Responding to COVID19: Now and in the long-term.

The past months and even more so the past few weeks have been challenging for educators on an unprecedented scale. As COVID19 continues to spread both as a global pandemic of a medical nature and as the almost singular focus of social media, education has confronted change on a scale we might never have imagined. Amidst the very real threat to our health and to the safety of our families, teachers have risen to the challenge of reinventing overnight what school is and what it looks like to be a teacher. 

At this point in time, most of us have dove into the deep and murky waters of online learning. For some, this means that all students are working remotely. For others, there is the double challenge of providing for remote learners while also meeting the needs of those who are still attending in person. Some are in lockdown, restricted to their homes and under intense police surveillance, others with varying degrees of liberty. Regardless, we all confront an uncertain future. Timeframes provided by experts vary enormously and it can be hard to see a light at the end of this tunnel. 

"All that was 'normal' has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet emerged, and nothing really makes sense." - Sardar, Z. "Welcome to postnormal times”

I have shared this quote from Sardar often, but it seems more real now than ever. There is very little ‘normal’ in the ways we are living our lives, connecting with loved ones, running our households and, for teachers and students, how we are engaging in learning. 

Change in schools is always challenging, but at this point, it seems it is also absolute, unavoidable and urgent. Many educators have been on a slow journey towards models of education that integrate seamlessly with an online world. There have always been those who rapidly embrace technology and those who see it as a threat to their identity or a shiny add-on with little proven value. Now, online learning is very rapidly becoming the norm. This brings with it very real tensions, many of which are yet to be seen in full. These are early days and while teachers are doing an amazing job of learning to swim in this new world of online learning, many will be longing to a return to the modes of teaching they know best. If the need for online learning continues beyond the scope of weeks and extends into months, as many have predicted, we can predict greater challenges. 

Teacher identity is closely linked to our role as teachers and our perception of that role is reflected in our pedagogy. Where the intended change alters the nature of our pedagogy and fundamentally shifts the relationships between teachers and students, and between teachers and knowledge resistance is more likely. Smollan and Sayers indicate the importance of understanding the socially constructed nature of identity and the potentially negative impact that change can have on this for individuals, 'that change ‘dislodges’ identity and leads to anxiety and grieving’ (Smollan & Sayers. 2009 p439) it is difficult to predict how this forced change is likely to impact teacher identity in the long term, however, a degree of grief for what has been lost seems inevitable. 

Educational organisations with their focus on the provision of human services and the inherent relationships between teacher and student and between teachers, creates a complex emotional playground. In schools, emotion and culture are linked, and change of culture frequently invokes an emotional response. “A person’s sense of identity is partly determined by his or her values, which can mesh or clash with organizational values” (Smollan & Sayers 2009 p439) When cultural change is sought in a school and it is not viewed as fitting with one’s values or it calls those values into question emotional responses such as fear, anger or sadness are common. The rapid nature of this change has, at least in many schools and at least in the short term, prohibited the normal processes and norms which accompany significant change. The process of planning, programming and resourcing units of learning, is typically lengthy, involves many stakeholders and much debate. The result, when everything works, is a sequence of planned learning opportunities that are tightly aligned with the teacher’s core beliefs about teaching. Whether this is a belief in the primacy of direct instruction, inquiry-based learning, teaching for understanding, a Reggio Emilia approach or another signature pedagogy, the experiences planned for students by teachers should be in alignment. In the rush to get content online, this process has been derailed and the short-term responses do not reflect the best our profession is capable of, even if they represent an exceptional response under the most challenging of circumstances. 

At some point, we will need to pause. Lift our heads up and survey the scenery in this new world. Then, let us hope that we ask the right questions. Making time and space for a moment of pause and reflection will be crucial if it becomes clear that this is more than a brief fling with online learning. In this moment of pause, we must go back to the fundamental questions that shape our beliefs about learning. These questions should shape how we organise learning in an online world as much as they do when we are teaching face-to-face. 

• What do I want my students to understand here?

• What might they already understand about this? What gaps might there be in their understanding? How might I make this visible in an online environment? What obstacles block students from showing their understanding that I can remove? e.g not requiring a written response.

