What truly drives change in Education?

You do not need to look very hard to find a report claiming that schools and education needs to change. 

According to Sarah Goner of “The Hechinger Report” the latest study by the Bureau of Labour Statistics in the US indicates that "Without changes in education, the future of work will leave more people behind". The Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) identifies from their research eight “enterprise skills that are essential for young people as they "engage with a complex world and navigate the challenges they will inherit”. Skills such as problem solving, communication skills, critical thinking, creativity and teamwork are listed. The FYA goes on to state "Given that many young people remain ill-equipped for what employers are demanding, we need to better promote these skills in our education and training systems".

Foundation for Young Australians - The New Basics - Access the Full Report

Lists of essential skills, competencies or dispositions are common and there is much overlap. The enterprise skills identified by FYA echoes those presented by others such as the Four Cs of the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration & Creativity) and the Seven Cs developed by Lucas & Claxton in “Educating Ruby” which adds confidence, curiosity, creativity, commitment and craftsmanship. The Australian Curriculum makes a good effort at a similar list with information and communication technology, critical & creative thinking, personal & social, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding sitting alongside a back to basics appeasing mention of literacy and numeracy. 

The OECD has used their extensive research base to develop a response to the question of “What do children have to learn?” An intertwined model of knowledge, skills and attitudes & values results. According to the OECD students require; disciplinary, interdisciplinary and practical knowledge, cognitive & metacognitive, social & emotional and physical & practical skills, and an unidentified triad of attitudes & values. 

More evidence for the need to change education can be found in the recently released work of Miranda Jefferson and Michael Anderson. The title reveals the authors position “Transforming Schools: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration” and they state their case for change eloquently "Education needs to take account of the prevailing conditions of postnormality (chaos, complexity and contradiction) to equip young people for their rapidly changing future.” 

In Britain the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has added their voice to the clamour of those calling for change. Their report titled "First Steps” claims that it "deals with the most important part of the UK’s long-term growth strategy – improving education”. The CBI has a list of characteristics that they feel we should aspire to, “The system should encourage young people to be Determined, Optimistic and Emotionally Intelligent” this will produce a “Compelling Individual” 

The answer according to CBI includes a “clear focus on attainment for every child”, “better parental and community engagement leads to more vibrant schools”, “better teaching” a curriculum with "rigorous expectations of every child, on both knowledge and the development that we expect schools to deliver” and holding schools accountable for delivering all of these outcomes. Australia’s Productivity Commission added its voice to the conversation in a recent report that became the subject for an article by Ross Gittins of the Sydney Morning Herald. The Productivity Commission states "A good school system ensures that people have the key foundational skills — numeracy, literacy, analytical skills — and the capacity to learn so that they can easily acquire knowledge throughout their lives. And‘soft’ skills, such as teamwork, collaboration, leadership and creativity are equally essential to adaptability and retention of employment”. According to Gittins "It's obvious our classroom teaching isn't as effective as it needs to be, but we've done little about it.”  and the productivity points the finger at teacher effectiveness and calls for "a more rigorous micro evidence base about what works in schools and how it should be implemented”. 

The pattern here is clear, schools need to change, education needs to shift its focus and the point of action is at the coal face with better teaching and accountability. But this seems to ignore the most significant obstacle to change, the elephant in the room perhaps. 

Assessment is probably the strongest driver of education and the most significant obstacle to change. While high stakes testing focuses on low order skills, an emphasis on recall of knowledge and learned strategies for responding to predominantly content based questions progress will be stifled. Open a dialogue with teachers about the need to teach dispositions and it will not be long before someone says “That’s all very good, but I need to get my students ready for the test”. 

Not that students suffer when we provide them with a curriculum that includes content and competencies, capabilities or dispositions. As research by the likes of David Perkins, Ron Ritchhart and Guy Claxton makes clear: If we teach our children to think then they will do better on the test and they will do better in life. Nevertheless, educational reform would occur at a faster pace if an at least equal emphasis was placed on gathering evidence of students attainment of the dispositions that so many are claiming to be essential. What we test is what we value and if we do not test for dispositions such as creativity, critical thinking and collaboration they will continue to be second rate citizens to foundational skills in numeracy and literacy.

By Nigel Coutts

Without changes in education, the future of work will leave more people behind - Sarah Gosner

Foundation for Young Australians

Claxton, G. & Lucas, B. (2015) Educating Ruby: What our children really need to learn. Wales; Crown House Publishing

First Steps - CBI

Miranda Jefferson & Michael Anderson (2017) Transforming Schools: Creativity, Critical Reflection, Communication, Collaboration. London; Bloomsbury

OECD 2030 Framework for Education

Something's gone badly wrong with teaching

Australian Productivity Commission - Shifting the Dial

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status and Education Pt 3

Pedagogy and curriculum that engages students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and is deemed personally relevant to the lives they live, are seen as important factors towards equality of outcome by Wrench, Hammond, McCallum and Price (2012). Their research involved designing a curriculum and pedagogy that would be highly engaging to students of low-socioeconomic status. 'The interventions involved curriculum redesigns that set meaningful, challenging learning task(s) (culminating in high quality learning products); strong connection to student life-worlds; and a performative expectation for student learning.’ (Wrench et al 2012 p934) 'Themes included: identity and agency within a community context; models of communities of practice that focused on learning in social settings; and, a holistic approach to the constructions of well-being and engagement.’ (Wrench et al 2012 p935)

The inclusion of ‘place-based’ learning and experiences that created a sense of community were found to be important factors along with well-being aspects of a holistic programme that engaged learners with their learning and allowed students to better engage with their aspirations. 'Re-designing the curriculum with a well-being focus provided the opportunity for students to explore and imagine possible futures and aspirations beyond their current life-worlds.’ (Wrench et al 2012 p943)

In exploring a pedagogy of poverty Haberman (1991) found that the tendency is to align the students with a model pedagogy, one that is reactive to the perceived needs of a setting where economic disadvantage is the norm. ‘Simply stated, we act as if it is not the pedagogy that must be fitted to the students but the students who must accept an untouchable method.’ (Haberman 1991 p292) Haberman notes that in schools with a low-socioeconomic status teachers are not judged for their failure to educate their students but for a failure to elicit compliance. This results in a particular pedagogical style dominated by top-down control with limited student agency.

This ineffective pedagogy is absent from quality schools regardless of their student population replaced by the strategies of ‘good teaching’. Student involvement with issues they believe are important, discussion of human differences, student planning of activities, student application of ideals such as fairness and justice, inclusion of real-life experiences, heterogeneous groups, critical thinking, polishing and improving work and active reflection are the hallmarks of quality teaching according to Haberman (1991).

Programmes such as ‘School is for Me’ (DEET NSW, 2006) aim to alter the way that students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds perceive and engage with school. By focusing on presenting students with engaging messages around who possesses valued knowledge, who has ability, who is in control, who owns the place and who has a voice in the school the program aims to reveal to students that school is a place for them and not one that is owned and controlled by teachers or others external to their community. The success that such a programme has had in engaging students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, who had previously shown disengagement from school reveals that funding alone will not produce equitable outcomes. Changes to the messaging systems of pedagogy, curriculum and assessment need to occur so that all students see the personal relevance of school to their lives. 

In a deficit discourse students of low-socioeconomic backgrounds are described as disengaged and having low-aspirations which schools need to raise but this view is contradicted by research undertaken by Reid and Faye (2014). This research indicates that indeed students in their study 'positively expressed a desire to be engaged in their learning and to succeed in their schooling.’ (Reid et al 2014 p205). What the students required was assistance in mapping a path towards their aspirations and dreams and help in expanding their capacity to aspire, something schools can and should play a part in.

Shifting how we view the purpose of education plays a part in discourses of educational disadvantage. When viewed as a screening measure differences in educational outcomes, even those that occur systemically and for reasons beyond the individuals control are excused. In a society where education is imagined as a process for screening candidates into future career pathways based on the identification of ability, the failure of this system to account for differences not related to ability is excused for the good of the result. 'It means that unequal incomes and unequal social standing in adulthood are seen as the outcomes of greater or less merit in an impartial process of selection'. (Connell & White 1991 p20) If education is about something more than screening students and if we are able to see that a multitude of factors play a part in allowing for academic success we will look to maximise the place that our educational systems can play in the future lives of every child and every community. 

by Nigel Coutts

References

Barr, A., Constable, E., Pike, B., Bartlett, D., Lomax-Smith, J., & Welford, R. Scrymgour, M., Firth, V. & Gillard, J. (2008). Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. Ministerial Council on Education.

Bauman, L., Silver, E. and Stein, R., (2006) Cumulative social disadvantage and child health, Pediatrics, Vol. 117, No. 4, April.

Connell, R., Johnston, K. & White, V. (1991) Rethinking the relationship between poverty and education in Running Twice as Hard: The Disadvantaged Schools Program in Australia. Geelong, Deakin University Press. 

Department of Education and Training (2006) School is for me: Pathways to student engagement. Sydney

Foucault, M. (1990) The history of sexuality: Volume 1: an introduction (Melbourne, Penguin).

Gonski, D. (2012). Review of funding for schooling. Canberra: Dept. of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

Haberman, M. (2010). The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(2), 81-87.

Levin, H. M. (1998). Educational vouchers: Effectiveness, choice and costs. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 17(3), 373–392.

Lim, P., Gemici, S., Rice, J., & Karmel, T. (2011). Socioeconomic status and the allocation of government resources in Australia. Education + Training, 53(7), 570-586.

Najman, J., Bor, W., Morrison, J., Andersen, M., & Williams, G. (1992). Child developmental delay and socio-economic disadvantage in Australia: A longitudinal study. Social Science & Medicine, 34(8), 829-835.

OECD (2012), Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting disadvantaged students and schools, OECD Publishing

Reid, A. & McCallum, F. (2014). 'Becoming your best’: student perspectives on community in the pursuit of aspirations. The Australian Educational Researcher, 41(2), 195-207.

United Nations (1948) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Accessed Online 22.4.2016 http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ 

Vinson, T. (2007)  Dropping off the edge: the distribution of disadvantage in Australia A report by Professor Tony Vinson for Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services Australia. Jesuit Social Services / Catholic Social Services Australia

Vinson, T., Rawsthorne, M., Beavis, A., & Ericson, M.(2015) Dropping off the edge: Persistent communal disadvantage in Australia. Jesuit Social Services / Catholic Social Services Australia

Watson, L. & Ryan, C. (2010). Choosers and losers: The impact of government subsidies on Australian secondary schools. Australian Journal Of Education, 54(1), 86-107. 

Wrench, A., Hammond, C., McCallum, F., & Price, D. (2013). Inspire to aspire: raising aspirational outcomes through a student well-being curricular focus. International Journal Of Inclusive Education, 17(9), 932-947. 

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status and Education Pt 2

An unavoidable element of the discourse around educational disadvantage or equality is how we define and assess equality. One definition will see this as being in equality of access to education, funding for education and/or resources. Such an approach has largely been seen in government funding models however subtle variations on this theme have resulted in significant differences in resulting policies.

A simplistic funding model would see each school that is funded by the government receive a fixed amount per student (something like $9,697 per primary student and $11,945 per secondary student in 2011 (Gonski et al 2011 p59)). In Australia subsidies for non-government schools (Independent and Catholic) has resulted in relative disparities in socio-economic status with government schools. Parental choice for school type has resulted in a higher concentration of high-socioeconomic status families in non-government schools according to Watson and Ryan (2010). 'Adverse peer effects generated by high concentrations of low-SES students in public schools can be expected to place further downward pressure on student performance in the public school system’. (Watson & Ryan 2010 p104)

This concentration of low-socioeconomic status children in public schools means that funding demands for these schools will be higher conclude Watson & Ryan (2010). Complicating the distribution of students between public and private sectors is research by Levin (1998) who found that families with high-socioeconomic status and high academic achievement levels are more likely to choose a school other than the default public school option for their children. ‘Families that are better-off may be more likely to take advantage of school choice than those that are worse off because of better access to information, greater ability to afford transportation, a higher penchant to exercise educational alternatives, and greater generic experience with choice and alternatives.’ (Levin, 1998 p379)
 
An alternate funding model was proposed by Gonski et al in what is commonly referenced in the media as the Gonski Report and has given rise to the social media campaign ‘I give a Gonski’. According to Gonski 'Public funding arrangements need to react to the nature of the educational challenges faced by a system or school given its characteristics and student population, regardless of whether it is in the government or non-government sector.’ To do this a new schooling resource standard was suggested; 'The standard would be explicitly linked to expected educational outcomes, rather than historical levels of resource inputs, and geared to providing all students with the opportunity to meet agreed national educational outcomes.’ (Gonski et al 2011 p69) Gonski uses socio-economic status as a value in determining the need of schools using data from Australian Bureau of Statistics to adjust the required funding level. This report resulted in additional funding for schools to be provided over six years starting in 2014. This funding is now under review by the present government.
 
