Will

According to Marc Tucker, education leaders at the 2nd International Summit on the Teaching Profession  are telling a much different narrative of learning than here in the States.

Singapore:

They reminded themselves that what they do in education is for the learner, their needs, their interests, and not simply to cover the content.  They said they wanted to help their students achieve understanding of essential concepts and ideas, not just dispense information.  They want to prepare their students for the test of life, not just for tests.  They said they want to focus on teaching the whole child, on nurturing them holistically across domains, not on the subjects per se.  They want to teach their students the values, attitudes and mindsets that will serve them well in life, and not only how to score good grades on exams.

Japan:

…had to overhaul its education system away from rote learning and toward the growth and development of the autonomous individual.

China:

Their priorities are on thinking, problem-solving, preparing Chinese students to live in a highly integrated global environment and cultivating individual talent.

Hong Kong:

[Students] need, as never before, to be “discerning,” to live and work effectively in a state of constant flux.  She worried that educators live in a sort of cocoon that will make it hard for them to prepare students for such a world.  Part of this worry comes from her belief that it is more important than ever for students in Hong Kong and elsewhere to develop a strong sense of empathy for people in other parts of the world, especially for those who are less fortunate. 

Values, mindsets, growth as autonomous individuals, problem solving, discerning consumers of the world, empathy…is any of that on the test?

Seems like the rest of the world might be getting it. Why aren’t we?

It’s early, and I’m trying to make some brain cells come together in a coherent thought. Help me out, ok?

Some truths/assumptions:

1. Schools have to act as if every child has easy access to the Web or will have it sooner rather than later. For now, we have to provide it to those that don’t, but more importantly, we have to provide to every student the skills, literacies and dispositions that will help them flourish in a content, knowledge, and teacher-rich networked world regardless their current level of access to it. 

2. Given the ever expanding scope of knowledge and information we have access to, suggesting that we know what to “teach” every student from a content perspective is highly problematic. Certainly, we need to “teach” the basics of reading and writing and math. Beyond that, however, our focus has to be on dealing with all of that information and knowledge rather than parsing out specific chunks of it to deliver.

3. Given that there is too much to teach, the traditional idea of the “teacher” is moving toward obsolescence. Instead of preparing the adults to be teaching “professionals” who are adept at a highly structured delivery of education, we need to prepare them to be “learning professionals” who have deep expertise in inquiry, literacy, information retrieval and vetting, collaboration, creation etc. 

I think I’m trying to make a case for unlearning and relearning teaching, or, even, pushing it more to the sidelines. Ideas?

Remember, it’s early. Be gentle.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on the Cornel West NPR radio show recently, and I just wanted to point to one snip that I think clearly shows that problem we’re having when it comes to how we define learning. Here’s Duncan:

Secondly, on the test scores, it’s a really, really important point.  We could spend a whole conversation on it.  I think if test scores are the only things people are focused on, that’s a real problem.  I think test scores should be part of a balance.  We think “no child left behind” was broken.  There was far too much reliance on a single test score.  We wanted Congress to fix “no child left behind” and work in a bipartisan way.

That didn’t happen so you know we actually went out and partnered directly with states and provided waivers to give them more flexibility.  [They’re] accountability systems, Dr. West, they’re moving way beyond a focus on an absolute test score.  They’re looking at growth and gain; they’re looking at how much students are improving each year.  

But very importantly, they’re looking at increasing graduation rates and reducing dropout rates and looking at what percentage of students who graduate from high school are going on to college.  And are they going to college having to take remedial classes, meaning they’re not ready, or are they really ready?  And are they persevering.

I always talk everywhere I go whether it’s evaluating a child or a teacher, which is your question, or a school or just a core state, I always say we have to look at multiple measures.  If anyone thinks 100 percent of a teacher evaluation should be based on test score, I will always fight that.  But I will also say that a piece of a teacher’s evaluation has to be upon whether those students are learning or not. [Emphasis mine.]

