition. [E-reader version](pp. 63-82). Retrieved from http://www.ecologyofdesigninhumansystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Lave-Situating-learning-in-communities-of-practice.pdf

Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

Something Wicked This Way Comes

My third post for the Mind Lab paper: "Applied Practice in Context":

Week 27: Contemporary issues or trends in New Zealand or internationally

“Shut the door please...we’re not trying to heat the world!” I call, as yet another student rushes from the hall without making sure that the door closes.  The heaters are on; the first day of winter has hit with a vengeance. “Global warming,” another teacher jokes.

And I think about how teaching has changed.  We’re not just sweating the small stuff like teaching kids to shut doors, we've now got to think about them as the lifesavers that we are throwing out to our future selves. Global warming is now one of the wicked problems that our children are facing.
Wicked problems are shaping education in New Zealand and internationally.  Documents like Future State 2030 highlight issues that will change the world of work and mean that our children will need to create solutions to issues that we have not experienced ourselves: demographics, the rise of the individual, the rise of technology, economic interconnectedness, public debt, economic power shift, climate change, resource stress and urbanisation.

The educational model, often referred to as the factory model, which we and our parents “survived” can not prepare our youth for a future career that no longer conforms to a narrow classification of job descriptions; we can’t promise them that effort and a university degree will lead to a secure future. Ken Robinson elaborates on this paradigm shift in his Ted talk.

I'm tasked, in this blog post, to identify and evaluate two contemporary issues or trends that are shaping education nationally and globally, but I'm finding that tricky; they all blend into the cauldron of wicked problems that require the current model of school to change: what teachers are and what they do and what learning and the student’s role in the learning process needs to look like.

I remember when all I was tasked to do as a teacher was make sure the content of the end of year exam was presented and absorbed. I remember debating with my HOD in 1990 about knowledge versus skill.  She firmly believed her role was to teach them material as their heads were empty. Over the last three decades professional development on the science of teaching has transformed to the art of learning. Digital technologies and the world wide web started to transform the possibilities open to us in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

In the nineteen nineties, organisations like UNESCO and the OECD, started to look at how we needed to change education to deal with the issues that were predicted to feature in the twenty first century.

The result was to move from a content based curriculum to a competency based curriculum; our own key competencies are based on the four pillars of the UNESCO Delors Report of 1993: learning to be, learning to know, learning to do and learning to live together; and the four competencies of the OECD 2005 report, which look much like what we now have: thinking, relating to others, understanding language, symbols and text, managing self and participating and contributing.

In their highly readable text, Key Competencies for the Future, Hipkins et al show how important these are for a future beset with wicked problems and show how “good” teachers scaffold learning opportunities where students are encouraged to involve themselves more deeply in critical and creative problem solving.

And therein lies the rub.  Our international and national education system is slow to change from that old factory model to one which embraces a desiloed curriculum, available technologies, authentic problems and design thinking. Political decision makers are at odds with educationalists about what our students need.  Parents view a good education as the one which they understand and which worked in past decades.

The teaching profession itself needs a shake up. Teacher training institutions are accepting students with literacy and numeracy levels below what they need. Digital technology use and inquiry thinking need to be much better developed. Our children deserve the best and the brightest teachers with growth mindsets who see the importance of creating different models of education.

We need learners who are engaged, motivated and self regulating.  How we create self regulated
 learners is the core pedagogical process needed in innovative learning environments, the current “bright and shiny thing”.  It’s important that we get students engaging in the learning processes they need to work out how to attack those wicked problems.  Research suggests that different contexts need different solutions.  It’s the subject of my literacy review and my inquiry.

What we need to do is keep engaging the naysayers at all levels.  As educators we need to keep asking, how can we do this better? We need to keep our eyes focussed on the future, fuzzy though it may appear.  We need to develop in ourselves those learning dispositions we need in our students.

References

Delors, J. ed. (1993). Learning: the treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century (Highlights). UNESCO Publishing.
Retrieved from http://lllp.iugaza.edu.ps/Files_Uploads/635087182222401677.pdf

Dumont, H., Istance, D., Benavides, F. (ed.) (2010). The nature of learning: using research to inspire practice. Educational Research and Innovation. OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264086487-4-en.

Education Review Office. (2012). Evaluation at a Glance: Priority Learners in New Zealand Schools. Retrieved 18 May 2016, from http://www.ero.govt.nz/About-Us/News-Media-Releases2/The-three-most-pressing-issues-for-N

Hipkins, R., Bolstad, R., Boyd, S., & McDowall, S. (2014). Key competencies for the future. New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) Press.

KPMG International. (2014). Future state 2030: the global megatrends shaping governments”. KPMG International Cooperative: USA. Retrieved from http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/future-state-government/Documents/future-state-2030-v3.pdf

Ministry of Education (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.
Retrieved 10 August 2009 from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/the_new_zealand_
curriculum/the_school_curriculum_design_and_review

Ministry of Education (2016). Enabling E-Learning: Teaching: Innovative Learning Environments. Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Innovative-learning-environments

National intelligence council.(2012). Global trends: Alternative Worlds. National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved from https://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf

Toffler, A. (1981). The third wave (pp. 32-33). New York: Bantam books.