Models such as that outlined by Gonski are aimed at providing schools with the level of funding they require to achieve a national standard of educational outcomes and aim to take into account many of the factors which influence the success of schools in areas of economic disadvantage. 'Likewise, pressing for additional skilled support to help ensure the successful launching of children’s education and to help maintain their meaningful engagement in school and post-school training and education, would also address another of the recurring features of the most disadvantaged areas'. (Vinson, 2015 p14)

As the largest percentage of school operating costs are directly associated with teacher salaries (78% for private schools (Watson & Ryan 2010 p92)) it is not surprising that much of the debate around school equity relates to teacher quality and teacher/student ratios. Attracting quality teachers into areas of socio-economic disadvantage is a goal proposed to enhance the quality of learning that occurs but is one that significantly oversimplifies the reality of what is required. 

Having attracted quality teachers into an area the imperative is to then keep them and to extend and enrich their capacities. Access to professional development is essential and this carries direct and indirect costs. A culture of collaboration and efforts to develop professional learning communities are effective strategies towards this goal. Free quality Professional Development is increasingly available through a mix of social media and free events such as Teach Meets. A school culture that promotes participation in these learning communities has benefits for all. 

In Part Three we turn to the question of pedagogical adjustments which benefit students from from low socio-economic backgrounds. 

By Nigel Coutts

Read Part One

Full references published with Part Three.

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status & Education Pt 1

The role that education plays in issues of social equity and justice cannot be undervalued. It is acknowledged by the United Nations as a human right, 'Everyone has the right to education’ (United Nations, 1948) and as outlined in the Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians 'As a nation Australia values the central role of education in building a democratic, equitable and just society— a society that is prosperous, cohesive and culturally diverse, and that values Australia’s Indigenous cultures as a key part of the nation’s history, present and future.’ (Barr et al, 2008). Such lofty assertions of the importance of education as a right and national value should be sufficient to ensure that all Australians have access to an education of the highest standard with equitable outcomes for all, the reality is that this is not the case and the reasons for this remain complex, divisive and politically entrenched. Discourses of equity, power and societal expectation play a part in helping us understand how access to education and disparities in the quality of outcome experienced shapes Australian society and advantages some to the detriment of others. 

The connections between socio-economic status and education are intertwined such that a deficit in one is linked to a deficit in the other. 'The persistent social and economic marginalisation of individuals and groups within society has significant detrimental direct and indirect impacts. Such marginalisation tends to create a “vicious cycle” of disadvantage, limiting access to educational opportunities, which in turn leads to poor labour market outcomes and low earnings.’ (Lim, Gemici, Rice & Karmel, 2011 p570) The connection between socio-economic status and educational achievement is made clear by Professor Tony Vinson whose study of factors resulting in disadvantage and its distribution across Australia states that 'The report highlights the particularly strong link between intergenerational poverty and low educational attainment.’ (Vinson, 2007 p1) Vinson’s study outlines how disadvantage on measures such as education, health, criminality, access to services, employment and community services is unevenly distributed and 'finds that just 1.7 percent of postcodes and communities across Australia account for more than seven times their share of top rank positions of the major factors that cause intergenerational poverty’ (Vinson, 2007 p1).

Vinson reveals the complexity of the interconnections between aspects of disadvantage and the complexity that exists as one tries to describe its causes or identify solutions. 'Poverty, low parental education and single parent family structure are not simply proxies for a single underlying disadvantage but have additive effects on the life chances of children.' (Bauman, Silver and Stein, 2006 p1326) While implicated in many studies as a factor (Connell & White 1991)(Lim, Gemici, Rice & Karmel, 2011)((Vinson, 2007 & 2015)(Bauman, Silver and Stein, 2006) (OECD, 2012), equity of educational outcome alone can not explain the distribution of social disadvantage and measures to minimise its influence will not be achieved through educational reform alone. As Connell and White assert ‘Poverty and education is an issue no one likes to own. It is complicated, it is frustrating, and it does not lend itself to grand gestures’. ‘In fact the issue is both welfare business and school’s business’. (Connell, Johnston & White 1991 ch2 p 1)

'The observation that children reared in socio-economic disadvantage experience developmental delays and intellectual deficits raises basic questions to do with appropriate social and welfare policies.' (Najman, Bor, Morrison, Andersen & Williams, 1992 p833) This finding by Najman et al reveals a connection beyond academic achievement and indicates a connection between low-socioeconomic standing and attainment of normal developmental milestones. This research indicates that more needs to be done to redress the influence of socioeconomic standing than improving schools as there are broader health issues implicated in this study. A discourse of school blaming or school failure oversimplifies the reality of the situation but is a common element of analysis. The OECD when addressing ‘Equity and Quality in Education’ writes that 'Educational failure also imposes high costs on society. Poorly educated people limit economies’ capacity to produce, grow and innovate. School failure damages social cohesion and mobility, and imposes additional costs on public budgets to deal with the consequences – higher spending on public health and social support and greater criminality, among others.’ (OECD 2012 p3) The implication in the phrasing ‘poorly educated people’ is that the remedy lies within the school and the quality of education received, broader societal issues that impede the capacity of the school to achieve equitable outcomes for students are overlooked in such a simplistic analysis. 

Understanding the complexity and interconnectedness of the issues causing and impacted by socio-economic disadvantage allows individual elements to be addressed singularly while not ignoring their relationship with others. As Foucault warns 'we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies.' (Foucault, 1990, p. 101) Such an approach is useful within education and for those operating within educational systems. Identifying the multiplicity of discourses connected to power and policy that influence the trajectory of social endeavours such as educational reform is essential. 

By Nigel Coutts

In Part Two we explore definitions of Equity and in Part Three Pedagogical response. 

Full references will be published with Part three

Project Zero Turns 50

This year is the fiftieth birthday of Harvard’s Project Zero, a research project designed to explore the nature of thinking and learning and from this suggest pedagogies which align with what we know about the mind. For its birthday celebration Project Zero shared insights from its five decades of research with presentations from Howard Gardner, David Perkins, Shari Tasman, Steve Seidel and Daniel Wilson. The presentations revealed the changing nature of the work of Project Zero from its early days and focus on arts education to its current position as a research organisation with broad interests across education but with a focus on thinking, understanding and the workings of the mind.

By keeping changes in Mind in mind, we might move beyond replicating classrooms from the 1850s

Daniel Wilson set the tone of the presentations by stating that educators must keep changes in Mind in mind. The implication being that as our understanding of the mind expands our interactions with it through learning and teaching must also evolve and expand; something that Wilson shows has not occurred historically. This has been the work of Project Zero and projects such as Teaching for Understanding and Making Thinking Visible provide teachers and most importantly learners the frameworks required. The great value that Project Zero brings lies in the research basis for its work and the clear connections its researchers make with practices which are applicable in the real world and real classrooms. 

Howard Gardner took us back to the early days of education where in the 1850s much of the structure of education was invented and implemented for the first time. Over subsequent years and decades our thinking about the mind changed from behaviourist notions with a strict focus on the visible behaviours which could be manipulated through rewards and punishments, testing of intelligence where what was considered intelligent was what the test tested, towards a science of cognitive psychology and an interest in what might lie behind the behaviours and on to more modern understandings from neuroscience. Beyond the individual social factors for thinking and learning evolved and with each new piece of research our understanding of Mind has expanded and evolved. From its early days of exploring linkages between the arts and the mind to today, Gardner shows how Project Zero has evolved our understanding.

David Perkins in his engaging storytelling style shared with us the story of the Evil Empire of IQ and revealed that contrary to popular belief intelligence is so much more than is revealed by a score on a test. Perkins asked the question "what does it mean to be smart” and his response showed that the errors in the common understanding. He reminded us that the evolving understanding of the mind shows:

• Smart as multiple - we are not all smart in the same way nor are we smart in a singular way. There are the smarts we use when we are being creative and these are not the same as the smarts we use when we are being business minded and these are not the same as the ones we use when being social
• Smart as learnable - that through the development of thinking strategies and the use of scaffolds for our mind we can enhance our smarts
• Smart as dispositional - that much of what we consider as smart are indeed dispositions and that can be developed or enhanced and that the utility of these dispositions requires not only the capacity for the disposition but the desire to deploy it and a sensitivity to its utility in given circumstances all of which can be learned
• Smart as performative - It’s not the knowledge, it’s what you do with the knowledge, It’s not knowing a lot it’s how you think with what you know.

Perkins concluded by urging us to consider the implications for this broader definition of what it means to be smart and what this looks like in the classroom. "Imagine a classroom where what’s central is not repeating what you know or repeating the standard routines, but this further layer of exploration putting that knowledge to work. In Jerome Bruner’s famous phrase “Going beyond the information given” That's what should be our earmark for a really rich generative setting for learning “Going beyond the information given”.

Shari Tishman focused on the work of the Visible Thinking project; "Visibility as a force for learning - a rich area of research Project Zero - two decades and going strong”. Tishman asked "What happens when instruction is designed to help learners externalise; to make visible their thinking to themselves and one another?” With examples from the classroom Tishman showed that by making thinking visible we allow learners and teachers to understand where they are with their thinking, how they got there and to move forward to a deeper understanding. She shared how the use of thinking routines such as “Notice, Know, Wonder” allows for a deep engagement with learning and takes students beyond recall of knowledge, towards understanding. 

Steven Seidel urged us to “turn teaching on its head” in response to what we now know about Mind. In his words:

"The radical preconceptions of the minds we have been hearing about and our new understandings of how people learn suggest we probably need a radical reconceptualisation of what it means to teach and indeed I think we do, just as these streams of research and theory have led us to turn our concepts of mind on their head, so to speak, clearly we need to turn teaching on its head as well. "
 
"To be sure while we have evolved our understanding of the mind in many if not most schools, classrooms and other learning environments, we have not changed our minds about what it means to teach. We may have changed our minds but we haven’t changed our practice so much. If you look in on most classrooms today you’ll see variations on old models of teaching, not radical reconceptualisations of what it means to learn and therefore to teach."

Sadly, as Seidel noted "Paradigms don’t shift until they are ready"
 
Seidel urged us to see teachers as curators of three core principles at the heart of education; as curators of curiosity, curriculum and culture. 

• Teachers as curators of curiosity, both their students and their own - students and teachers as creators of knowledge - Seidel noted that teachers are well placed to develop and extend our understanding of the curation of curiosity.
• Teachers as creators of curriculum - building on what is there but also on what is within the community and what matters to learners. “A different model of a curriculum, one that is long term, often place based, open to taking new directions as it unfolds, aesthetically rich, community connected and oriented to produce products and performances"  - not a teacher proofed commercial curriculum or one mandated by government and monitored by high stakes testing. 
• Teachers as creators of Culture - Not as transmitters of the culture of the dominant society. but to "think of things as if they could be otherwise, to use our imaginations in service of our ethical sensibility and to recast our works as teachers toward the creation of just, equitable and democratic classrooms and school cultures”

Learning as . . . according to Steven Seidel

The work of Project Zero is ongoing and increasingly global. In the words of Howard Gardner, it is an institution that is not the lengthened shadow of one man as imagined by Ralph Waldo Emerson but is the shadow of a whole community. It is a community dedicated to the betterment of education for all, and one that seeks to understand and respond to debates around the purposes and processes of education with sound research and respect for the complex nature of the subject.

As a teacher who has benefited from the thinking of Project Zero I thank all involved and wish you a happy birthday. We will watch with anticipation to see what comes next. 