And there you have it, in those last two sentences, the huge problem that we are facing when it comes to changing the conversation around reform. The Secretary doesn’t understand that learning is much more than what is indicated on the test, and that learning is a much more complex interaction that is not easy to test for in a standardized, common way. 

Equally problematic is how he defends the idea that waivers are providing flexibility. True, it’s not just “an absolute test score” that’s used to grade schools or teachers or custodial services. (Joke.) It’s “growth and gain” and “improvement”…as measured by the absolute test score year to year. So now instead of just focusing on test scores, states can focus on test scores. There’s a switch.

I know it’s a huge undertaking to try to get politicians and parents to unlearn and relearn what learning is and the ways it can most effectively be assessed. That it’s different from “knowing” in the sense that we know the answer to the test. That it’s more about learning dispositions and practices than anything else. But I think we have to continue to push back against those who are trying to simplify it for the sake of efficiency and economics. Test scores do not equal learning.

John Seely Brown’s keynote from the recent DML conference is worth the watch if nothing else for his overview of “entrepreneurial learning.” I could summarize, but I found this snip from Sarah Vaala to be a more than adequate overview:

Entrepreneurial Learning. The morning began with a keynote address from John Seely Brown (University of Southern California; Deloitte Center for the Edge) entitled “Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Learner in the 21st Century.” An entrepreneur, he contended, is someone who is constantly looking around at their environment for new and innovative ideas and puting those ideas into practice. In the context of education, then, entrepreneurship should take two forms.

1. Students should be encouraged and enabled to learn through an interest-driven process of ‘thinking’ and ‘making.’ Entrepreneurial learning is the point at which thinking (about ideas and interests) and making (context and things) meet. As examples he pointed to wikis, fan fiction sites, blogs, and online game discussion boards that allow kids to practice writing skills, knowledge production, and knowledge dissemination while making their own content in an inherently motivating way.

2. Practitioners and educational policy-makers must become entrepreneurs as well, by scaling up the innovative ideas and practices that enable students’ learning in the 21st century. Kids are engaging in very profound learning experiences outside the classroom through production and remixing of digital media. Institutional learning needs to begin to incorporate those experiences inside its formal institutions as well. If the typical 20th century learning institution was a steamship plodding along at a consistent speed on a set course, explained Brown; then the optimal learning institution of the 21st century should be a white water raft moving quickly with the ability and agility to traverse whatever direction or waves the immediate environment dictates.

What I especially like in this description is the idea that it conveys a real sense of the flexibility our kids are going to have to have to succeed. They will need to adapt to many different opportunities, be self-directed and creative, and transparent in the ways they share their work. All of which is brought home in a short but relevant article in the New York Times today titled Our Workplace: How Three Companies Innovate. Google, General Electric and Dreamworks all expect this type of entrepreneurial learning disposition.

At Google, it’s about getting outside the box:

Google provides resources — infrastructure, money, time and people — but most important, a vision that tests most entrepreneurs to think bigger than they ever have before. We believe in big bets, and in high-risk and high-reward projects such as driverless cars and Android. By encouraging people to think bigger, we often achieve far more than what we initially imagine.

At GE, it’s about encouraging people to take risks:

…We literally measure employees based on their capacity to take risks in championing ideas, learn from the experience and drive improvement.

And at DreamWorks, it’s about supporting failure:

We feel it is critical to empower employees to take risks, move boundaries and test the limits of their imagination. Simply put: individuals must be allowed to fail in order to innovate.

Thinking outside the box, taking risks, learning from failure…how much of that happens for students in today’s schools?

danah boyd has an interesting analysis of the Kony 2012 video phenomenon that a) went viral and b) is basically disseminating an inaccurate message as to the realities in Uganda at the moment. (See Ethan Zuckerman’s post for a full deconstruction of the video.) She raises a number of points about the spread of the video, from the networks that Invisible Children already had in place, to the motivations of youth for sharing out the link, the role of celebrities, and the inherent race and privilege undertones. 