• What experiences might allow them to achieve this and then demonstrate it?

• As I evaluate the activities I have planned for my students:

• Do they move students towards this understanding?

  1. What understanding does this activity require?

  2. What evidence of understanding does this provide?

• How do I fill gaps? Questions, Prompts, Provocations, Direct Instruction, Feedforward.

• What thinking will they require for this task? How might I scaffold that? How do I make it visible in an online environment?

• What next?

And, now perhaps more than ever, as we confront fear and uncertainty, we will all need a sense of agency empowered by capacities required to activate or perform our intentions (Clapp et al 2010). "This entails thinking about the world not as something that unfolds separate and apart from us but as a field of action that we can potentially direct and influence” (Ritchhart p. 77). They must become creative problem finders through learning opportunities that allow them to "sense that there is a puzzle somewhere or a task to be accomplished" (Csikszentmihalyi p. 95) and respond strategically, creatively and collaboratively towards solutions devised with empathy and a long-term view of impacts and real-costs (Kelley). Our students must be shown the value of acquiring deep-understandings through weaving ideas together, going beyond information and figuring things out (Ritchhart).

This demands that our students are routinely engaged with learning that requires them to do thought-provoking things with what they know, such as considering different viewpoints, reasoning with evidence, uncovering complexity and building explanations (Clapp et al) (Blythe). Such complex thinking does not occur automatically, and our students will need to master structures which support this. Visible thinking strategies assist teachers to make deep thinking a routine part of their classrooms and allow them to 'see' the way their learners are engaging with ideas (Clapp et al). All learning is a consequence of thinking and schools must transform themselves into "cultures of thinking” (Ritchhart). This demands a continual evaluation of the culture that is experienced by students and teachers. We must come to value thinking in all its forms and appreciate that our collective futures depend upon the quality of our thinking.

What is most clear to anyone with an understanding of the scale of the challenge educators are confronting is that this is a profession with immense reserves of talent and wisdom. Amidst such great chaos and confronted by a very real threat to their safety, teachers have reinvented what schools look like in a matter of days. Now, we need to be granted the time to step back from the immediacy of our overnight response and plan how we move forward with plans that will best serve the needs of our learners in the longer term. While we hope and pray that we might return to more normal times, the learning that has occurred in the past weeks seems to offer an opportunity too good to be missed. Moving forward this seems like the perfect time to reflect upon what might be the best possible model for education. A chance to restore that which we miss most from our previous models while retaining what we value in the new. 

By Nigel Coutts

Blythe, T. (1998) "The teaching for understanding guide”, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013) "Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention”, New York, Harper Perennial.

Clapp, E., Ross, J., Oxman Ryan, J. & Tishman, S. (2017) "Maker-centered learning: empowering young people to shape their worlds”, San Francisco, Josey Bass

Kelley, D. (2013)  "Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All”, London, Harper Collins.

[4] Ritchhart, R. (2015) "Creating cultures of thinking: The eight forces we must truly master to transform our schools”, San Francisco, Josey-Bass.

Sardar, Z. (2010) "Welcome to postnormal times”, Futures, 42(5), p. 435-444.

Smollan, R & Sayers, J. (2009) Organizational Culture, Change and Emotions: A Qualitative Study, Journal of Change Management, 9:4, 435-457

The challenge of educating for unknown unknowns

It is almost precisely eighteen years since Donald Rumsfeld uttered his now well-regarded commentary on the danger of “unknown unknowns”. At the time his remarks brought more confusion than clarity and reinforced for many a belief that politicians use words to conceal the truth. Somehow though, Donald’s words from 2002 seem to fit the world of today, and the challenges confronting educators all too well. 

Here is Rumsfeld’s reply:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. - Donald Rumsfeld (2002)

When we consider what our children will need to learn from their time at school, we must consider known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. But what does this mean and how might we respond?

