The entrepreneurs

Amid the current school funding cyclone, Naplan, international comparisons of our schools performance and students grilling the PM on national television, too often, there has been little discussion on the role of the teacher in today’s world. I believe this discourse is central to school improvement.

I only wish that we could step back and look afresh at the work good teachers need to do in a knowledge age. I hope I’m not alone in believing that we need to re-think the role of the teacher.  

Socrates used the metaphor of teacher as the midwife at the birth of knowledge.  Is this metaphor still relevant?  If so, what happened in the industrial age when instead of overseeing the birth of knowledge, teachers became owners and transmitters of that information?

Or is this more a question of what value we place on information vs knowledge?  Have we come full circle from the attainment of knowledge in ancient Greece to the transmission of information in the industrial age to the creation of knowledge in today’s world?

Can the role of a teacher remain the same but the context change? Is everything old somehow new again?

Parker Palmer claims “good teachers are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.”  This quote resonates with Elmore’s instructional core and the premise that good teaching is the relationship between the teacher, the student and the content.

There are two areas that I see as critical.  The first is what is the content and whose content?  The real learning lies not just in remembering content but applying and creating it. The concept that students and teacher work together in this process provides a  window into how we might see the work of a contemporary teacher. That students can construct their own learning is a bridge too far for some but this should be the end point.

The second is re-conceptualising the work of teaching.  It’s time to retire the old descriptors of teacher as sage on the stage, guide on the side, meddler in the middle etc.  These do little justice to the complexity of good teaching.

I have begun to think about re-defining teachers as entrepreneurs. In a recent Forbes article on re-defining entrepreneurship, the definition of entrepreneur is seen as the “ innate mindset of a person who sees opportunities and pursues them.”  This is what the role of a teacher in today’s world – they are professionals who take calculated risks using good data and research.  They understand that being professional means being accountable and responsible.  They create networks to build collective knowledge and are willing to share that knowledge with beginning teachers. Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features is an inherent understanding that learning and teaching is dynamic – it requires new sets of inter-dependencies and understandings of learners and their technology.  

Is this how you see the role of teachers in today’s world?

Metacognition and the digital age

I spent Monday in masterclass so to speak at the ACARA national roundtable on curriculum for the 21st century. The roundtable was an opportunity to hear from international experts and educators in the context of how we are responding at a national and local level to the rapidly changing world and how jurisdictions are responding to, and planning for, the nature of schooling in a contemporary world.

It was good to see ACARA looking over the horizon as we move our focus from implementing practicalities to imagining possibilities. Charles Fadel from the Center of Curriculum Design delivered an fascinating keynote on how we pursue depth of understanding in today’s world. He began with examples of the exponential rise of technology and how it is both a source of disruption (see Dan Pink chapter in Whole New Mind on abundance, Asia and automation) but also huge possibilities.

The challenge then for schooling is how do we keep up with technology given the rapid growth we are witnessing? Fadel warns about falling into the trap of playing catch up because we never will be able to, a fact that he demonstrated so profoundly. We should let the race to catch up distract us from the core issue, that is how to construct relevant learning experience for young people.

We know that what we have been teaching isn’t relevant to today’s world but the assumption is that we need to revisit what we teach. What are the things that could be taught that are of value today?

Fadel suggests subjects like journalism, entrepreneurship, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, robotics and 3D printing but he warns that it’s not an argument between teaching STEM or humanities. Both are equally important in today’s world. Employers don’t want employees with knowledge or skills – they want both.

Interestingly the SMH ran an OpEd piece today examining whether the supply of university graduates exceeds demand in a world of MOOCs and off-shoring.  The piece referred to OECD figures showing the number of young people without work globally has risen by 30 percent since 2007.  The author goes on to say that:

Many professions have outsourced the training of young people to universities, expecting the higher-education sector to provide ready-made graduates who can step into corporate jobs. Heaven help our teenage and graduate recruitment markets if economic growth deteriorates, companies more aggressively cut costs, or new technologies lead to some graduate jobs disappearing. It would be an economic and social catastrophe to have so many young people sit idle.

