Thriving too

Children as Teachers

This week I am in Philadelphia for the Mind, Brain and Education Conference and I will be putting up some posts today and tomorrow about some of the speakers. This morning we had a talk by Antonio Battro, the current President of the Society on the 'Teaching Brain'.

 

Battro believes that insufficient attention has been given to research into the teaching brain, and he has particularly strong feelings about giving children opportunities to teach as well as learn.

The other major project that Battro works on is the One Laptop per Child scheme, and he took the opportunity to share some of his ideas around how the scheme is promoting children as teachers.  Some of the facts that Battro shared were:

- In Uruguay, this month or next, they will reach 100% digital saturation with the laptop scheme - all 400,000 children will possess a laptop.

- Children in Uruguay are often found outside their schools at all hours for the wifi access.

- One observation in India showed that bringing the laptops into the classroom meant that within 2 hours the class was working in groups rather than rows, teaching and sharing with each other.

Really inspiring stuff!

Tribute to Frank Pajares

Over the weekend I was terribly upset to discover that Professor Frank Pajares had died in January.  I exchanged a number of emails with Prof. Pajares over the last few years and although I had in fact never met him face to face, his passing has affected me very much.  

Frank Pajares worked on self-efficacy beliefs, mostly in adolescence.  He edited Self-efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents with Tim Urdan, which is one of the most inspiring and  referenced books in my library.

I shared two intellectual heroes with Frank Pajares.  He worked with and was an enormous supporter of Albert Bandura's work, orginator of social cognitive theory. He created and maintained the Self-efficacy website at Emory University - one of the finest resources on the subject and Albert Bandur's work anywhere.

His other hero was William James. In a recent interview Pajares said of William James:

"For over 30 years, I have been smitten with William James. I read him for work and for play. I read him for guidance. I read him for inspiration. I read him when my spirits are low. I read him to discover what I really think. I read him to learn. I am never disappointed. My admiration borders on adulation. How could anyone fail to see the profundity of this man’s wisdom, the elegance 

of his thought, or the simplicity of his uncommon common sense."

At the end of that interview he was asked how he would like to be remembered.  

"You know, I just don’t think that way. Actually, I don’t much care how I am remembered by the fields of education and psychology. I’d be delighted if at times the thought of me would spark a smile in the face of one of my former students, though."

Frank Pajares had a wonderful intellect and was a brilliant and funny man. I loved reading everything that he wrote. His website and presentations are full of humour. He loved Calvin and Hobbs. His faculty picture for many years was a pic of Sean Connery.  

In his interview he quoted William James's closing words of his famous Talks to Teachers "with the admonition that if we can view our students as essentially good, and love them as well, we “will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers.” 

IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience

I was delighted when David Barrie sent me this marvellous list from IDEO. When the design consultancy ranked as one of the top 25 most innovative companies turns their gaze on education there is a good chance people might start to listen in earnest. 

What is great about this list is how it has been written, what it prioritises and who has written it.  Very insightful.

"In recent years, IDEO has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about education. The firm’s work with Ormondale Elementary School, in Portola Valley, California, helped pioneer a special “investigative-learning” curriculum that inspires students to be seekers of knowledge. We spoke to Sandy Speicher, who heads the Design for Learning efforts at IDEO. Her insights provide powerful lessons for architects and designers creating the schools of tomorrow:"

1. Pull, don’t push. 
Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing—and can’t help but seek out an answer. 

2. Create from relevance. 
Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone. 

3. Stop calling them “soft” skills. 
Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges. 

4. Allow for variation. 
Evolve past a one-size-fits-all mentality and permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place. 

5. No more sage onstage. 
Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”

6. Teachers are designers. 
Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.

7. Build a learning community. 
Learning doesn’t happen in the child’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the child—it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist. 
An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

9. Incubate the future. 
What if our K–12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.

10. Change the discourse. 
If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.

Hat tip: David Barrie

Via: Metropolismag

Education Means More Than Job-training

 

Professor Patrick Keeney made an impassioned plea for learning in the National Post this month.