Learn more - 

Project Zero 50 Years

Project Zero Website

By Nigel Coutts
 
 

What if? Reflections from the ACSA Conference

Last week I spent three days thinking about curriculum and all that it means to teaching and learning thanks to the Australian Curriculum Studies Association’s biannual conference. It was three days of deeply thoughtful conversation and learning with just the right mix of academic research and ideas for grounded practice straight out of innovative classrooms and schools. With keynotes by Alan Reid, Dan Haesler, Bob Lingard, Robert Randall and Jan Owen combined with Masterclasses from some of Australia’s leading educators there was much on offer. The biggest challenge was deciding which workshop you would attend when every session offered such outstanding opportunities. 
 
One of the very clear take-aways from the three days is that there is a great pool of talent and wisdom within the Australia’s education profession. Our educators are passionate, informed, thoughtful and knowledgeable, they are enthusiastic and driven to meet the challenges of these times of chaos, complexity and change head on and they always put the needs of their learners first. With so much professional wisdom to draw upon Australia should be leading the world. Unfortunately too often the key decisions are made in isolation from the professionals who know best, by politicians and policy makers without adequate consultation with the expertise within the profession. 
 
It is also apparent that Australia has an equity issue when it comes to education. This is the conversation that is lacking from the national agenda of education reform with its focus on blaming teachers and schools for a supposed decline in Australia’s ranking on international assessments. What is also shown by this data is that more interesting questions about the distribution of academic achievement are revealed. Socio-economic status has in Australia a significant impact on educational achievement and the achievement gap between those with low and high SES is greater in Australia than in many other countries. We need to engage in conversations about why this is so what might be done about it.  
 
Innovation is happening in Australian schools and it is happening across sectors, sections and locations. Greg Miller is the founding Principal of St Luke’s Catholic College in Marsden Park a school with a clear vision and a desire to explore what is achievable when building a school from the ground up. Their vision statement reveals a thoughtful imagining of what is possible; "With a commitment to ‘Live the Good News’, St Luke’s nurtures faith-filled, curious children to become creative contributors and innovative problem solvers for a changing world.” With his team of educators Greg is creating a culture for learning backed by the structures and spaces which best serve their collaboratively set goals. This is a team of educators who will not be held back by ideas of what education should be like. 
 
Kurri Kurri High School realised that their Year Seven students were not engaged with their education so they made changes, big changes. They engaged with an expert, listened to their teams, noticed what was happening and implemented a new model that disrupted the norms. In place of the traditional timetable and typical class structure they moved to a model that integrates interdisciplinary learning, collaborative teaching and matches the structure of the class to the learning intentions. Students spend their time in Hubs, Pods and Huddles. A Hub involves up to sixty students learning with three teachers and this allows for the teacher with the most expertise in the learning at hand to lead while the other two move into the role of expert learners with the students. From Hubs, students move to Pods with up to 20 students and one teacher and here learning becomes increasingly targeted on the individual. Huddles are a group of three students with an emphasis on metacognition and reflective practice. With learning spaces adjusted to suit and aspects of consistent pedagogy and identification of non-negotiable learning across disciplines students benefit from a learning platform that drives their learning forward. The best indicator of their success is the manner in which students are able to describe where they are with their learning journey, what got them there and where they need to go next. 
 
There are schools building communities of practice to identify and target goals that matter to them. Hilltop Road Public school identified a need to target how their students articulated their learning. This resulted in an action research project which targeted metacognition and was led by the school’s executive team functioning as a community of practice rather than a more traditional leadership team; a team of learners exploring what was most needed and what would suit their context. Lakemba Public school implemented observational rounds to develop and evolve collaboratively constructed lessons. A team of teachers plan a lesson together; one member of the team delivers it to a class with the other team members observing. At the end of the lesson everyone involved in planning the lessons discusses what worked and what can be improved. Critique of the lesson is open as it comes from those responsible for planning it. 

Strategies for leadership and change management were shared. Dan Haesler challenged us with questions from Appreciative Inquiry, questions we do not normally ask but ones which encourage real reflection on our practice. “When are we at our best?”, "Now wouldn’t it be great if . . “, “What’s stopping us  . . “ and “What do you want to do?”. By beginning with a reflection of what we like most about our current context and exploring ideas that evolve from that with a clear expectation that we do dwell on obstacles early in the process, we arrived at a set of actionable possibilities stated in language that would assist with implementation. Cameron Paterson had us engage in five minutes of free writing as a way of exploring a problem related to leadership, curriculum or innovation. This is a strategy Cameron uses with his students when he wants them to think deeply about a topic before exploring it in a more collaborative setting. Five minutes of focused writing without the option to stop or pause brings a new dimension to the task of writing and encourages ideas to flow and take charge unhindered by the usual demands of accurate spelling and grammar; this is pure ideation. With a paragraph of ideas we moved into small groups and utilised the Brainstorming Possibilities Protocol to share a puzzle and gather potential solutions. 
 
A highlight was Professor Alan Reid sharing his ideas for the evolution of the Australian Curriculum. One of his recommendations cut to the core of much of the current debate in education around which pedagogical methods supposedly have the most effect. Professor Reid recommends ACARA works to minimise the negative effects of the artificial split between curriculum and pedagogy. This split ensures that a content heavy curriculum and its associated assessments will dictate a mode of pedagogy which best serves learning of this content. A curriculum with greater emphasis on dispositions of learning, problem finding, solving and inquiry would be better served by a pedagogy that facilitates these modes of learning. Until the curriculum aligns with pedagogies which target dispositions for learning we are likely to be confronted by research that favours pedagogies that best serve knowledge building. Bob Lingard described the binary of contemporary curriculum concerns which must balance what knowledge students ought to know and what sort of people they ought to become. This all points to the heart of the question that seems to have always confronted education: What and whose purposes does education serve?
 
Other voices rounded out the conference. We heard the story of a refugee from Deena Yako and were challenged to seek a richer understanding of the backgrounds of the students we teach. Deena encouraged us to acknowledge the culture of our students and to not shy away from conversations about the culture and the worlds that refugees have left behind them; to allow them to share their past and their memories of their home. Omar Musa challenged our thinking with his poetry. Confronting and gritty, Omar’s poetry shines a light on Australian life that many of us turn a blind eye to; the lives of the disaffected and marginalised youth living in our suburbs away from the privileged, romanticised ideals of Australia as a land of opportunity and yet through his words he shares a deep patriotism and desire to make his home a better place for all. 
 
And finally, the conference was a great opportunity to connect with other educators and share stories. We are a community of learners with a passion to share our practice and in doing so we make the profession stronger. The future of the Australian Curriculum matters and needs to be high on the list of priorities for all educators. We can either sit by and let it along with assessment and teacher accreditation be things that happen to us, or we can unite and shape these things in the way that we know will best serve the needs of our learners. Bob Lingard's call to action is profound, “You don’t want to be the one who knew change was needed but didn’t do anything about it”. 
 
 
 By Nigel Coutts

Modern Spaces for Contemporary Learning

Think back to how you felt after the last day you spent at a conference or course. If things went well you probably came out feeling enthused by new ideas but also exhausted and fatigued in ways that you don’t after a regular day at work. If the presenters have done their job well and you choose your workshops wisely, the day should have been full of learning that resulted from you having to think. Days like this should work our brains hard and it should be no surprise when we are fatigued by such an experience.

Conferences bring other fatigue inducing factors. A change of routine, the temptations offered by the catering and day under artificial lighting. They also often require long periods of motionless sitting, in chairs that offer little genuine comfort, arranged in cramped rows that afford little to no personal space. Conferences are a great escape, but it is nice to return to our normal routines and give our minds and bodies time to reset. 

Now imagine you are student in a traditional classroom; a student in one of those classrooms that looks just like classrooms did in the 1800s. Let’s assume that you have teachers who challenge your thinking, who are engaging and present lessons full of stimulation. Every lesson throughout your day is a model of quality teaching and you leave every class wanting more. Let’s assume your classmates are actively engaged in their learning and inspire you to do the same. This is perhaps the dream learning experience and yet at the end of the day it should still be no surprise that you are feeling more than a little fatigued by the experience. 

With your brain awash with ideas you head home. After an evening of extracurricular activities, daily chores and an hour of homework you finally get to bed. Throw into the mix a busy and at times challenging social and family life and the average day brings a significant cognitive load. While you sleep your brain busily processes the learning from the day before, makes new connections and extends your knowledge banks. 

In the morning, you awake and do it all again. And then again the next day and then the next. 

In reality, amidst the mix of spectacular lessons are a whole lot of fairly average experiences and some you would rather forget. There are probably whole sections of the curriculum that you don’t connect with and teachers with whom you have barely connected with at all. There are classmates who are distracting, disruptive and difficult to learn with. There are changes to the routine, interruptions and special events which break the flow of your learning. Lunchtime and recess are often the highlight of the day. Boredom more than fatigue becomes the enemy and the mind wanders. 

This is when traditional classroom seating comes to the rescue. Uncomfortable, hard and restrictive seating brings your mind back into the room but takes it nowhere near the learning. You notice the painful pressure points and are overwhelmed by a desire to fidget as you try to find a more comfortable position. At this point any distraction is a welcome one and you long for the lesson to end so you can move again. All learning has stopped. 

Fortunately, there are alternatives and many learning institutions are exploring what is possible. Inspired by innovations in the corporate world from tech giants such as Google office design has seen some radical changes in the past decade. Beige is out, colour is in. Static, rigid seating is out and movement permissible options abound. With options for sit/stand desks the notion of office seating is completely challenged. Meetings occur in spaces resembling lounges and sitting on the floor or in a comfortable bean bag is more than OK. Google images of 'innovative office spaces’ or combine IDEO or Google or Pixar with office spaces and you will be amazed at what you find. Places that are as imaginative as the products produced within them.  

Search for Innovative Office Spaces on Google and this is what you find.

Schools are starting to embrace these new ways of thinking and companies that design furniture for them are responding. Look at the catalogue of any of the large manufacturers of school furniture and you will find items you would happily place in your home. The shift is away from a one size fits all mentality to spaces that are full of comfortable options with the flexibility needed to adjust to changing circumstances. The most innovative spaces combine comfort with a sense of whimsy which invites creativity and inspires the imagination. Why learn in a classroom when you can learn on a pirate ship or in a pod that looks like it grew out of the floor. 

As with all change in schools the biggest obstacle is tradition. We have strong ideas of what a classroom should look like and balk at ideas which challenge this. Many believe that rigorous learning can’t possibly take place in environments which do not align with images of the traditional classroom; the type that they experienced. We need to challenge these ideas and show that it is indeed possible to create spaces that are a joy to learn in and where comfort, creativity and learning go hand in hand. Contemporary learning expects a great deal from its students and they deserve spaces which ease the physical load while inspiring their best thinking. 

By Nigel Coutts

For ideas look at these manufacturers:

• BFX Furniture - https://www.bfx.com.au/
• Furnware - https://www.furnwareaus.com.au/
• RAECO - https://www.raeco.com.au/ 

Destinationitis - Preparing for tomorrow while missing today

Destinationitis is the tendency to focus more on where you are going than where you are. You will frequently see groups of trekkers suffering from destinationitis. So focused are they on making it to the end of the trek or the next rest stop that they storm through the wilderness oblivious to the beauty that surrounds them. Destinationitis similarly afflicts educators but here the consequences are borne by the students.

In education destinationitis occurs whenever we think about the next phase in our students learning and how we may adjust their current setting so it best prepares them for where they are headed. In many ways it is a noble mission but in practice it can miss the mark. This goal of preparing our students for the next phase in their learning too often results in efforts to make their current setting more like what they are moving to. But should this be our path?

Consider the traveller who has just arrived in Paris. Their next destination is Rome. Applying the logic of the destinationitis obsessed teacher they will spend their time in Paris speaking Italian, seeking out Italian dining experiences and reading about Italian culture. They arrive in Rome fully prepared but have experienced nothing of Parisian life. Rather than a life enriched by their experiences and embiggened by their time in the “now” they move forward untouched and unchanged by the opportunities of where they are. 

This is the danger of destinationitis for the educator. We look ahead beyond the next transition point to the challenges the student will face and then bring those experiences into their current learning environment. High school students must be organised, use a diary, write a TEEL paragraph, manage multiple classrooms and multiple teachers. Primary schools must prepare students for this world and so we see Primary Schools adopting the structures and methods of High School. University students are required to engage in great quantities of academic writing and will master the APA style and thus it is not surprising to see High School students learning such methods. The world of work beyond school requires a particular set of skills and so it is only logical according to destinationitis that these skills are introduced in schools. 