Known knowns are the most straightforward points to deal with. These are the pieces of knowledge, the skills and dispositions we know our children will need in the lives they are likely to live. We know they will need fundamental skills for communication and mathematical reasoning. We know that they will need to know how to interact with others, how to build and maintain relationships. They will need to know how to balance their lives and maintain a healthy and happy disposition. A sense of empathy will serve them well as will respect for diversity. They should be aware that they occupy a world governed by social norms that change and evolve and which have been shaped by our collective pasts. They should also be aware that they share their world with many other people and that not all these people benefit from the privileges of power experienced by others. An awareness of the politics of power and the impact that this has on the world they share is vital. They will need to understand that our world is fragile, beautiful and fierce. A capacity to reason logically, a desire to seek evidence in support of claims made by themselves and others and a great sense of curiosity seem vital. Definitely, they will need to understand that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity abound, and that change is the one constant they can depend upon.

These are the known knowns, and one might expect our education system to be able to meet these needs very well. In some ways, we are doing well, and there is a definite move in the right direction. This is countered by calls for a return to basics, even if those doing so are unclear on what these might be. Our students do seem to spend a lot of time memorising facts, rehearsing procedures, preparing to utilise outmoded methods and solving problems with well-known solutions. We claim that critical thinking, collaboration and creativity matter most and yet our high-stakes testing focuses on individual knowledge best achieved through rote memorisation. It is in this way that we perhaps most fall down as much of the good work we do in building dispositions that matter is undone by an assessment regime which values base skills and recall of facts. And in place of devoting time to problem finding, curiosity, wondering, and reflective thought, we bombard our students with more and more content delivered in discrete packages even though we know information is ubiquitous. 

In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. (Harari, Yuval Noah)

We must also consider the “known unknowns”. These are things we know will change in the future, and are likely to play a role in the lives our children will live, but their exact form is unknown. Technology will continue to play a significant part in our daily lives, but our best predictions of what this might look like may well be wrong. Artificial intelligence is likely to play a role in the world of work that our Kindergarten students of today will experience, but what impact will it have? Climate change is another known unknown. We know that our climate is set to continue to change, but the exact effect that this will have remains uncertain as is the nature of our response to it. The worlds of work, politics, and society are all set to change and evolve as they have always done, and as is always the case, we might only guess at what shape they will take. 

In response to these “known unknowns” we can develop strategies which are likely to serve our children well. If they understand that they can be the masters of technology and utilise it to meet their needs, then they might be better prepared for the technologies which evolve in the coming decades. Knowledge of the science of climate change, and a desire to utilise the power of science to understand and shape the world, might be the best preparation for an unstable climate. The ability to think flexibly, to ask questions and approach the world with a positive scepticism seems like the right disposition for whatever might confront us in the areas of work, society and politics. The development of these dispositions and understandings should not be an add on, but a core component of our curriculum and we must continue to seek pedagogies which serve the needs of our learners in these domains. 

Lastly, we come to consider the “unknown unknowns”, that which we do not know we don’t know. At this point, even the best crystal ball fails to meet our needs. We are now beyond the point of imagination and have accepted that there will be aspects of our futures and our children’s futures which we might not predict. How do we prepare for these “unknown unknowns”? Our best path of action might be to retain our sense of curiosity and wonderment and make space in our curriculum for the imagination of educators who are travelling with their students into an unknown future. 

Educating for the unknown, far from an unapproachable paradox, can be an alluring and inspiring agenda. Rather than counseling despair, educating for the unknown favors a vision of learning aggressive in its effort to foster curiosity, enlightenment, empowerment, and responsibility in a complex and dynamic world. It favors a broad and visionary reach for meaningful learning. (David Perkins - “Future Wise”)

These are indeed exciting and challenging times. They are times that require the very best from us as educators. Our role extends far beyond the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. The challenge of the unknown, calls on us to educate our children so that they may confront it, armed with knowledge, intellect, curiosity, creativity, empathy and a desire to understand. To be that person who prepares a young mind for success in the modern world is undoubtedly the most rewarding of endeavours and is the great privilege that comes with being a teacher. 

By Nigel Coutts

Harari, Yuval Noah. (2018) 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Random House. Kindle Edition.

Perkins, D. “Future Wise: Educating our children for a changing world”, San Francisco, Josey-Bass, 2014, 274 p.