"A search for knowledge and understanding is one of the most fundamental of the passions. Justice Douglas [aged 90] desired to learn Greek for the sheer delight involved in learning. This quest for knowledge is hardly confined to youth, but is something we engage in throughout our life. We have lost sight of the spirit which animated Justice Douglas. At every level, schools have become obsessed with credentials, and with providing students with marketable trades.

No one disputes that universities properly serve a role of social utility. However, education is about something more than simply preparing students for the job market. It is also about the ancient idea that free citizens need to develop a critical intelligence to enable them to live meaningful lives.

Through education we are introduced to other ways of thinking about the world and its people. We encounter new ideas, new questions and new imaginings. We increase our understanding of the human condition."

Machine Project

 

Machine Project describes itself as follows:

Machine Project exists to encourage heroic experiments of the gracefully over-ambitious. We provide educational resources to people working with technology, we collaborate with artists to produce site-specific works, and we promote conversations between scientists, poets, technicians, performers, and the community of Los Angeles as a whole.

Their list of classes and workshops include:

Intro to Soldering/Build Your Own Synth workshop 

Introduction to Crochet

Intermediate Circuitbending 

Instrument Invention Workshop

Computer Music Gaming: Intro to SuperCollide

Currently if you are a paid up member, you can win a musical trip to the dentist!

The Public School

The Public School is a school with no curriculum. At the moment, it operates as follows: first, classes are proposed by the public (I want to learn this or I want to teach this); then, people have the opportunity to sign up for the classes (I also want to learn that); finally, when enough people have expressed interest, the school finds a teacher and offers the class to those who signed up.

The Public School is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that everything is in everything.

Amazing list of people involved...

Via: Lauren Currie

 

Exciting School

High Tech High looks like such an exciting school environment.....

"HTH combats the twin problems of student disengagement and low academic achievement by creating personalized, project-based learning environments where all students are known well and challenged to meet high expectations. HTH schools attempt to show how education can be redesigned to ensure that all students graduate well prepared for college, work, and citizenship." 

Learning Just Changed... I think....

There is a lot of talk about 'open' in education.  But I feel as though the game is *really* changing.  Talk has started to be a reality.  

If you can't get to Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale..... On Academic Earth you can now watch lectures from their top scholars.

Two years after it's launch new research published this month in New Scientist Magazine showed that students who downloaded a podcast lecture through iTunes University 'achieved substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person'.

My friend Andy Gibson has been writing about the possibility of doing an MA in Everything. I love this idea and I can really start to imagine this happening!

"I've been thinking for a while now about going back into full-time education.
I'm very clear that I don't want to be an academic or study at an academic institution though. I want to spend a year studying all the various things I'm interested in - some quite formally, some just for the fun of it. I want to design my own Masters course and spend a year learning everything I've always wanted to."

The Delights of Progressive Education

I had the great pleasure to spend today in the company of group of very inspiring educationalists and students at the the 'Celebrate the Difference' Conference co-hosted by Frensham Heights School and Bedales School.  The idea of the conference was to gather together a number of ethos-led schools to discuss ways that they could share their ideas and experiences and generally promote the shared ideals of these schools to the wider educational community and general public.  

The other schools who were represented by Headteachers or Deputy Heads and student members were: Leighton Park School and Bootham School, both Quaker Schools; King Alfred School; Newton Prep; University College School; Sands School;  Bryanston School; and Lewes New School.  From the list you will of course notice that there was a great variety of schools attending, some occupying very different positions on a scale between progressive and traditional.  This added something particularly interesting to the day.

The day was kicked off by Dr Martin Stephen - High Master of St Paul's School who gave a very interesting and personal talk about his perspective on the challenges he sees in education today.  Dr Stephen, although generally critical of the developments, or rather lack of developments, in our educational systems from the 40s onwards, started off expressing great optimism about young people more generally.  He said 'I defy anyone working with young people every day not to be an optimist'.

Dr Stephen's most insightful comments were made during the question and answer session where he expressed the view that the 'key to change was about enabling others' and that his own modest, but lovely, view of his achievements were that he believed that he might have left his previous schools 'nicer and kinder' places under his headship.