Extend this logic downwards and we very quickly see Kindergarten students who are required to complete requisition forms for crayons to ensure they are workplace ready. Take this logic the other way and High School ultimately becomes preparation for a happy and fulfilling retirement. 

What our students need is the very best experience of learning where they are. When we value the ‘now’ more than the ‘next' we are able to plan and deliver experiences that are exactly what our students need now. We start with a knowledge of where our students are, we take the time to know them as learners, we connect them with their passions and we deliver learning experiences that are spectacularly engaging and challenging. 

When our students do finally move on to the next phase in their learning journey they carry forward their experiences and build on those as they confront new challenges. They move forward with a growing sense of themselves as learners and as navigators of their learning journeys. They believe in their ability to learn and have had positive experiences of learning and of learning to learn. They have maintained their sense of curiosity and are adept at asking questions. They are not motivated by external measures nor do they see learning as preparation for something in their future but instead value it as a natural part of their life now and always.

As educators we owe it to our students perhaps more than ever to avoid destinationitis. The students we teach to learn today more than anything else will need to be lifelong learners who understand that learning is not something you do with tomorrow in mind but to make today brighter. 
 

By Nigel Coutts

Making Time for Quiet Contemplation

In our busy and highly connected lives it can be difficult to find time to slow down, to deliberately and mindfully engage in reflective contemplation. Taking the time to do so can be significant for success, creativity, mental well-being and learning and yet we seem to struggle to commit time to this valuable practice. Schools, in particular seem to offer little time for students to slow down and think, and with the busy lives students lead such time is often entirely absent.
 
Taking time to sit and think should not be considered a luxury but as a vital component for learning and growth. Having actively engaged our minds in the activities of learning we must then allow ourselves the time we require to process our new ideas and for this new learning to be incorporated with our prior-understandings. Deliberate reflective time requires us to disengage from highly cognitive tasks. By both reflecting actively on ideas and giving our minds time to “play” with ideas in the background of our consciousness we create the circumstances required for deep learning. 
 
These times when our mind is not harassed by the general noise of our day-today lives is also the time when new ideas are likely to spring forth. Sadly, the time for such endeavours is often blocked by our always on and always connected lives. We are never more than a few clicks away from our connected selves and the seemingly engaging distractions that this world entices us with. The challenge is to find times in our days where we are almost forced to disconnect and allow ourselves the time we require for contemplative thinking.
 
For me this time is often during my daily commute. While I travel to work and back each day amidst the stop-start traffic that is the norm of any large city, I find the time for my mind to drift and wander. On weekends the daily walk with the dogs provides a similar experience, although this is frequently disrupted by the excitement of a passing cat or an unusually interesting smell and the resulting jerk on the leads as my companions explore. It is in these times that I make some sense of the day’s events or when possible solutions to challenges emerge. More often than not the best ideas, the more creative solutions, emerge from the quiet moments where the problem is floating in the background of my mind rather than heckling for attention. 
 
The weekly process of blogging has proven to be an excellent reflective practice. From pondering possible topics, to exploring them in depth through the writing process I have found that I gain and hopefully share insights. I read once that you should only decide to blog for your personal benefit, dreams of building an audience should not play a significant part in the decision. I have found great value in the process of writing each week and for me the blog has become a catalog of my thoughts over the years along with a repository for ideas I have researched and explored within my professional learning. Such a practice of regular reflective writing has value to students and along with daily engagement in reading is a practice that should be encouraged. 
 
The tendency to fill every waking moment with activities is a trend we should seriously take stock of. Our time is precious and there are many ways in which it can be wasted but the deliberate and mindful process of contemplative thought should not be confused with mindless inactivity. The processes of learning, problem solving, ideation and creativity occur as much or more so during periods of inactivity as they do during times of activity. When we value learning over work we become open to the possibility that a student whose mind seems to be wondering, who is not actively “doing” the set task may indeed be fully immersed with their learning. The subtle shift in our language choices from ‘work', with its focus on productivity and activity, to ‘learning’, associated with cognition and the building of connections between ideas in the mind, allows us to value periods of apparent inactivity. Too often does the ‘work' minded teacher break the mental flow achieved by a learner in a state of contemplation with the call to ‘get back to work”.
 
Find the time for contemplation and reflective thinking. Value it as a part of your professional practice and never feel guilty for taking time away from the active doing of your duties. 
 

By Nigel Coutts

Contemplating the consequences of Constructivism

Constructivism is one of those ideas we throw around in educational circles without stopping to think about what we mean by it. They are the terms that have multiple meanings, are at once highly technical and common usage and are likely to cause debate and disagreements. Constructivism in particular carries a quantity of baggage with it. It is a term that is appropriated by supporters of educational approaches that are in stark contrast to the opposing view; constructivism vs didactic methods or direct instruction. The question is what are the origins of constructivism and does a belief in this as an approach to understanding learning necessitate an abandonment of direct instruction or is this a false dichotomy?

At the heart of most cognitive approaches to understanding learning is the notion that knowledge is constructed by the learner and informed and influenced by the learner’s previous experiences. Constructivism, in particular, is an approach to understanding learning that begins with the notion that meaning is constructed by the learner. (O’Donnell 2012)

The common element across models is that the learner, exposed to stimulus from the environment, creates, adapts or evolves internal representations or schemata (cognitive structures) and in doing so extends their knowledge. What varies, and it is subtle, is whether new knowledge is a reconstruction of structures in the environment, an internal re-structuring of existing structures in response to the environment or an internalisation of processes modelled and then practiced. The degree to which social factors add further complications. In each case learning is a process which occurs within the mind of the individual as they process stimuli arriving from their sensory buffer from their environment (broadly speaking), into working memory and onward into long-term memory. 
 
From this basis and underpinning it are a host of beliefs about how the brain processes and stores information, how it uses affect to notice and respond to significant stimuli, while filtering unimportant stimuli and how it manages cognitive load. 
 
Constructivism is sometimes conflated with ideas about self-guided learning or self-initiated learning and direct instruction but should not be seen as providing a strong case for one over the other. Quality learning should include a mix of both as relevant to the need of the learner and the learning. 
 
Direct Instruction provides a particular environment in which learning can take place. It provides the learner with relevant stimulus and when well designed should overcome some of the barriers to learning such as directing the learners attention to what is significant, managing cognitive load, providing appropriate modelling and monitoring of learning progress through appropriate means of assessment for learning. Coupled with opportunities for independent practice and application with scaffolding this provides an effective learning environment and the research on what produces effective learning supports this.
 
One set of goals for learning is to develop the skills and dispositions required by learners to inquire, explore, discover and create or extend knowledge. This desire is evident when we expect our learners to be scientists, historians, geographers, researchers and problem solvers/finders. With this goal in mind we provide instruction in and scaffolds for the processes which the students will utilise e.g. teaching the scientific method or an inquiry cycle. We teach the skills of inquiry, problem solving and experimentation and then provide opportunities for independent practice. We at times model how content might be explored and understood through such processes and at other times we allow the content to be explored by students as they independently practise the skills of inquiry we have previously instructed them in. The skill of the teacher is in knowing which content requires direct instruction and which can be utilised by students practising their inquiry skills.
 
Self-regulation and the desire to produce learners who are able to initiate and guide their own learning complicates things, but only slightly. Schools should be providing students with opportunities to take charge of their own learning and to inquire and explore topics of their choosing. Inquiry, Project and Problem based learning methods that include elements of choice allow for this but such methods still involve the teacher as the professional guide to learning. A gradual release of responsibility model, where the teacher gradually removes themselves from the learning as the learner gains and confidence ensure the learner develops the skills and dispositions to tackle this style of learning.

The gradual release of responsibility model of instruction suggests that cognitive work should shift slowly and intentionally from teacher modeling, to joint responsibility between teachers and students, to independent practice and application by the learner(Fisher & Frey. 2011)

The order in which we offer direct instruction, scaffolded application or learning and independent practice is worth considering. It is not always the case that learning is best served when the process begins with direct instruction. As an example, the research by Manu Kapur on Productive Failure in Learning Math, indicates that the best model can be to begin with an independent exploration of new content even when this produces failure, before moving to direct instruction. 

However, students who engaged in problem solving before being taught demonstrated significantly greater conceptual understanding and ability to transfer to novel problems than those who were taught first. - These results challenge the conventional practice of direct instruction to teach new math concepts and procedures, and propose the possibility of learning from one’s own failed problem-solving attempts or those of others before receiving instruction as alternatives for better math learning. (Kapur, 2014)

Not all learning is a result of a deliberate, planned and external effort, such as that which is delivered by a teacher. Much of the early learning that occurs and a great deal of the social learning which we rely on, is a result of our immersion within stimulating environments and our innate capacities to learn. Schools provide a rich environment within which such learning may occur. By managing the physical environment in parallel with the social and cultural context, schools maximise their impact on the learning that occurs.

What constructivism does bring as a consequence for teaching is a shift in how we engage the learner. Pedagogical models where the teacher is the sage on the stage delivering sermons, where notes are copied from the board and where the learner is a passive sponge are examples of poor quality teaching. In opposition a classroom can be a place full of questions, shared knowledge, discussion and debate and a teacher directed. The learner’s experience of what might be termed direct instruction does not need to be a passive one. What makes some educators nervous is an implementation of the constructivist classroom where all structure is dissolved; where the learner is left alone in the environment to learn what they might, to overcome problems as they arise with no guidance or scaffolding. A Claxton and Lucas (2015) caution in “Educating Ruby”, advocates of such an approach have “never read Lord of the Flies”. Rather than suggesting we retreat from an active role in empowering and enabling learning, constructivism urges teachers to ensure that the learner is at least as involved in the process as their teachers are. 

Ultimately we need to understand that learning is done by the learner, as Dylan Wiliam so clearly articulates - "The crucial thing is that teachers are involved in a creative act of engineering environments within which learning takes place. Teachers are responsible for creating those learning environments but you cannot do the learning for the learner." 

By Nigel Coutts

Related to this: Inquiry based learning is dead, long live inquiry.

Claxton, G. & Lucas, B. (2015) Educating Ruby: What our children really need to learn. Crown House Publishing; Wales

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2011) The formative assessment action plan: Practical steps to more successful teaching and learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
 
Kapur, M. (2014) Productive failure in learning math. Cognitive Science. 38 pp 1008–1022
 
O’Donnell, A. M. (2012)  Constructivism in APA Educational Psychology Handbook: Vol. 1. Theories, Constructs, and Critical Issues, K. R. Harris, S. Graham, and T. Urdan (Editors-in-Chief)

Wiliam, D., & Leahy, S. (2013) Embedding Formative Assessment Professional Development Pack. Hawker Brownlow (DVD)
 

Sharing our Puzzles of Practice

Einstein is often quoted as having said “If I have an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” Clearly Einstein understood how to attack puzzling problems. As teachers we face a host of puzzles on a daily basis. Every student we teach, thanks to their idiosyncrasies presents a unique puzzle. The interactions between students further complicates things. Our goals for our learners, their learning needs, the demands of the curriculum, pressures from beyond the classroom all result in puzzles for us to manage and to solve.

Sometimes the approach taken by teachers is one analogous to the Hollywood action hero. We rush headlong into the situation relying on our past experience and bravado to win the day. Time is of the essence and the solution must be applied immediately. We act our way towards a solution and when at first we don’t succeed we try and try again. Such an approach to problem solving is a typical human response. We are short on time and thinking is hard work. Stopping and digging beneath the surface of what is going on might be the approach we advocate as intelligent beings but in the spur of the moment we respond to what we see right there in front of us or we use the methods which have become routine. 

Taking the time to truly understand our puzzles can be challenging. The process begins with realising that we indeed have a puzzle and that we do not have the ideal solution already in our tool-kit. More than that we need to recognise that we have a puzzle that we do not fully understand. Maybe this comes when we see our initial efforts are not working. By this time the puzzle is likely to have been made worse and when our mishandling includes puzzles involving people we are likely to have shifted into damage control. 

A culture that embraces and rewards the identification of puzzles is an important piece of the wider solution. In schools this can be particularly challenging to achieve. With each of us isolated in our classroom it is easy to imagine that we alone are kept awake at night by our puzzles of practice. We imagine that every other teacher knows the answer and that if we share our puzzles we may be seen as unable to cope. Such fear is a danger to a profession facing great complexity and rapid change. Our puzzles are only likely to increase in size and quantity as we explore models of teaching and learning best suited for “post-normal” times. 