But for me, this was the paragraph that really jumped out:

The stories that Invisible Children create in their media put children at the front and center of them. And, indeed, as Neta Kliger-Vilenchik and Henry Jenkins explain, youth are drawn to this type of storytelling. Watch Kony 2012 from the perspective of a teenager or college student. Here is a father explaining to a small child what’s happening in Africa. If you’re a teen, you see this and realize that you too can explain to others what’s going on. The film is powerful, but it also models how to spread information. The most important thing that the audience gets from the film is that they are encouraged to spread the gospel. And then they are given tools for doing that. Invisible Children makes it very easy to share their videos, republish their messages on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr, and “like” them everywhere. But they go beyond that; they also provide infrastructure to increase others’ attention. [Emphasis mine.]

So, to my point. Not that the Kony issue isn’t important. And not that the audiences are the same. But I’m wondering if there isn’t an Education 2012 that’s itching to be made, one that puts children front and center, one that is powerful but also models how to spread the gospel. And I’m not talking about Waiting for Superman or Race to Nowhere, though at least the latter makes some inroads into the conversation. I’m talking about a movie that paints a compelling picture of what learning looks like in a networked world, how literacy changes, and how the value of school must change away from test prep to authentic, real world participation through inquiry and design. That nothing less is adequately preparing our kids for the realities around the bend.

You can’t look at the Kony video and not be amazed regardless of the problems with it. The compelling case is clear, and it’s an easier case to articulate than the one we’re trying to frame in our networks and communities. But it has to make you wonder…couldn’t we script and produce something like that? 

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across this post on “Rebranding Teachers” at Hyperakt, a design firm for “the Common Good.” Here’s the gist:

We began with a simple premise, that education is the key to human progress, therefore teaching is among the most important professions for humanity. Our new visual vocabulary should capture the excitement and magic of activating the potential that is innate in every student. It should celebrate the process of developing ideas, reflect the collaborative nature of teaching and pay homage to existing visual tools used in teaching.

Included are a host of images that aim to reach that goal. Here’s one:

Do check out the rest.

I continue to struggle with the whole “teacher” idea, at least in the traditional sense that we use it in schools. It goes back to my struggle with what learning really is and how we can best make that happen in schools. Do I really want “teachers” for my kids? As I’ve said many times before, I think the majority of those who teach find their value in their ability to “deliver” the curriculum in engaging, perhaps memorable ways, not in their ability to help students uncover or create their own curriculum for learning as they go. To put it another way, most teachers don’t place a greater value in their own ability to learn and model learning. In that way, the word “teacher” connotes someone with something to give, some piece of knowledge or skill or content that must be taught. But lost in that interaction too many times is the most important learning of all, a student’s ability to learn on his or her own, to ask his or her own questions, find the answers, and create new knowledge around those answers. 

So when I ran across this “rebranding” effort, my reaction was not like most of those leaving comments. I think the bigger rebranding effort is around just what the role of the adult in the room is in schools today. Ironically, as some of the graphics on the Hyperakt site suggest, it’s more about discovery than teaching. What if instead of seeing the adult in the room as the point through which the curriculum ebbs and flows and as the ultimate arbiter or what’s been learned we saw that person as the chief instigator of discovery, or the person that continually asks questions that he or she doesn’t have the answers to, or the learning expert that constantly models passionate and discerning practice around “learning more?” That would be a more relevant rebrand than things like “Teach Curiosity” which, at the end of the day, is something many would argue the system teaches out of kids who naturally bring it with them.

I find a lot of irony in that snip above. It’s a gaggle of competing verbs. Do we “teach?” Do we “activate” the innate potential of kids? Do we “develop” ideas? Are those things the same, really? Given the baggage of over a century of “teaching” defined by iconic symbols and roles, I don’t think they are. Maybe the real rebranding has to start with a different word altogether. 

***Added 2/27: Seth Godin gets to this in his new manifesto on schools (which I’ll probably be blogging about more in a bit.) He says:

If there’s information that can be written down, widespread digital access now means that just about anyone can look it up. We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an axe.  (Worth stopping for a second and reconsidering the revolutionary nature of that last sentence.)  What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better. (Section #44)

Amen.