In a BBC interview at lunchtime Andrew Fisher, Head of Frensham Heights said:

"Our key thought this morning was about bravery in the curriculum, in trusting students and in taking risks."

"I feel there is a need for schools like this in a changing world where there are issues about global warming and resources, about why the banking world has collapsed and where overt competition is encouraged."

"We advocate independence, creativity, relationships and spontaneity, which might be more effective in the long term for all of us."

I found the day a delight, and appreciated every moment spent with such dedicated and thoughtful people.  When talking collectively about what the individual schools felt were the things that made their schools special places, there was a universal agreement that the relationships within the schools were the most important aspect of the individual school's 'magic'.  Trust, mutual respect, happiness, achievement, caring, listening, responsibility... were words mentioned often during the day - including by students in the afternoon session.

Perhaps the spirit of the day is best summarised by a wonderful quote from John Atkins from Frensham Heights who gave an amusing historical perspective of liberal education: 

"...they [students] all have within them the potential for wisdom and a capability for joy. Every conversation with any pupil contains inherent possibility and, in that sense, every conversation is special. Perhaps the essence of liberal education is to respect every contact with pupils, to give complete attention to what is being said and provide a balanced and thoughtful response."

I sense, as I always do, that due to their collective size, that many of these types of forward looking schools (there are of course many more), perhaps feel slightly on the fringes of educational development at times.  This couldn't in fact be further from the truth.

It is these types of brave and unusual schools which provide the 'system' with innovations in teaching, learning and community spirit.  Innovations that work.  

The importance of relationships in the learning dynamic and in community wellbeing are increasingly being recognised more widely, and it is on this basis that these schools should be at the very centre of where mainstream education looks for practical inspiration.  Many ideas which we take for granted today, such as student voice, co-education and education of the whole person, started life in these very schools, and it would be nice not only to see their contribution to creative thinking in schools recognised, but also that their experience and wisdom should continue to be source of very deep understanding.

The Obama's have chosen a Quaker school for their two girls, and Apple's Steve Jobs's children went to The Nueva School, one of the first pioneers of social and emotional teaching in the US.  I think they might be onto something...

Thank you to Andrew Fisher and Keith Budge, who made everyone feel so welcome, for a thoroughly refreshing day!

TESTING HOPE: Grade 12 in the new South Africa

Despite the promise of opportunity, 52% of people aged 16-24 in South Africa are unemployed.  Testing Hope  is an award winning documentary by Molly Blank  which follows four students – Babalwa, Noluyanda, Mongamo and Sipho – at Oscar Mpetha High School in Nyanga township, just outside of Cape Town, as they work towards their crucial Matric exams which one student calls “the decider." The film in not new, but has made significant impact in South Africa, bringing to everyone's attention this deeply important look at education post 1994. 

"Director Molly Blank powerfully tells us of the lives of four students and the current conditions of their schools, placing student achievement in light of the country's historical experience with apartheid, against the backdrop of the wide-spread public belief that education can and will bring about social change.

Testing Hope offers an honest and sincere portrayal of the persistent inequality in under-resourced township schools in contrast with formerly white "model C" schools.Yet, the film is striking not only in its contrasts, but in its questioning of the national embrace of this high stakes assessment."
—Carol Ann Spreen, Assistant Professor, University of Virginia

Having taken the matric exam myself in Grahamstown in 1983, I am particularly interested in seeing this film. 

It would great to see some screenings of this film, at RSA or NESTA for example [hint]

Via: Steve Dahlberg

I Want to Do this All Day!

I WANT TO DO THIS ALL DAY is an audio documentary about "Redefining Learning and Reinventing Education." The documentary uses interviews from 23 different learning spaces to illuminate the grassroots movement of people and communities taking power over their own education and creating learning environments based on freedom, cooperation and social change.

Thanks, Will!

Miles Berry, Headteacher, talks about social media

Miles Berry is the Head of Alton Convent Prep School in Hampshire.  Miles is one of very few Headteachers who is currently using social media, keeping his own blog and communicating on Twitter. He has kindly agreed to be interviewed for the Thriving Too blog...

Tessy  Blogging and using social media seems like a bold step for a Head to make... why do you think so few Headteachers are blogging?