Taking the time to share and explore our puzzles has been the theme for a group of Sydney based teachers over the past twelve months. Project Zero Sydney Network was founded as a collective of teachers keen to share their learnings from Harvard’s Project Zero. The focus has been on classroom practices that result in quality learning outcomes for students; life-worthy learning within a culture of thinking. We are united by our Puzzles of Practice and our strength has come from our willingness to share not just solutions but our puzzling puzzles. We have seen that the more time we spend unpacking and understanding the puzzles we confront the more likely we are to find solutions which work. 

For teams looking to explore puzzles there are a host of tools which can be leveraged once the right culture is in place. One place to begin is with thinking routines. As David Perkins explains, thinking is hard work and something we are not very good at, so we need tools to make our thinking more effective. Two simple strategies are:

Circle of Viewpoints - Should you need to understand a complex problem with multiple stakeholders this routine is ideal. It encourages you to see the perspective of each person or group and to understand how they are approaching the situation. It develops new questions and puzzles to be explored that had not been seen before alternate perspectives were considered. 

Circle of Viewpoints - a thinking routine that will help you see diverse perspective and look at a situation from another person's point of view. Useful in small groups.

1. Brainstorm a list of different perspectives and then use this script skeleton to explore each one:
2. 1.  I am thinking of ... the topic... From the point of view of ... the viewpoint you've chosen
   2.  I think ... describe the topic from your viewpoint. Be an actor – take on the character of your view- point
   3.  A question I have from this viewpoint is ... ask a question from this viewpoint
3. Wrap up: What new ideas do you have about the topic that you didn't have before? What new questions do you have? Record your thinking with a mind map, locating differing points of view around a circle.

Connect, Extend, Challenge - is ideal when you are dealing with complex and new circumstance. It encourages you to identify what you are familiar with in the situation, what is new and what is challenging.  

1. How are the ideas presented Connected to what you already know? What new ideas are presented that Extend what you know? What is still Challenging for you about the new topic and/or its connection with prior learning? 
2. Use individually recording your responses on paper or in a group with each member responding to the three questions in turn.

As our puzzles increase in complexity we require strategies that unlock the wisdom of the collective. Such a strategy can be found in the “Brainstorming Possibilities Protocol”. Protocols are a structured conversation that establishes the circumstances for constructive dialogue. The imposed structure of a protocol can at first be confronting and seem awkward, but it is the structured nature of the protocol which allows for conversations which would otherwise be stifled by social convention. In the “Brainstorming Possibilities Protocol” one member of a group presents a puzzle, describing the context and why the puzzle matters to them. The facilitator allows time for clarifying questions before pausing the discussion and giving time for the group to ponder potential solutions. After this time the group shares their potential solutions. When sharing a possible solution the group members are careful to use language that reinforces that their idea is just a suggestion. The presenter is referred to in the third person and response take the form “One possible solution that Mary might like to try is  . . .” or “I wonder if Mary might find this idea useful  . . .”. At the conclusion the presenter is given time to share their reflections on the suggestions and the group reflects on the process. 

Once we recognise that we all have puzzles that we struggle with we open the door to solving them intelligently and collectively. As Simon Sinek states in his little book of inspiration “Together is Better”. By spending more time with our puzzles and avoiding the rush to apply potential solutions, we are more likely to find the best response and enjoy the process along the way.  

By Nigel Coutts

Good Reads for Great Assessment

Recently I have been diving into the world of Assessment, seeking to better understand how we might design effective processes around this essential phase of the learning cycle. In doing so I have found a wealth of resources and quality reads that offer insights and strategies to be applied into our classrooms. Here then is a sampling of what I have been reading. 

Embedding Formative Assessment: Practical Techniques for K-12 Classrooms by Dylan Wiliam & Siobhan Leahy

If you are interested in formative assessment then the research and writing of Dylan Wiliam is a must read. This accessible and immediately applicable book brings it all together with theory and practice covered. This is one of those books that needs to be in the hands of every teacher. Its opening chapters provide a clear understanding of the importance of formative assessment as a tool for learning and its advantages over traditional methods with their focus on measuring and recording achievement. Later chapters provide strategies to be used in developing quality assessments for learning and for activating students and their peers as agents of learning. The book is made complete through the inclusion of numerous resources for teachers to use in their classroom.

Embedding Formative Assessment: A two-year professional pack for schools and colleges by Siobhan Leahy & Dylan Wiliam

If you need to beyond what is available in their book of a similar name, this professional pack will certainly meet your needs. In the two DVD set you will find video, slideshows, meeting agendas, rubrics, articles and trainer notes. The perfect set of resources for a school looking to deliver quality professional development to its teachers. The price might seem high, but when looked at as a resource with the potential to change the practice of every teacher in your team it is well worth it.

The Formative Assessment Action Plan: Practical steps to more successful teaching and learning by Nancy Frey & Douglas Fisher

Backed by extensive research and full of practical advice this is another book that will enhance your understanding and practice. The authors reveal the value of having a system for formative assessment and reveal how this might be developed. The book breaks assessment down into a set of questions which guide the learner; Where am I going? Where am I now? How am I doing? and Where am I going next? Further the authors outline the role that assessment and the four questions play in the gradual release of responsibility from the teacher to the learner; an essential step if we are to produce life-long learners. 

Mindful Assessment: The 6 essential fluencies for innovative learning by Lee Watanabe Crockett and Andrew Churches

Anyone familiar with the work of Lee Watanabe Crockett will know he is on a mission to transform learning and teaching. Through the Global Digital Citizen Foundation he and his team provide an excellent range of resources for teachers looking to bring their pedagogy into the 21st Century. The “Fluencies” are at the heart of this and many students have benefited from the use of these scaffolds for thinking and learning. Have a problem to solve, use the Solution Fluency. Need to be more creative, the Creativity Fluency will guide you. Using Information or Media, there are fluencies for those too. In Mindful Assessment, written with Andrew Churches the details of how to assess each of the fluencies is made clear. The book is full of resources which reveal what success with each criteria looks like and is invaluable in developing learning opportunities that will take students from where they are with their learning to where they need to be.

Hacking Assessment: 10 ways to go graceless in a traditional grades school by Starr Sackstein

Driving change from the middle out can be hard work even in schools that recognise the important role that their middle leaders play. The “Hacking . . .” series of books aim to empower those seeking to make changes from where they are, starting in the classroom and enlisting followers who are amazed at the results being achieved. In “Hacking Assessment” the author provides 10 hacks which can be implemented without a complete rethink of the system within which the teacher is operating. Each hack is well documented and the reader can implement just one at time, adding others as their confidence grows. Hack number six “Maximise Time” is bound to appeal to every teacher. 

Essential Questions: Opening doors to student understanding by Jay McTighe & Grant Wiggins

While not strictly aimed at assessment, this book is an invaluable guide to the closely linked task of asking questions that engage the learner and require them to think deeply and develop a true understanding. If our goal is to teach for understanding, then we must be asking questions which require it. Using this book as your guide you will be asking questions that are highly engaged and that reveal where your students are with their level of understanding. One warning, the questions you ask after reading this are likely to spark lengthy debate and extended responses from your students.  

Maker Education on a Budget

There is growing interest from schools in the Maker Movement and Maker Education but with this have come some subtle misunderstandings about what it is all about. For one the modern maker movement is all about the mindset of the maker rather than developing a set of specific skills for making. The second confusion stems from a belief that the maker movement is all about the tools and the makerspace and that as such it involves large budgets.
 
Agency by Design is a research initiative by Harvard’s Project Zero that set out to understand the benefits which might be derived from adopting a maker mindset. A key finding is that Maker Empowerment is a vital component of successful maker projects within schools. 

"Maker empowerment: A sensitivity to the designed dimension of objects and systems, along with the inclination and capacity to shape one's world through building, tinkering, re/designing, or hacking." (Agency By Design)

This implies that the maker is an individual who sees the world as a set of objects and systems which can be improved, modified and adapted to new purposes and who engages in the process of making these changes. The maker according to the framework proposed by Agency By Design, looks closely at objects and systems so as to understand them, explore their complexity as derived from their parts and how people and systems interact with them and then seeks opportunities to unlock the hidden potential in what they have noticed. 
 
This model aligns beautifully with Design Thinking. In Design Thinking we find a model for the sort of action that is central to the maker mindset. A process for understanding what is there and through strategic thinking and an iterative process of planning, testing and modifying, allows new ideas to be revealed. Founder of IDEO, David Kelley explains that "the central tenet of Design Thinking, isn't one of aesthetic or utility, but of empathy and human observation’. We moved from thinking of ourselves as designers to thinking of ourselves as design thinkers. We have a methodology that enables us to come up with a solution that nobody has before.” This is echoed in the words of NSW Draft K-6 Science and Technology Syllabus that states "Design thinking is the thought process involved in understanding and developing solutions to design needs and opportunities. Consideration of economic, environmental and social impacts that result from designed solutions are core to design thinking. Design thinking methods can be used when trying to understand a problem, generating ideas and when refining a design based on evaluation and testing.” (NESA)
 
The Draft K-6 Science and Technology Syllabus has an increased focus on both Design Thinking and Maker Education. It is broadly divided into two overlapping parts; Working Scientifically and Design & Production. In Design and Production "Students identify factors that may influence and dictate the focus of the design idea. They explore options, consider existing solutions, generate alternatives, represent and refine ideas and communicate design decisions for a range of audiences.” They will also be required to “undertake a range of practical experiences” linked to the processes of Design and Production. This requirement is likely to cause school administrators stress as they contemplate the cost involved in meeting this requirement. 
 
Making can however be achieved without access to the more expensive toys of the maker movement. Indeed, much can be learned from working within the constraints of a very minimal budget. A first step towards a successful low budget maker programme is to embrace the concept of the prototype. Here the aim is to produce at low cost a physical representation of a design that captures the essence of the idea but does so with low cost materials. Paper, cardboard, tape and recycled or repurposed items are often sufficient when developing a model that will demonstrate the idea without the polish of what would become the finished product. Low cost prototyping is also more likely to encourage a rapidly iterative process where design ideas are radically changed or completely abandoned. A 3D printer might produce a more detailed and impressive looking model, but the time taken in both designing it and printing it is likely to discourage students from starting over with a new idea. 
 
Cardboard is a great material for school students and most schools have an abundant supply. Either brought from home by students or gathered from the office or canteen, corrugated cardboard provides an ideal building material. Students can explore its properties before using it in their constructions and in doing so are bringing an understanding of the materials they use to the process. Traditional methods with cardboard involve copious use of tape and glue in the production process. Hot Glue Guns can bring an element of speed to the process but also bring an element of risks when students ignore the clear warning in the name “Hot Glue” until after a visit to the nurse.

MakeDo is a company that has produced a simple solution to the process of joining pieces of cardboard together. They produce a set of plastic screws that can be easily used to hold two or more pieces of cardboard together. The process is simple enough for Kindergarten students to master and the screws are immediately and readily reusable. A set of cardboard saws with safe plastic blades and plastic screwdrivers complete the the tool kit. It is s simple idea but it focuses attention on the iterative nature of design thinking and allows the maker to quickly experiment with ideas while producing very little waste. Ideas like this are what will bring making into the hands of every learner.
 
Adding technology to the mix brings additional affordances for learning and new opportunities for exploration. LED lights and button cell batteries are cheap way to add electronics to a project. Electric motors, servos and solar cells can be purchased cheaply online and used to build a kit of maker supplies that are used on a project and then recycled into the next one. Adding an Arduino based computer can also be achieved at very little cost and for educators willing to spend some time in the online markets can be had for less than what is spent on most craft projects. The end result may not have the aesthetic appeal of a store bought robot but will have involved the students in hands on learning and a product that they played a part in bringing to reality. 
 