When I was a little kid, at least once every few weeks in the warm months my mom would fill a big wicker picnic basket full of sandwiches, drinks and some hidden sweets, pack it and me and an old blanket in the back of our long, white Chrysler station wagon, and drive out to a parking lot behind a factory that was a stone’s throw from O’Hare Airport outside of Chicago. As soon as the car would stop, we’d scramble to the roof of the car, spread the blanket, plop down the picnic basket, and throw ourselves longways on our backs, faces turned into what would always be a bright, clear blue sky. If our timing was right, the high-pitched scream of the engines would start rushing over us almost immediately, and soon after, the car would start shaking, and soon after that, this huge, silver, beautiful jet airplane would come screeching over the Chrysler, maybe, just maybe 300 fet over our heads, blotting out the entire sky, forcing our hands over our ears, and generating from both of us a long, drowned-out, happy scream of “Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!” When the plane would pass, we’d roll onto our elbows and watch the puffs of smoke shoot from the tires as they hit the runway, watch the plane roll slowly to a stop, turn and smile at one another, the roll once again on our backs to wait for the next rumbling to start. 

Best. Days. Ever.

I’ve always loved planes. Still do. (I’m actually writing this on a plane.) The best news of my week this week was when I heard the new United (now merged with Continental, the primary airline I fly) would be upgrading all of it’s planes to include audio from the flight deck, giving dweebs like me even more opportunities to listen to the pilots and air traffic controllers safely navigate us to our destination, or reroute us around storms, or delay our takeoff, or all sorts of other good stuff that most people never listen to. There’s just something about being in the air that, 95% of the time, at least, fascinates me. I always get a window seat.

So last year, the stars kind of aligned, and I decided to learn how to fly at a small country airport fairly near where I live in New Jersey. It didn’t start well; my first three flights it was all I could do to keep from throwing up before we rolled to a stop on the tarmac after some “maneuvers” aloft. On the fourth trip, I made my flight instructor David just do a one hour “straight and level” out to the beach and back, and I finally got out of the plane pink instead of green. 

About 25 hours of air time later, I actually flew that Cessna 172 by myself for the first time last Friday. I was surprised at how not nervous I was. It was a calm day, which helped, and David flew the “right” seat for three takeoffs and landings before hopping out of the plane, but I knew I was ready. Four times up, four times down, “greased” landings almost every time. And when I heard the tires squeal as they hit the ground on that first go ‘round, I couldn’t help think of those days back in Chicago with my mom. I let out a very loud, grown up “Wheeeeeeeeeee!!!” indeed, bridging two bookends on a lifelong passion. It was, in a word, awesome.

Throughout the process, which still has about 30 hours to go (at least) before I get my check ride for my official private pilot’s license, I’ve been thinking a lot about the learning process. A couple folks have Tweeted asking what I’m learning about learning, so I thought I’d take the time to reflect just a bit here. I keep running Sarason’s “And What Do You Mean By Learning?” filter through all of this, and it’s been pretty interesting to go meta and look at myself as a learner in a very concrete context again. So, some quick thoughts, more for me than anything, but hopefully worth the time if you chose to read it:

1. The intrinsic motivation I have for this makes all the difference, even with the not so fun stuff. As with just about everything, I’ve got to learn more than just making the plane do what I want it to. There’s a lot of math, physics, geography, statistics…all sorts of stuff that I never really liked in school (to put it mildly.) But I don’t mind it much at all because I know why I have to know it. All that stuff informs the act, makes me better at it, and, most importantly, that connection is real and relevant. 

2. I needed a good teacher. I know I talk a lot about this brave new world where we can learn all sorts of stuff on our own without traditional teachers. This is not one of them. Although I have never once felt scared in the plane, David has made some life or death decisions for us, particularly when I’m fighting the controls trying to get the plane on the runway in a stiff crosswind. He’s patiently and carefully given me more and more of the responsibility, releasing the controls more and more, providing specific feedback and assessment. But now, as I read this back, I’m not sure if “teacher” is really the right word for what he’s done. He’s guided, modeled and supported more than anything. Very little has been of the “this is an altimeter and here’s what it does” variety. That stuff I could have learned on my own. 