Miles - Well, there are a few of us, but I'll admit it's something of a minority interest at the moment. I never saw it as a bold step myself, as I'd started blogging before taking on my present role.

As to why there aren't more of us, in part, it's a time thing - there are plenty of occasions during the school year when work seems to take over almost every waking moment, and then the blogging and engagement with the broader educational community have to take a back seat.  There's also, I suspect, a generational thing, in that it's only now that Tapscott's N-Geners are moving into headship.

More cynically, it's possible that new heads' previous experience of social networks via NCSL's talk2learn system has failed to fire their enthusiasm, but things are changing at NCSL, with a new system coming soon.

Another issue is that of the head's persona as somehow representing the school, and I can imagine some of my fellow heads being reluctant to share too much of their personal views and experiences online.

Tessy  I certainly see that last point being a important reason.  You are very interested in technology in schools and education, are you using the blog and Twitter to keep connected with other people working in education and technology, or are you also using them as communication tools within the school community more widely?

Miles  My own blog and most of my tweets tend to focus on the use of technology in education, and I'd say over half of my 'personal learning network' are people in the ed. tech. world; for me, this is the area in which I feel I can contribute most to the world of education beyond my own school. 

The other side of this though is the school's own website, which I built using the open source content management system Drupal. This  has a lot of blog-like features, such as reverse chronological ordering on the front page, RSS feeds and tags, although we've not enabled comments yet. The tag system also creates department blogs automatically, and we have an RSS feed from the website into the virtual learning environment (VLE), so our students are kept up to date about what's happening elsewhere in the school. 

My 'Dear Parents' letters are included here along with match reports, write-ups of visits and highlighted work form our students.

Tessy  Have you had any response from parents?

Miles  To the school website, yes; very favourable ones - we average around 200 hits a day in term time, with really positive feedback from present and prospective parents as well as our own students. Occasionally I hear about some of my pupils finding things I've written online, but I'm not aware of any of our parents who regularly read my blog or follow me on Twitter, although I do have a number of blogging and tweeting colleagues now.

Tessy Do you think other Headteachers should be encouraged to blog?

Miles  Professionally, there's much to be said for the Head's Blog as a successor to letters home, and it would be great to see more heads doing this through their school websites. Reflection on practice and connections with others outside the sometimes insular world of British schools certainly ought to be part of every teacher's or school leader's professional development, and blogging is a great way to do this in a less formal, more organic way than traditionally accredited courses.

Tessy  Are you encouraging the use of social media tools with your students?

Miles  Absolutely. We use the open source software Elgg to host our own social networking platform inside the school network but accessible form home, and create accounts on this for all our Year 6 students. We spend a term using this as a medium for their writing, both in lessons and outside of school - a kind of digital 'show and tell'. 

This lets us cover a lot of the e-safety groundwork, as well as nudging children towards collaboration and creativity rather than just the communication and consumption of culture that tends to characterize their use of the Internet outside school.

Our VLE, Moodle, also includes a number of social media features, and we're keen to use this as a way of extending the learning community into the home, through discussions and wikis, rather than just delivering resources and quizzes.

My brilliant network manager is now running a 'digital arts' club for the prep school pupils, with some great podcasting being done; we make extensive use of Wikipedia; we don't filter out YouTube at the moment; and we use Flickr's creative commons search extensively for presentations and the like.

Tessy  Do you think social media tools could potentially be used to build trust, openness and contribution within the school community?

Miles  The trust, openness and sense of contribution come first, in my experience. Having a culture of collaboration and an emphasis on the classroom and school as learning community mean that social technology can be introduced without undue concern on its being abused. 

The technology does help to build-up and extend these qualities outside of the classroom. However, simply introducing the tools won't suddenly transform a hierarchical, assessment-led institution into a vibrant learning community.

Tessy  Thank you so much Miles for giving us such valuable and important insights into yours and your school's approach to these complex issues, which all schools are trying to address.  I hope that your innovative work will show other schools a balanced path between safety and maximising the learning, communication and collaborative opportunities enabled by the internet.