By Nigel Coutts

For more ideas on using paper and cardboard as materials for Maker-Centered Learning see:

"Make: Paper Inventions: Machines that Move, Drawings that Light Up, and Wearables and Structures You Can Cut, Fold, and Roll" by  Kathy Ceceri

Asking Why and Why and Why

As children, we ask “Why?” a lot. It is a part of childhood, that special time when the many forces acting upon our cognitive development converge around a singular desire to ask “Why”. It becomes the central focus of our conversational style, an incessant exclamation into the void which tests the patience of any nearby adult. We seem to develop an innate ability to spot those in our environment who we can recruit into our “Why” centric world, those who have not yet mastered the art of terminating our pattern of questions with a well-timed “because”. At the heart of it though, and despite the many road trips it has ruined, our desire to know why is a marker of the innate human propensity towards curiosity. There is so much to know and seemingly so little time to learn it all. The world presents us with a flood of new things, new interactions (with knowledge and people) and new puzzles for us to wonder about.
 
When we enter formal schooling the pace of our questioning declines. Warren Berger is rather keen on questions, his book “A More Beautiful Question” reveals the power of questions to solve problems and encourages us to ask more. He describes the decline in our questioning and cites research by Richard Saul Wurman who shares that "Preschool kids ask their parents an average of 100 questions a day. By middle school, they’ve basically stopped asking questions. Around this time, the article points out, student motivation and engagement plummets. Which raises an interesting question: Have the kids stopped asking questions because they’ve lost interest?” Middle school is around the time when we turn more frequently to another form of the “Why” question, what David Perkins refers to as the “Uppity Question - Why do I have to learn that?”. It might be that the traditional response to this question is what has turned students away from asking questions - “You need to know it for the test”. If the only things that seem to be valued are those in the test and we do not naturally have a desire to understand them (thus the “Why must I learn that?) why would we ask probing questions? Why would we want to dig deeper into a topic we have no interest in?
 
When we are presented with an engaging topic, when we can see the relevance of what we are learning, “Why” becomes a very powerful question. By asking “Why” we begin to dig beneath the surface and guide our learning towards the issues at the heart of the topic. Facts are interesting but studying facts alone will only ever take us so far. Exploring the “Why” of the facts opens new avenues for rich understandings. But students do not naturally ask “Why?”, they often need a teacher or mentor to ask the “Why?” question for them and of them.
 
Recently our students explored a collection of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Their challenge was to uncover and define a part of the problem underlying the selected goal. I joined one group of students who had chosen to tackle the goal of “Zero Hunger”. Their initial response was typical amongst the groups who had selected this goal; “people are hungry, we will give them food”. I listened to them for a while and realised they had only developed a surface understanding of the problem. I asked them what the problem is and then started on the “Whys”. Why are people hungry? Why don’t they have food? Why can’t the food get in? Why do they need food to be delivered? Why do they not grow food? Slowly we dug down into what they knew about the problem, we quickly added to that pool of knowledge but now we were making connections and developing an understanding as we researched. One simple question led them to a solution that targeted the root issues and would be potentially much more sustainable.
 
The technique of asking “Five Whys?” is a powerful tool for learning, both for children and adults. It is also confronting and handled badly and without forewarning can border on aggression. When I first use “Five Whys?” with a class I always talk through the plan with them first. I tell them that my aim is to test their knowledge and guide them towards a richer, deeper understanding of the topic. I tell them they might not like this. They always appreciate the process afterwards and we always include time to reflect on that process. Some of the students start to include “Why” in their responses.
 
For organisations asking “Why?” has a particular power when it is turned to the matter of the way things have always been done here. Asking “Why do we do things that way?” can reveal the habits and patterns of behaviour we have become tied to but that no longer truly serve our purposes. Looking at these long held beliefs and asking “Why do we do that?” can take courage and is only likely to occur within an organisational culture that encourages it. A good measure of the health of an organisation might be to observe how long it takes new staff to shift away from asking “Why” questions that strike at the heart of our traditional patterns of action.
 
You cannot consider the “Why” question without giving mention to the work of Simon Sinek. In his book “Start with Why” he writes "Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money— that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?” We are reminded that unless we understand why we do what we do and why it matters we are likely to lose track of what matters most. We must strive to always be guided towards our “Why” and avoid actions that take us away from this. As Simon Sinek points out the truly successful people and organisations are those who use their “Why” as their north star and never lose sight of it.

And, so we come back to the writing of Warren Berger and his guidance towards “A More Beautiful Question”. Asking “Why?” is a great starting point but it only takes us as far as understanding. We need tools that take us from understanding to action. According to Berger "A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.” A pattern of three questions can take us from our “Why” to that actionable question we are seeking. From our “Why”, we ask “How might . . .” and we finish with “What if . . .”. This is a simple pattern of questions that students can learn to ask and is a pattern we have used with students as they develop ideas for their Personal Passion Projects. It is simply exemplified by the story of Air BnB. The pattern of questions the founders of Air BnB asked probably went like this: Why can we not get a bed in a crowded city, even though there are lots of empty beds? How high we connect people who need a bed with people e who have a spare bed? and finally “What if we create an app that lets people with a spare bed make it available to people who need a bed and in doing so become the conduit that sleepy travelers and people with too much room need?”. 
 
The power of “Why” deserves greater respect if we are to reap its benefits. The next time I am accosted by a preschooler full of “Why” questions I might try a more encouraging approach in the hope that this child’s incessant curiosity might just result in the next big breakthrough the world needs. 
 

By Nigel Coutts

Taking risks outside our comfort zone

Possibly the most dangerous place to spend too much time is inside your comfort zone. Only when we take a risk and step away from the safety of the familiar and the ways we have always done things do we expose ourselves to new ideas and become open to the possibility of learning and discovery. The trouble is having the confidence to take that first step, to embrace discomfort and become open to the risks that come with trying something new.
 
For our young students, school can be a place of constant leaping from one zone of discomfort to the next. Their learning journeys, particularly during the formative years are steep and there are many challenges. The social world of school brings one set of challenges. Time away from home and the safety net of their immediate family requires brave hearts and caring teachers who build bridges of support and care. Moving towards more formalised learning requires great curiosity but school brings the new experience of making mistakes in public. New teachers with each year of learning, different classrooms, shifting friendships and an always evolving curriculum brings a constant stream of challenges and opportunities to embrace the discomfort of the new. 
 
Some of our young learners embrace these challenges with resilience and determination. Some become adept at avoiding challenges of a type they may not feel comfortable with. The realms in which we are willing to take risks gradually shrinks and our comfort zone expands. Before long we are developing a set of protective measures that allow us to spend more and more time inside our comfort zone. Slowly the list of things we don’t do expands. For learners, this pathway to a fixed mindset in certain areas of our learning can have a profound effect. Maybe it is in art where we decide it is not a subject for which we have the required skills. Perhaps it is mathematics that we turn away from. Maybe we believe that there are people who can do maths and people who can’t, and we are in the ‘I can’t’ group. 
 
As teachers, our responsibility is to guide our students away from their comfort zones and back into Vygotsky’s ‘Zone of Proximal Development’. We show them that the risk is not as great as they imagine and provide the safety net they need. By understanding the obstacles they face, we can provide just the right support so they can move in the desired direction. Building their confidence, showing them it is OK to fail, that the little steps they are taking are moving them towards their goal even if they don’t see it. By providing the safe environment they need, full of feedback that guides and shows the way we can help our students move towards a growth mindset.
 
For some of our students the challenges they might face at school fall short of the edges of their comfort zone. These are the students who throughout their schooling achieve at an acceptable standard. They pass the tests, achieve success and nothing seems too difficult for them. For these students, school fails to provide a suitable challenge. These are the students whose first experience of cognitive dissonance, overwhelming complexity and the need to step outside their comfort zones arrives after their school years. Alone and without a caring guide at their side, these are the students who seemingly fail to cope with the world of work despite their great promise they once showed. The challenge is to identify these students and provide the opportunities they need to experience challenging learning while at school. It is interesting to note that for some students it is learning that occurs away from the traditional academic class that brings them face-to-face with real challenge. Maybe it is a learning experience in the great outdoors, where the elements, the isolation and the dramatic change of context shows gaps in their ability to cope. Some students who manage the day to day routine of the classroom find that the challenges typical of maker-centered learning are too much. Their understanding of geometry and physics seems to slip from their grasp as they struggle with the details of a mitered joint or the lines of code required to turn on a light bulb.
 
Teachers also have comfort zones. It is often said that the most dangerous phrase in education is “That’s how we have always done that”. We are comfortable with the ways we teach. We are safe in our routines, safe when we are in control, safe when we know what to expect. We have our imagining of how school should look, what good teaching looks like and believe we know how to achieve this. Inside our classrooms we are masters of our domain. But what if we are wrong? How do we know our approach is best, how are we testing our understanding, how are we exposing ourselves to new ideas and maybe better ways of meeting our learners needs?
 
We need to step outside our comfort zones for the sake of our learners. Maybe this starts with opening our classroom doors and inviting others to observe our practice. Perhaps it starts with trying a new routine, a new approach to questioning, a new take on how we close a lesson. maybe we give up some of our control and hand the learning back to the students. What would it sound like if we were the quietest voice in the room, if we asked but one question and let the students run with it? Alan November asks the question “Who owns the learning?”, to encourage teaching that encourages curiosity and develops self-directed learners. What might our classrooms be like if no one in the room new the answer to the questions that are asked in advance? 
 
As we move from a model of education that sees the teacher as the sage on the stage to a guide on the side, all involved are likely to experience an expanded zone of discomfort. Our students will be required to do much more thinking, collaboration, problem finding and solving. Teachers will not always know how their lessons will evolve, where the learning might lead and there is likely to be more noise. Our classrooms should be a buzz with the energy of inquisitive minds. Questions will be asked for which there are yet no answers. David Perkins describes this elegantly "The agenda of education should not just be passing along the contents of already open boxes but fostering curiosity for those still unopened or barely cracked open.” By stepping outside of our comfort zones, by taking our students out of theirs, we begin a learning journey that will prepare them for a world of unknowns where their willingness to embrace the challenges they face is their strongest weapon.  
 

By Nigel Coutts

Why such a rapid pace of change?

Change fatigue is the response individuals exhibit when the pace of change and the consistency of change becomes too much. Its symptoms are diverse including resistance to change, anxiety, withdrawal and anger. It is not surprising that change fatigue is common in schools, after all change seems to have become a permanent companion and the pace of change only seems to accelerate. For those driving change, there is a constant balancing act that we play between implementing change at the pace we feel is required, while avoiding overload. For those confronting change, there is the easy recourse of blaming those who are driving the change for the anxiety and stress that they feel. Questions are asked and fingers are pointed. Allegations of change for the sake of change are made and purposes are questioned. 
 
In this climate change becomes difficult and complex. The urgency to change is not distributed evenly and some cling defiantly to the past. There is a belief that what worked in the decades before will continue to serve our needs. There is a questioning of the need for change at such a rapid pace. Change after all is nothing new, so why must we change so rapidly now?
 
I am currently reading “Thank you for being late: An optimist’s guide to thriving in the age of accelerations” and have found in this the answer to these questions. In essence we are confronting two types of change, one that we have always faced and one that is unique to our current times. 
 
People and the human systems that unite us into societies change at a slow pace. The pace of change at which people and society change, has altered but a little overtime. We slowly learn and adopt new ways of responding to our world. We develop social systems in response to change and when that change is forced to accelerate the results are often troublesome and chaotic. World Wars, civil unrest, political turmoil, violence and upheaval seem to accompany such times. Our responses to the change do not keep pace and we find ourselves struggling for new ways of functioning. The birth and spread of western democracy or the adjustments to work and the economy that came with the industrial revolution are examples of us adjusting our social systems to cope with change.
 
The other change is that resulting from the exponential growth of technology, population, globalised markets and changes to the very nature of our planet. The difficulty is that all of these changes are occurring at a pace that we are not able to cope with. Take technology alone and consider the implications of Moore’s Law. Named after the cofounder of Intel, Gordon Moore it predicts that processing power will double every two years with little change in cost. Since 1965 this law has held true and for at least the next few cycles is predicted to continue. It is this constant doubling that we humans are not very good at coping with. Thomas Friedman, author of “Thank you for being late” use the story of the inventor of chess to demonstrate the power of this type of growth. The story goes like this, the king liked the newly invented game of chess so very much that he offered its inventor the opportunity to name his reward. A clever man, the inventor asked for enough rice to feed his family. He stipulated that in the first square of a chess board the king should place but a single grain of rice. In the second square twice as many grains as in the first and in the third twice as many as in the second. This pattern repeated still every square was covered with constant doubling from one square to the next. The result is in the order of eighteen quintillion grains of rice. 
 