We know the stakes are much higher today than they ever have been.  The demand on learners is great and even greater on schools and education systems. We also know that we must bridge the gap between what is taught and what is actually needed. But who decides on what is needed or relevant? Who defines the curriculum and are students part of the design process? These are questions  we must answer but I don’t believe we have defined the elusive ‘we’ yet?  Are students part of the design process?

While I don’t have all the answers, I liked Fadel’s response to the question – what is the role of a teacher in today’s world?  To teach children how to learn.

Australia – educating globally

On Friday, the Age newspaper featured a story on how foreign fee paying students have become a lucrative income source for cash-strapped Victorian schools. It’s coincidental because I’ve just caught up reading the February report by the International Education Advisory Council on the challenges and opportunities of Australia’s international education sector.

While the focus is predominately on expanding tertiary and VET sectors, there are some interesting statistics on the demand for quality education both regionally and internationally. For instance:

• Education is the fourth largest export industry – $15.7 billion in 2011
• In NSW – international education and training is the second top export earner after coal
• As a result, Australia has internationalised the design and delivery of its education systems
• China, Rep of Korea and Vietnam had the highest student enrolments in schools in 2012
• Australia is likely to host more than half a million students in 2020 studying across all education sectors.  This will be worth $19.1 billion to the local economy.
• Australia needs to focus on providing high quality education

The report identifies seven key issues to be addressed if Australia is to remain globally competitive.  Three of these are relevant to the work of school systems:

1. Provide the highest quality education
2. Develop strong and diverse partnerships that encourage exchange, capacity building and collaboration
3. Inform educational policy through accurate and timely data analysis and research

In the book ‘That Use to be Us’, Thomas Friedman explains why an average education won’t suffice in a hyper-connected world.  He uses his wife’s old college in Iowa as an example of how competitive education has become.  When Thomas’ wife attended Grinnell there were 1600 students. He says if you want your kids to go to Grinnell now, they’ll be competing against 250 applicants from China.  Even Bill Gates admitted he’d rather be a genius born in China than an average guy born in the US because these days multinational companies look globally for the best talent.

This is the reality of living in today’s world and it’s something that every educator needs to be mindful of. Education is global, it’s big business and technology has made the farm, not just the paddock, the new environment. Those things that used to be barriers are now opportunities for new ways of working in a knowledge age.

Teaching the educators

Jal Mehta, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote recently that we “have an almost endless list of things that we would like the next generation of schools to do: teach critical thinking, foster collaboration, incorporate technology, become more student-centered and engaging. The more skilled our teachers, the greater our chances of achieving these goals.” Building teacher capacity is both a school and system responsibility.

The role of the teaching educator in our system is similar to what Michael Fullan refers to as coaches.  They are experts in literacy and numeracy who work with the lead teacher to plan, model, observe, reflect and challenge with the intent of improving the learning outcomes of all students.

In the early days the arrival of a TE in schools was often met with resistance and in some cases, their expertise was under utilised.  Over the past few years we have worked tirelessly to articulate and communicate the what, why and how of the TE in schools.  Their role is not to obstruct schools but to build instructional capacity.  The focus shifts from building individual capacity to community capacity.  Once we build community capacity, our schools will be able to link into an ever bigger system of inquiry, learning and knowledge.

We now understand that the most powerful way of building capacity is in situ, in context around the real problems and challenges that arise on a daily basis.  Previous models of withdrawing teachers from their context and transmitting information did little to improve their practice and only served to further frustrate them.  The best approach is to learn the work by doing the work and having someone that you can share and reflect with.  I think teachers respond well to the immediacy and collegiality of this approach.

In 2011, Michael Fullan and Jim Knight wrote an article titled Coaches as System Leaders.  They state that if “teachers are the most significant factor in student success, and principals are second, then coaches are third.  All three, working in coordinated teams, will be required to bring about deep change.”

Some may call it the power of three – we refer to it as the instructional triad (TE, principal and lead teacher) or the teacher-learning triad (teacher, lead teacher and TE).

Our TEs are an important part of our system strategy to improve the learning outcomes of all students and ensure a professionally rewarding working life for teachers.  The how and why of their work represents a shift in education from “I know to we learn” and success for some learners/schools to success for all learners/schools.