Laptops in Nepal

How do you introduce computers in a country where only 45% of people are literate? Rabi Karmacharya is doing exactly that. Seed Magazine reports on how Rabi is using the XO computer through One Laptop per Child scheme to change education in Nepal.

"Of the country's eight million school-age children, 84% attend primary school; by age 11 half have dropped out."

"...if this current generation of kids can leapfrog the failing system with little more than an inexpensive plastic computer stocked with clever programs, Rabi could just succeed in bypassing decades of slow national development."

The article also states, amazingly, that The Uruguayan government has purchased 350,000 XOs, and by the end of 2009 every child will own one and have access to the Internet. Literacy rates there are more than 98%. 

Educational Systems and Time

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers is, in his own words, 'a corrective if not an assault' on the widely held view that people succeed through talent alone. Researchers in psychology have also sought to debunk the talent myth.  These include Angela Duckworth's research into 'grit' and perseverance. Carol Dweck's work, Mindset showed that attitudes to ability, and in particular IQ, altered our behaviour and achievement levels. 

Gladwell's focus, rather than the psychological, painstakingly takes us through a number of highly persuasive examples where our social systems favour some and fail others.  One of his examples included the researched fact that the system in Canadian hockey favours those kids born between January and March.

But one of the examples is quite uncomfortable.

The topic is how the education system copes with variance in social backgrounds.

Children from working class backgrounds suffer educationally during the long summer holiday.  Children from middle class backgrounds read more during the summer and generally have more access and encouragement to continue learning informally through the summer holiday.  Gladwell isn't the first to highlight this. Charlie Leadbeater raised this issue in 21 ideas for the 2st Century Learning published last year, which included discussion of the holidays, saying:

"Holidays are vital for families; school holidays provide a rhythm to the year for people and parents like predictable holidays. But many families would be better able to maintain stable relationships at school if they were able to take more flexible holidays." 

Leadbeater sites an example where re-structuring the year, providing 5 terms with two week breaks between and only four weeks in the summer, raised the proportion of students gaining five good GCSE's from 70% to 88%.  

Gladwell's example in contrast is KIPP schools in the US, who are tackling this issue head on.  They are effectively re-balancing the social/educational equalities directly by increasing teaching time by 50%-60%, not by increasing flexibility.  

When hearing this my guard went up immediately.  I automatically assumed a 'hothouse' approach.  Pushing kids to get good grades.  

However, Gladwell's discussion showed that this extra time has benefits that up close are very appealing indeed.  More teaching time means that the teachers have more time to explain things, go over things, play games.  The students have more time to digest. They get through more work. But entry to a KIPPs school includes a very large work commitment.  They really do work hard. 

But you can't help but wonder how much, exactly, of the discipline and failing problems could be overcome by giving everyone a bit more time to learn, in a more relaxed atmosphere, provided by more relaxed and satisfied teachers.... 

More: IPPR's Freedom's Orphans

Karl Alexander's research

MIT Drops the 'Lecture' Format

MIT has always taught in lecture halls.  Now they have changed:

"The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning. Last fall, after years of experimentation and debate and resistance from students, who initially petitioned against it, the department made the change permanent. Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent."

Good lesson for everyone, particularly schools.

Pic: Prof. Gabriella Sciolla at a class on electricity and magnetism. via: New York Times

Unesco E-Cards

Unesco have some really nice E-cards!

Amazing New Centre for Learning

The Centre for Real-World Learning opened last month at the University of Winchester. The Centre is being led by Professor Guy Claxton and Professor Bill Lucas whose mission is to find out more about how people can be helped to get better at learning whatever it is they want to learn.  

Their examples of Real World Learning include:

Investigating: gathering and testing information and ideas

Experimenting: trying things out in practice; drafting and redrafting

Controlled imagining: running mental simulations and rehearsals

Receptive imagining: allowing possibilities to incubate and ‘bubble up’ into consciousness

Reasoning: thinking things through, planning and goal-setting, analysing arguments and evaluating progress

Resourcing: creating and capitalising on a network of tools and resources

Collaborating: engaging, sharing and discussing with others

What a welcome addition to the educational landscape!

Recruiting kids in school...