3. Learning is not linear. Another thing that I knew, but this process has reminded me of that over and over. Some days, I feel like I’m leaping forward. Other days, every input feels wrong. Pilots talk of “bad days” in all of the flying forums I lurk around in, and I know exactly what they mean. Here’s hoping I don’t take my check test on a “bad day.” 

4. There is nothing like learning by doing. I’ve been on a simulator once, and it’s not even close to being up in the sky trying to pick out landmarks, seeing both New York City and Philadelphia in one visual sweep, and trying to land at a real life, grown-up plane airport where the runway looks like it goes on forever. 

My favorite Sarason snip is the idea that productive learning is a process “which engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more.” I feel that way about a lot of things; parenting, learning in a networked world, and flying to name a few. And this whole process has reminded me how much I want my own kids to have that feeling as well. 

Just a couple of quotes that found me this morning, some pattern recognition in my sleepy brain.

Joi Ito in the New York Times:

I don’t think education is about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.

And George Siemens at his blog:

Planned information structures like textbooks and courses simply can’t adapt quickly enough to incorporate network-speed information development. Instead of being the hub of the learning experiences, books, courses, and classrooms become something more like a node in part of a much broader (often global) network. The shift to networks is transformative in how a society organizes itself.

Two pretty smart guys echoing each other and making me think more deeply about what needs to happen to make this a reality in our classrooms. How do we help our students establish themselves as a “node” in a broad, global network of creativity and learning? Shouldn’t that be one of the fundamental questions that drives our work in schools right now?

The answers start, as always, with our own willingness and ability to go there. But they also start with transparently asking the big questions in our schools and communities. In light of the changes that the Web is bringing to our learning lives:

• What do we mean by learning?
• What does it mean to be educated?
• What is our value in a world filled with content and teachers?
• How do we best help students become patient, self-sufficient, sensitive, intelligent learners?

And finally this from George a couple of weeks ago:

When the education system is synchronized with the interests and passions of learners, the process is invigorating and tremendously motivating. However, when learners and educators have to fight the existing education system in order to learn and teach, it’s time for dramatic change.

Too many of us are fighting the system to learn and teach. We’re out of synch. If we’re not having these conversations in our communities, we really need to be.

I just recently ran across Jonathan Martin’s posts regarding the “Open Internet” tests that he’s piloting with some teachers at St. Gregory School in Arizona, and I’m just loving the thinking. In November of 2010, he first asked:

We know that content memorization must no longer [be] the goal of our learning programs; what our goal must be is that students can make the most sense of the voluminous and fast-accelerating quantity of information which will forever be at their fingertips, and about which they must be able to think critically, to select, to evaluate, to apply, and to amend as they tackle challenging problems. So why shouldn’t our school-tests evaluate our students ability to do exactly this?  Why not structure tests appropriately, and then invite and welcome (and require) our students to use their computers on their tests? Isn’t this real world, and real life, preparation?

A couple of months ago, Jonathan wrote about a chemistry teacher at his school who was letting students use the Internet to take tests, (check out the embedded annotated example test) and he added this piece of reasoning:

Our students are preparing to work in professional environments where they must tackle and resolve complex problems, and we know that in nearly every envisionable such environment, they will have laptops or other mobile, web-connected, digital tools to address those problems.   Let’s assess their  understanding in situations parallel to those for which we are preparing them.

Then, this week, Jonathan added a third post that documents the experiences of a Theater History teacher, and he refined his pitch for “Open Internet” tests even more:

I think this assessment approach is a highly valuable one for promoting deeper learning, information literacy, and analytic and organizational skill development over memorization and regurgitation.  I think that many tests in most subjects can be, with the right intentional design, “open internet” and that they will be the better for it.  Some argue against tests altogether, but I still love a good test, and taking the time to think through as a teacher what kind of questions can we ask which will continue to be meaningful assessments when Google and Wolfram Alpha are available is, I think, a highly productive exercise, and, of course, will generate a more authentic assessment experience far more well aligned with the real world of professionals for which we are preparing our students.