The initial change that this sort of growth makes seems small. One grain of rice is not significantly less than two or so it seems. In the early days of computers a doubling of speed seemed like barely enough to meet our need for faster processing. But now as Friedman describes we are entering the second half of the chess board. The changes being felt now are significant and we are struggling to keep up. Schools in particular find it hard to keep up with such a rapid pace of change. With most change projects set to occur over seldom less than an academic year and any new idea needing to be accommodated in the following years budget we quickly find that we are embracing outdated changes. 
 
More so than before the affordances of the new processing power are set to change how we interact with technology. Our computer systems backed by access to massive data sets, huge processing power and social networks are altering the way we interact with the world. This is resulting in new ways of doing business, think Uber and Amazon, new demands on information, think of the power of the mobile phone, and new pressures on society, think lifelong learning so that you are able to maximise the opportunities just emerging.
 
Technology is just one area where the pace of global change is outstripping our ability to keep up. While population growth in some parts of the world has slowed in others it is increasing and it is doing so in areas where access to services and quality of life is least. Our social systems have not kept pace with improvements to health care and where mortality rates decline and fertility rates remain high population growth becomes exponential. Our environment faces similar challenges and despite the rhetoric of politics climate change continues to accelerate. 
 
What does this mean for schools? Firstly, we need to accept that we are living in a time of rapid an unprecedented change. That the pace of change is now such that the children we teach today will enter a world of work that is very much divergent from the one we know. They will require a different set of skills to compete in a world that is dominated by an unstable climate, accelerating technology, a larger much more connected population and a market driven by forces of globalisation and acceleration. Change is going to happen whether we like it or not. Moore’s Law will win. 
 
But this does not mean we should despair. While we may not be able to describe the exact opportunities that will emerge from this change, we do have an understanding of the skills which will allow our students to thrive. The capacity to think and behave intelligently with what we know, creativity and a disposition for problem finding, skillful communication and empathy will serve us well. By providing our children with opportunities to collaborate with their peers, to access global networks, to solve problems that matter and to do so through models which are responsive to changing circumstance such as design thinking we can prepare our students to thrive in a world of accelerations.

Highly recommended reading:

Thomas L Friedman (2016) Thank you for being late: An optimists guide to thriving in the age of accelerations.

By Nigel Coutts

The purposes of our pedagogy

The debate over the most effective method of instruction continues as ever and where one stands on the topic is largely influenced by the purposes one attaches to education. Analysing a series of research articles reveals the nature of the debate between advocates of direct instruction compared to those who support a problem based learning methodology. In these articles one can see that the debate centres on the desirable outcomes of learning; either a focus on the acquisition of skills and knowledge taught by the teacher to the student or learning that is focused on rehearsing and applying broad skills for learning. The language and perspective in each article is interesting to note and while the arguments over the benefits of each perspective are interesting it is worth digging beneath the surface and asking how each author imagines learning and its outcomes.
 
Kirschner et al., (2006) argue that minimally guided instruction, which they equate with methods such as inquiry based learning, project based learning or discovery learning is incompatible with what we have come to understand about human cognitive architecture. Human cognitive architecture provides a research based understanding of the processes of learning and define particular limits for how learning occurs and even what it is. Learning is defined as a change in long-term memory and this requires new material or content to be processed in short-term memory and then consciously moved into long-term memory. Factors such as a limitation on the number of chunks which may be held in short-term memory and the duration for which items may be held without rehearsal result in cognitive load as defined by Sweller (2003). Kirschner et al conclude that minimal guided instruction methods increase cognitive load to the point that learning is inhibited; that the additional demands of searching for information, acting with incomplete information and exploring complex environments is too great. They advocate for direct instruction (DI) models of learning as the method of instruction and learning most effective and best informed by human cognitive architecture. They further argue that constructivist approaches have no research base and are aligned with an erroneous belief that teaching in the methodologies of the discipline in which the learning is based is an effective approach. 
 
Schmidt et al., (2006) state that Problem Based Learning is not a form of minimally guided instruction and that it is, contrary to the assertions of Kirschner et al., compatible with human cognitive architecture. Their claim is that PBL provides a scaffolded learning environment which manages cognitive load and by activation of prior learning and elaboration of knowledge. They described PBL as a structured approach aimed at developing 'knowledge about how to interpret and approach problems.’ (Schmidt et al. 2006 p96) and identify issues with the type of assessments used in comparison studies between DI & PBL where the focus is on the efficient learning of 'directly applicable knowledge and focus on “sequestered problem solving”'. (Schmidt et al. 2006 p96) A further point is made regarding the placement of learning within a social setting and the effect that collaborative learning and shared knowledge construction has on reducing individual cognitive load. While PBL occurs within a social setting the assessment of its effect occurs in isolation from this. The authors point to the need to avoid conflating research centred around with individual cognitive load with group-based learning. 
 
Kuhn takes a distinctly different approach and argues that the question of what is to be taught and the broad purposes of education are more important than that which is addressed by Kirschner et al. Kuhn argues that the factors of motivation and the need to prepare learners for an uncertain future should focus our attention on understanding what might be considered by learners as the most important objectives for their education. Kuhn identifies the skills of inquiry and argument as those which most importantly learners need to master and to take ownership of. Kuhn states that students need to experience and understand what it means to be learners and knowers and that the goal of empowering students to be problem-solvers is a better preparation for life than a focus on knowledge transfer can achieve. 

Students are provided with scaffolds for their thinking and guided in their use, but have opportunities to use these tools to solve problems that they find. 

Kuhn’s title (Is direct instruction an answer to the right question?) encourages us to consider the logic behind the selection of the most efficient teaching methodology. If our purposes are the efficient transfer of knowledge from the learned teacher to the student, then DI might be the right answer. In the days of the industrial revolution when the desirable output of the education system was a citizenry with the requisite skills and knowledge to allow participation in the workforce direct instruction was a suitable approach. If our goal is to produce individuals and collectives of them capable of taking charge of their own learning and skilled in the art of problem solving, then we need to focus more on the question of what we shall teach rather than how we might teach it. Only where the curriculum exists as a clearly defined body of knowledge and where the answer to the questions we might ask our students is equally defined should we focus on how that knowledge is best conveyed. 

Seymour Papert says "There is only one 21st Century Skill - And that is the ability to act intelligently when you're faced with a situation for which you have not been specifically prepared."

The school I teach at is increasingly focusing on teaching students to think. Our current focus is on the development of a culture of thinking and teaching for understanding defined as the capacity of students to use what they know in meaningful ways and for the solving of novel problems. Beyond our students being problem solvers we hope that they might become problem finders with the disposition towards life-long learning that will allow them to adjust to changing circumstances. In this philosophy PBL is more what we teach than how we teach. As Kuhn suggest we utilise methods of DI as appropriate but this is largely to scaffold the skills of inquiry, knowledge sharing and knowledge making. The problems our students engage with have multiple solutions in alignment with the types of complexity which Schmidt et al., identify as the norm in PBL learning. The challenge is that this style of teaching is not the norm. To embrace a student centred approach to learning with the skills and dispositions of PBL as central tenets of our teaching requires a shift away from teaching for the accumulation of knowledge.

By Nigel Coutts
 
Kirschner, P.A., Sweller, J. & Clark, R.E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41, 75-86.
 
Kuhn, D. (2007). Is direct instruction an answer to the right question? Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 109- 113.
 
Schmidt,H.,Loyens,S., VanGog,T.,& Paas,F.(2007).Problem-BasedLearningisCompatiblewithHuman Cognitive Architecture: Commentary on Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 91-97
 
 

Avoiding Assessment Mistakes

Assessment is arguably the piece of the learning cycle we get most wrong. Whether looked at from the perspective of the learner, the teacher, the school administrator, the politician or the parent, assessment is misunderstood and poorly utilised as a tool for learning. The importance of changing this situation is only made more salient in light of the countless research studies from the likes of Jon Hattie & Dylan Wiliam that points to the power of effective assessment. So, what are the common mistakes and how might we avoid them?

Effective assessment is a part of the learning process. In their book "Mindful Assessment: The 6 essential fluencies of innovative learning”, Crockett & Churches compare assessment to the processes driving lean startups. The fledgling startup aims to develop a product that is a just viable product and rapidly releases this to market. The product launch begins an immediate process of product evaluation driven by user feedback. Through a rapid process of iteration and refinement the product evolves to meet the needs of the market. This is how assessment of learning should be. The learner feels comfortable sharing their learning in progress, they don’t need to wait for it to be a polished piece of work before they share. Feedback is sought early and the feedback provided is specific and allows for improvement. The learner makes changes and adjustments based on the feedback, the process repeats. With each cycle of feedback the learner moves closer to their goal but the process never stops.

Effective assessment is timely. This is where we make the biggest mistake. Assessment is seen as an end point by the learner and by the teacher. This is made very clear when the assessment is placed at the end of a unit of learning and feedback is then provided after the learning has occurred. The concluding assessment, the final test at the end of the unit send a message to the learner that assessment is the end of the learning process. According to Dylan Wiliam, "It is formative only if the information is used by the learner in making improvements that actually take their own learning forward. That is why to be formative, assessment must include a recipe for future action.” When assessment is only provided at the end of the unit, or the most valued assessment occurs at the end of the unit, it offers no opportunity for adjustment and sends a clear message that learning is not a continuous process.

Timely assessment needs to occur as close to the performance of understanding as possible. If you are coaching a child to catch a ball you go through the process and after each turn offer feedback. “Keep your eye on the ball”, “relax your arms as the ball hits your hands”, “move your body so it is behind the ball”, “don’t overreach”. You back the verbal feedback with modelling of the desired actions, you make adjustments to the throw of the ball to allow for success, you allow multiple practice opportunities and over time you praise improvement even when the growth is small. If we learned to catch the way we might learn mathematics or writing we would be given one or two examples, be left alone to apply the new skill and then be given an assessment of our ability. More than likely the result would be in the form of a grade or percentage and we would be left with few if any insights as to why the ball continually ended up at our feet. 

We value grades and percentages more than quality feedback. The disappointing reality is that when we are given are grade or a percentage as feedback on an assessment no learning occurs. Indeed, the damage goes deeper and impacts our desire to learn. Where grades are offered Ruth Butler found that interest and performance declined, where only comments were provided the opposite was true. If both comments and grades were provided the results paralleled those achieved with grades alone. A grade sends a clear message to the learner that the learning is done with according to Crockett and Churches, and a grade handed down by a teacher removes learner agency from the equation. Apply the typical pattern of assessment and grading to the process of building a house. The foundation is laid and assessed with a percentage for overall quality of say 75% and a B grade. By this stage the framers are on the job having started while the foundation’s assessment was still being processed, when they finish they achieve a percentage of 80%, slightly better than the foundation but clearly with room for improvement. The roof follows, the bricks are laid and in no time at all the house is found to be falling behind code, a building certificate is never issued and the house is condemned. The trouble is the fundamental issues with the foundation and each subsequent step were never addressed. Now imagine the same process applied to a child’s years of schooling and it is little wonder that we have students with significant learning gaps. Sadly, as Lane Clark points out we are too busy moving on to the “Electricity” unit to stop and address any issues.

Assessment needs to be of the learning that matters. We know that the skills which will matter most for success in the "age of accelerations” (See Friedman - Thank You for Being Late) are critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, an innovators mindset and a good grasp of models for problem finding and solving such as design thinking. But, this is not what we traditionally assess. Instead we test for recall of information, an awareness of basic theorems and the formulaic application of knowledge, all of which is easily replaced by machine learning or artificial intelligence. Testing for the skills valued in the 21st century, assessing socio-emotional intelligence and the capacity to function effectively within dynamic teams is difficult to do at scale, so we instead measure what is easy to measure. The trouble is in doing so we assign an inflated value to the parts of the curriculum which matter least and then lock ourselves in to teaching for these skills even when we know they are obsolete. The truly sad part is that the assessments we cling to and that drive so much of what we do in schools, are no longer valued by universities and employers; the very people we designed them to serve. 