I've watched this film far too many times but as its a favourite it seems a good one for a first post! Earlier in the year an advert on the Tube in London caught my eye - its the one showing a teacher using a camcorder on a basketball court to teach maths (trajectories I think). It was a really good example of making an otherwise dull subject seem appealing.

Of course the aim of that appeal was to recruit teachers - not to recruit students which is the aim of the film below. I wonder then, what if teachers did have to recruit children to their lessons? What if children had complete freedom of choice as to which lessons they signed up for each term/semester/year? How would that change the way subjects are presented to children and young people?

Thinking Through Art

If you have 10 minutes do watch this amazing short film by Hillman Curtis which documents Jim Dine working. There is an intrinsic lawlessness about Jim's work which really liberates your thinking, even as an observer. There is a beautiful bit in the film where he decides to sand blast the paint he originally applied to his figures, because it is hiding too many imperfections.

What an interesting idea.... Imagine if educators adopted that attitude to all their students?

A really inspiring research project through the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is looking in detail at enhancing thinking through art discussion. Great resources on the site, including all the research and lots of lesson plans.

Additional Programmes:
Learning Through Art at the Guggenheim Museum
Artful Citizenship at The Wolfsonian

Also both important and interesting is Visual Thinking Strategies which aims to bring a wider understanding and practice of visual literacy into schools.

There are also lots of great art sites in the UK
Young Tate
Tate Tracks

And Creative Partnerships and The Making do some wonderful art projects in schools.

Being Capable

A friend of mine recently visited Atlantic College in Wales. She was pretty impressed altogether, but what she wanted to talk about most was the service programme that they run for the students. This service programme isn't just about students extending time and care into their local community, it includes a list of high competency training schemes including how to run a Lifeboat Centre.... to manning the phone lines at Childline.

The College describes their aims as follows:

The College enables young people to become responsible citizens, politically and environmentally aware, committed to the ideals of peace, justice, understanding and cooperation, and to the implementation of these ideals through action and personal example.

It sounds to me as though Atlantic College may actually be achieving some of these aims, partly by helping students feel genuinely capable. I went to hear Richard Gerver's talk on creativity in education in London on Tuesday, who was excellent, and was again inspired to think seriously about how vital it is to broaden the curriculum.

So much discussion in education is about the academic curriculum, new teaching methods etc. Thankfully a lot of discussion about 'soft skills' and confidence too. Which is great. But nothing in my opinion makes a person feel more capable, than actually being capable.

As with Atlantic College and countless other examples of inspiring programmes for young people, it is the variety of experiences which seems the essential opportunity. Whether a sports programme, a dance programme, or an art or service one, each may offer an opportunity to a young person which provides the catalyst for developing a sense of excitement and enjoyment.....

William Damon's recent book The Path to Purpose, describes the results of a research project with young people, looking particularly at the discouragement of many young people who are not engaged with their lives. He writes:

"Ultimately all young people will make their own choices: no one can do this for them. But we can make it far more likely that they will be able to make good choices which provide them with a lifelong sense of well-being. We can offer them possibilities that fire their imaginations, guidance that encourages their highest aspirations, support that helps them realize their aspirations, and a cultural climate that inspires rather than demoralizes them."

Photographs from Stefan Bruggemann's text pieces.

Testing, testing, testing

When I was in California earlier this month one of the things that teachers really complained about was the No Child Left Behind Act. In America this act has now been in force since 2001 and teachers are now counting the educational costs of implementation. NCLB focusses on bridging achievement gaps, raising standards, having high expectations for all students, making schools more accountable for results. This sounds very reasonable. But like many policies and ideas which sound great in theory, in the classroom these principles appear to play out as narrowing the curriculum, constant testing, disrespecting teacher's capability and vocation, removal of play times and holidays - to ensure that every child gets over the required academic line.

In the UK a comparison is often made to the Every Child Matters, and there are certainly similarities in wanting more children to succeed more and fail less, by academic standards. However it seems to me that Every Child Matters is taking a much more integrated approach to include the whole child's wellbeing rather than just focussing on academics. Is Every Child Matters falling into the same traps that NCLB is I wonder? I hope not.