The student feedback about the test structure included in the post is instructive. For instance:

I liked this test because it allowed me to show what I know. With multiple choice tests, that’s not always obvious (it could just be a lucky guess or limited knowledge of something).  Short answer takes too much time and also isn’t the best option for full explanations. I also liked how we had some input on the test, because not only were the suggested questions helpful for studying, but it also forced me to think about the test long before the morning of.

Read the rest.

Now a couple of quick points and then a push. First, as both teachers that are featured in the posts point out, the thinking is a bit different when creating tests like these. For instance:

In his Chemistry class, Dr. Morris recognizes how radically the questions he asks must change if he knows his test-takers have access to the internet, Wolfram-Alpha, and a myriad of other sources on chemical information.   His questions must require his students to genuinely sort out what information they require, get that information, evaluate it, and then apply it to solve his now much more complex and rich questions. This is assessment for genuine understanding, not assessment of recall and regurgitation. It is far [more] likely to be assessment of lasting understanding and future applicability than typical memorization based testing.

Second, while the idea of going online to find answers may strike some as “cheating” and/or making things too easy, many of our students will find this more difficult:

This test does not have multiple choice or terms that we had to define. This is more about testing your ability to find resources that you need, write a quality essay under pressure. I find I like the multiple choice and defining terms better.

And now the push. What if we didn’t just make it about giving kids access to Google and Wolfram Alpha for test taking? What if we invited them to use their networks of peer learners and teachers as well? 

Awesome.

I know that this goes back to the “what do we really need to make sure kids are carrying around in their heads?” debate, and it speaks to the fact that not every child is going to have access to the Web at every moment (at least not in the near term.) But just think of all of the new ways we would be able to prepare kids to answer the questions that they will be asked in their real lives if we gave them a handful of “Open Network” tests before they graduated. I mean, why wouldn’t we be doing this?

And if you really want to go there, why wouldn’t we let kids access their networks for the Common Core assessments that are coming down the pike? 

Curious to hear your thoughts. Anyone else out there moving in this direction? Why or why not?

(Note: Jonathan will be presenting on these ideas at the NAIS conference next month in Seattle.) 

As Royan Lee points out, there’s every reason to have a conversation with students about SOPA and PIPA in almost any classroom right now. (If last Wednesday wasn’t a teachable moment, I don’t know what was.) For most older kids, the debate strikes at the heart of their practices online, and even for younger kids, the larger themes are well worth the mention in general terms. My guess, however, is that a very small percentage of students have had a chance to learn and think about those proposals in the presence of peers and teachers.

Why? For one, I wonder how many teachers could lead a cogent discussion about them. The whole world of online interactions and knowledge sharing is not something most teachers yet participate in. But as Royan points out, in order to have a really meaningful conversation about SOPA and PIPA, students need to have a larger context other than the pirating of copyrighted music and films. He writes: 

Do you know what made it a lot easier to have a discussion about SOPA and PIPA in my class? The fact that my students post regularly to the internet, comment on one another’s work, receive comments from the far reaches of the globe, remix work, share links, and honour CC licensed work.

I asked the students how they would feel if their ability to do all of things was restricted, or even taken away, without debate or a tribunal of some variety. The room went silent for a minute which felt like an hour, but we proceeded to have a rich discussion about democracy without ever mentioning the word itself.

I know they still care much more about whether the next Eminem song will get on their iPods, but at least we were speaking about something we really know, not just have heard of.

And Royan can do that because he really know this through his own practice as well. Those conversations in his class would have been far less relevant without that.

So this pretty much sums it up as well it can be summed up right now:

U.S. schools under the jurisdiction of state and federal governments are now scripted processes that view knowledge as static capital, students as passive and empty vessels, and teachers as compliant conduits for state-approved content. The accountability paradigm is antithetical to human agency and autonomy and thus to democracy, but it serves the needs of the status quo and the ruling elite; in effect, accountability paradigms driving compulsory education are oppressive.

Amen.

(Source: dailykos.com)