Education needs to be about more than placing students on a curve. If the only purpose that years of formal education serves is the ranking of children, then we are wasting our time. The factors which result in individual success are diverse and there are better more efficient measures which might serve our needs. To better understand the confluence of factors which on average result in success read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The story of success”. The emergence of ‘Big Data’ is only likely to provide us with new approaches to identifying those whose life circumstances and biology prepare them for any specific role, but surely this not a direction we wish to pursue.

Assessment needs to involve the learner more so than any other person. Hattie found that the empowerment and self-regulation that is achieved when students become skilled in methods for self-assessment had the highest effect size. Dylan Wiliam identifies three critical agents for assessment; self, teacher and peer. Self-assessment is critical in activating students as owners of their learning according to Wiliam and as such is a critical component of life-long learning where learning continues beyond the classroom. 

If we wish to cling to traditional methods of assessment and view the first twelve years of schooling as little more than preparation for the final school assessment, we need to acknowledge at least one rather disturbing reality; most of what we teach and assess is rapidly forgotten. "From this perspective, the research on educational attainment is especially disheartening. For more than 75 years, studies have consistently found that only a small fraction of what is learned in the classroom is retained even a year after learning.” (Matthew Lieberman (2012) Education and the Social Brain. Trends in Neuroscience and Education 1 (2012) 3–9) Unless we take the time to develop assessment processes that clearly reveals to all concerned, where our learners are with their learning, where they are going and how to get there, this situation is unlikely to change. 

By Nigel Coutts

Learn more about quality assessment:

Embedding Formative Assessment: Practical techniques for k-12 classrooms by Dylan Wiliam & Siobhan Leahy

Mindful Assessment: The 6 essential fluencies of innovative learning by Lee Watnabe Crockett & Andrew Churches

The Formative Assessment Action Plan: Practical steps to more successful teaching and learning by Nancy Frey & Douglas Fisher

Assessing 21st Century Skills: A guide to evaluating mastery and authentic learning by Laura Greenstein

The Power of Feedback in Review of Educational Research by John Hattie & Helen Timperley

And you might also like:

Thank you for being late: An optimists guide to thriving in the age of accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman

Outliers: The story of success by Malcolm Gladwell

Reflections on a service trip to Fiji

Recently I left the cold and dark of a Sydney winter and journeyed north to the warmer climate of Fiji. A jewel dropped in the warm waters of the Pacific, Fiji is a popular holiday destination for those looking for a tropical escape. This trip was very different from the norm. There would be no resorts, no five-star dining and my company was to be a group of 24 Year Nine students. It was to be a journey full of learning and insights into the challenges facing education. 
 
For the students, this trip was a part of a 'school service’ that encourages them to take positive action for a better world. Charitable donations of cash are an easy and painless step for those from a privileged community; giving of your own time, energy and sweat requires a far greater contribution. While in Fiji the students visited villages, a women’s refuge and threatened coastal environments and spent days in the hot sun making a genuine contribution. Our tour provider was Rustic Pathways, a company whose "mission is to empower students through innovative and responsible travel to positively impact lives and communities around the world.” Rustic Pathway provided the students with opportunities to engage with the true culture of Fiji, to experience life in a village through homestays and to give back by participating in projects that were identified by the local communities. 
 
The cultural learning for the students was a highlight of the trip. This was at its peak while in the Highland village of Nasivikoso. Nestled in the remote highlands and accessed by dirt roads and four-wheel drive ‘carriers’ the village exists on the boundary between the world of the 21st century and a traditional way of life. Technology is slowly creeping into Nasivikoso; mobile phone access exists in parts, a limited electricity, a satellite dish at the school and flushing toilets. There is a feeling that even these remote places the reach of the connected world of information technology is not far from having a much greater impact. The true story of life in Nasivikoso lies in the stories of its people. The community is welcoming and open. We were invited into homes and became members of the families with which we lived. it quickly become obvious that the usual boundaries between families does not apply here. Children come and go from the houses and all have an open door to visitors. No one goes without a bed or a feed and it is harder to be alone than to be part of a group. 
 
Perception is everything but when it is biased by our cultural understanding it can serve our understandings poorly. The people of Nasivikoso live a life with very few of the luxuries we take for granted. We complain mightily if we must do without hot water or electricity for a night, here this is the norm. Clean clothes, a comfortable bed, a kitchen with a fridge and a stove are novel ideas in Nasivikoso. It was a shift in mindset for our students to understand how the children of the village could be so happy despite what seemed to be missing from their lives. This was the moment when the learning really kicked in. That moment when you recognise that your world view doesn't fit with the evidence in front of you. Our students started to understand the complexity that exists for westerners looking to enhance the lives of people in developing nations. The easy response is to seek a path towards rapid modernisation, an imposed process of bringing them with us into the 21st century. The flaw in this process is that it is based on a misunderstanding of what the community needs most. Only partnerships and programmes that never diminish the agency of the community can hope to bring meaningful long term change. 

The children of Nasivikoso are its most powerful ambassadors. They are joyful balls of energy, naturally curious and always ready to play. A favourite game is to use a halved plastic 25 litre cooking oil drum as a makeshift toboggan to race down the grass slope in the centre of the village. The strength and physical dexterity of the local children was remarkable and put to good use as they claimed the walls of the nearby waterfall with ease and a total absence of fear. Such experiences of exploration and risk taking are for the most part filtered out of the lives of children in Australia in the name of safety, but what is the cost of the “Nanny State” to the lives our children live. 
 
An instant bond was made between our Year Nine students and local children. A highlight of the visit was watching the children play together with paper planes that had been made together as part of a lesson taught by our students. The delight on everyone’s faces was a reminder that happiness is best found in the simple connections between people engaged in play. The final evening was filled with dancing and song and not just a few tears as farewells were made. 
 
The visit to Nasivikoso left us all questioning our priorities. We are all less likely to complain the next time the WiFi goes down, we will all cherish the little things that genuinely matter to us a little more; the people we care about, our friendships and loved ones. This is where service programmes rather than charity drives make a real difference. The powerful contextualised and situated learning that the tour offered our students has changed their perception of the world. They understand that they live a life of privilege and that there are others who live happy lives full of love and joy with much less. They became members of a community and understood what life is like for children in a remote village where fun is found playing with their mates. Back home they might notice how few are the opportunities to play with the other kids in their neighbourhoods. They are unlikely to spend their afternoons climbing a cliff, catching a baby goat or sliding down a hill in a barrel. They might well find they miss a life where such simple pleasures are missing. 
 
Time will continue to change Nasivikoso. Technology will creep further into the life of the village. There are great benefits to be had and opportunities to do things better and smarter than what is the norm elsewhere. Solar powered lights are already bringing light into the dark huts reducing the reliance on kerosene lamps. Larger scale solar projects could have a significant effect and the expansion of digital networks and mobile internet cannot be far off. The impacts to the changes soon to wash over the people of Nasivikoso will be challenging and great empathy will be required if the best parts of village life are not to be replaced with the downsides of the modern western world. 

The challenge for education systems as they confront the pace of change is immense. The methods used traditionally struggle with the pace of change and scale poorly and yet the challenge will be to develop a system that is at once agile and able to scale and millions if not billions of new learners turn to education as the doorway to a brighter future. In a country like Fiji with a need to increase its capacity to provide for the needs of its citizens, education must be rooted in the realities of the skills needed for building infrastructure and meeting basic needs. Beyond this there is a need here as in countries like Australia for an educated youth capable of finding better solutions to old problems and new opportunities for growth in markets yet to be created. The positive message from the children of Nasivikoso is that they are naturally inquisitive and wanting to learn, all they need are the right tools. 

 
 By Nigel Coutts

On the path to creativity

We all understand that creativity is an important skill for the future and we want our students to leave our classrooms with what David & Tom Kelley of IDEO call creative confidence. A quick read of the introductory chapter of any book on the future of the workplace will reveal an emphasis on the importance of creativity for individual and organisational success. As one of the four or alternatively five Cs (the others are critical thinking/reflection, collaboration, communication and often compassion) creativity is part of a skill set that differentiates human capacities from those readily replaced by automation and artificial intelligence. The difficulty with creativity is it is not easy and perhaps thanks to our experience of schooling not a natural attribute of many adults. What creativity needs is a process and/or a structure that allows us to bring our intellect to the development of creative solutions.

While we often refer to the need to think outside the box, as Ewan Macintosh of ‘NoTosh’ points out, we need the box when it provides the just necessary structure to scaffold our thinking. The more creative we need to be the more we need some structure to keep us on track. For educators, there are other reasons to provide a process to scaffold creativity. Asking our students to ‘be more creative’ without some scaffold is a strategy doomed to fail. If our goal is to keep our students within a zone of proximal development as defined by Lev Vygotsky, then we need to provide a scaffold that will take their capacity for creative problem-solving to a level beyond where they currently are and where they can only achieve success with appropriate scaffolding. Further when we seek to assess creativity and offer feedback on what has been achieved and feed-forward on where the learner can go next we need a process against which we can track progress. To only assess the end product will leave the students with little guidance as to how they may enhance their next effort. Without a process, students are left to be continually guessing at how they should approach the next challenge.

Finding this process was the focus of a workshop offered by University of Newcastle, Sydney as part of Vivid Ideas. Led by John Scott participants were introduced to five approaches to creativity which can be readily used with teams to enhance the results of their creative endeavours. Each offers a process that can be applied to a variety of problems and a common language that can be used within teams as they learn together. 

The first invites team members to state and restate the problem. A seemingly simple step but one that encourages a full understanding of the problem and encourages seeing it from alternative perspectives. Restating the problem is an excellent check of understanding and will often reveal a better approach towards a solution. Strategies such as rephrasing the problem using positive instead of negative terms, identifying persuasive or opinionated words or drawing a picture or diagram of the problem were suggested. 

A model of design thinking modified from the IDEO d.School model

Design Thinking was offered as a solution to complex problems where a highly iterative process is useful. Design thinking is becoming increasingly popular in schools and is even being included in state and national curriculums. It is a process which has been explored elsewhere on this site and there are many models which might be adapted to suit an organisation or a particular problem. Perhaps the key understanding is that it is a process which is based on experimentation and rapid prototyping. For it to be successfully embraced by organisations there must be a culture that is tolerant of failure as without this playful ideation and iteration will not occur. 

Read More about Design Thinking

This model of design thinking has been successful with Year Two students

Agile and Lean processes were explored as possible processes. Agile brings a process focused on user stories and a rapid process for responding. Agile is very much problem solving by doing and with each cycle producing a ‘done’ component of the larger solution it allows for rapid progress. Having identified a user story, self-organising teams enter a ‘sprint’ to identify and implement the first part of the solution or response. Individuals opt into what is called a ‘scrum’ which is the core unit of a ‘sprint’ based on their desire to play a part in that part of the solution. Lean is about identifying and removing waste and continuous improvement. By understanding what is there and always looking for ways to improve what is done, teams can develop enhanced products and operations. A key ingredient in ‘Lean’ is respect for the the perspective and problems confronting every stakeholder. Part of the strategy is understanding how processes and systems impact individuals and groups and then taking appropriate actions. 

The final approach is the use of Edward de Bono’s thinker hats. The 'Six Thinking Hats’ are a common element in classrooms and it was interesting to see this methodology being shared with a mixed audience. It would be interesting to see the hats being worn in the executive suite of a large corporation. Each hat asks the wearer to engage with a different mode of thinking. White hat thinkers are analytical and interested in facts, figures and information. Red hat thinking is about emotion and feeling, the Black hat is critical and full of judgement. Yellow hat thinking is positive and seeks to explain why an idea will work and the benefits it brings. Green hats bring alternatives and Blue hats look at the big picture and bring a reflective, metacognitive approach to the overall process; an understanding of how the creative process is unfolding and what type of thinking it might require more of. The Six Hat process works best when each hat is given a voice and understanding the value that each hat brings to an individual’s or team’s thinking encourages this. It should not be a process of labelling the thinking style most commonly adopted by a team member but a way to bring new thinking modes into their repertoire. 

With an understanding of a set of processes for creativity the team and individual should be better able to approach complex challenges. As mastery of the methods is developed new opportunities can be created by blending elements of one approach with another. Knowing when to break the rules comes with experience and maturity and allows the right approach to be matched to the context. In seeking to maximise the creativity of individuals and teams perhaps the most critical element is a willingness to embrace failure. There is no method guaranteed to produce desirable results the first time but a culture that punishes failure will always limit its creative potential.