In my own opinion the greatest weakness in both these policies isn't necessarily the aims, the desire outcomes, but in the methods that are being used to try and achieve these. NCLB seems to rely heavily on traditional methods of teaching and assessing.

If you compare, for example, the RSA's Opening Minds Curriculum, with the traditional knowledge based curriculum, you can see that there is a world of difference in how the desired outcomes can be achieved. Opening Minds relies on a creative exploration of a curriculum which nurtures thinking and life-long learning skills, whereas the traditional methods evident in America continues to be knowledge-based, and thus testing assessed.

In a really interesting article in Good Magazine, Gary Stager
discusses No Child Left Behind without holding back any punches. His main points are that the pressures of accountability based solely on standardised tests are reducing the scope of education, not increasing it, and that the interference of business and philanthropy are making things worse not better. He writes:

"The theory behind the tests seems to analogous to the theory that taking a sick patient's temperature every seven minutes will cure him"

I certainly take his point. The pressures that some low performing students are under really worries me:

"...first graders being placed in “Gift of Time” summer schools. For nearly 12 percent of first graders in East Ramapo, New York, summer break means being held back and receiving a “gift” of tutoring, with an extra order of tutoring on the side. Somehow, we are to believe that this will help slower children catch up.

Except they can’t catch up. When they return to school in the fall, according to the Times article, they’ll be segregated in their own small classes made up of other kids deemed “low-performers.” At an age when children should be falling in love with learning, these children will be labeled, shamed, and tracked."

But while Stager writes a persuasive article against the realities of NCLB, I am less convinced by the way he has presented his solution:

"If every parent was vocally fighting for the best public schools for their children—instead of some of the most involved and caring opting out in disgust—the government would be forced to listen."

In part this is absolutely true: parent's interest and care are vital for schools to flourish. However, 'vocally fighting' in my experience (3 years Chairing a Parents' Association) is completely the wrong approach. Schools need parent support, they need informed parent opinion and they need a two way dialogue which has everything to do with mutual respect and care for the children, and nothing at all to do with fighting. Creating spaces in schools for teachers and parents to both talk and listen seems the only real way to keep parents supporting a state system of education. While schools continue to pretend to listen, and parents continue to fight, parents will not be the valuable and indispensable resource to schools that they have the potential to be. Like a car without fuel, a school without trust isn't going anywhere.*

*I can't remember where I heard this quote. But I like it.

Future of Education Map

The KnowledgeWorks Foundation has produced a really interesting map which details what they think are the Future Forces Affecting Education 2006-2016. Very good for discussion and perspective widening

What's the Point of School

I am not prone to raving about books, but I really want to encourage reading Guy Claxton's new book 'What's the Point of School'. This Tour de Force on schooling and education not only provides a powerful rationale on educational change for life-long learning - it also gives an inspiring glimpse into the tangible possibilities of exciting schooling.

Professor Guy Claxton is opening the Centre for Real-World Learning at The University of Winchester next month with Professor Bill Lucas. The mission of the centre includes: To develop robust, practical understandings that can help people, of all ages and in all walks of life, become more able, confident and eager learners throughout their lives.

You can see Guy Claxton speak at the RSA on the 2nd October, where he will be debating 'What's the Point of School' with Dylan Wiliam, deputy director, Institute of Education, University of London and Mike Gibbons, chief executive, The Innovation Unit.

Not to be missed.

Teach them outside...

Thanks Jennifer Renae Egelston Wood for the links!

21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning

Charlie Leadbeater launched his new ideas paper last month through the Innovation Unit. The ideas follow Charlie's research in an interesting and innovative group of schools. I particularly like the emphasis on relationships for learning and I would recommend reading the whole paper which can be easily downloaded. Here is a brief quote that I liked particularly:

Children need relationships that make them feel cared for, safe and secure. Feeling cared for depends on your distinctive needs being attended to, having a voice in what happens to you and being treated with dignity and
respect. Providing care generally involves: being attentive, sensitive, noticing or even anticipating when someone might be in need; being responsive, engaging with the person to understand what they need; respectful of them as a person.

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