A global village

I’ve just returned from the UK where I had been invited to participate in the CSCLeaders conference.  CSC is an annual global conference that brings together about 100 leaders from across the Commonwealth.  The conference is run in partnership between Common Purpose and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conference which began in 1956.

Aside from being a great privilege to participate, the conference was very much PBL for leaders. Here were 100 culturally diverse leaders from all sectors including government, military, police, education, banking and finance, not for profits, religious groups, activists and the arts coming together to tackle a global challenge. This year, the challenge set for participants was how do you get disparate communities spread across the world to become bridge makers in the global networks of the future?

The conference spanned eight days and was structured in three parts.  The first three days we had input from prominent speakers on the political, social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges of the 21st century.  This was followed by discussion within our groups.  The next three days included site visits to one of five cities in the UK which contextualised the challenge by giving us an opportunity to see how local communities were tackling the challenge of becoming ‘bridge-makers’.  Groups were able to then meet with local community, educational, business and faith leaders.  I was fortunate to have spent my study tour in the London borough of Tower Hamlets because Hargreaves and Shirley include it in their book The Fourth Way as a turned-around district for its schools.

Tower Hamlets is one of the most culturally diverse boroughs of London and a stone’s throw away from the financial and media district of Canary Wharf.  There is a huge population of Bangladeshi migrants – the largest community in the UK.  It also has the highest rate of child poverty in London but as Hargreaves and Shirley state the schools in TH were able to dramatically turn around in a decade from one of the worst performing to performing above the national average.  The reason for this dramatic turnaround was the community coming together to create and build new capacity.

According to Hargreaves and Shirley, the schools improved because services were integrated, school leaders were visionary; they were able to attract high performing teachers who stayed and positive partnerships have been developed between schools, business, community and religious organisations. The Tower Hamlets schools became responsible for each other by setting their own ambitious targets for students.  One of the directors quoted in the Fourth Way said “poverty is not an excuse for poor outcomes.”

I spoke to the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman and the head teacher at Swanlea School, Brenda Landers. Swanlea has 1000 students enrolled and was judged by OFSTED to be ‘outstanding in all areas’.  Brenda attributes the school’s success to a sharp focus on the data and an investment in building the capacity of teachers.

The final three days were spent in Oxford where groups shared their reflections of the study tours.  We synthesized ideas and data then tried to identify innovative practices that the Commonwealth nations might adopt to build leadership capacity at local and global level.  We also reflected on how we could collectively try and tackle some of these 21st century challenges.

A major element of the conference was networking opportunities which included lunch and dinner engagements with HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and HRH Princess Royal and business leaders.  These networks aside from creating the opportunity to bring more people into an ever expanding network of critical thinkers, problem-solvers and exceptional leaders will hopefully sustain the work in years to come.  The next part of the conference takes us to Mumbai or Johannesburg in June where we get to explore the challenge in the context of a vastly different city.

In reflecting on this experience, two important things struck me that were neither obvious or explicitly stated.  The first is that CSCLeaders brings together culturally diverse people who share a common purpose of leading  organisations into the 21st century.  Despite the diversity, there are common threads uniting us all. These threads include a passion for the work we do, a drive to seek new ways and solutions to challenges and the recognition that in this century you cannot do this alone, interdependence demands collaboration at every level.

The second is that depending on which nation of the Commonwealth you were born in, your perception of the world is vastly different.  Members from developing nations are looking for the recognition that they have something valuable to contribute. They do not seek “a leg up” but want to be active citizens in building better societies.

The above made me think about how we go about the work we are doing with our school communities here in Parramatta and raised so many questions for me. Have we have tapped into the rich diversity of our school communities and started from where they are rather then where they should be?  Are we stifling innovation or failing to nurture it? What are the new models we need to explore to build leaders capacities and so on.

This conference taught me many things but key was the value of multiple data sets and the evidence it draws as well as the critical need to interrogate the data from several different points of view. Listening to other leaders and hearing what the data and evidence says to them was a real eye-opener and often altered my own understanding.

For me the most important message I can share is that no matter your experience or expertise base, there is always something to learn.  Living in a global village demands that I need to be a life-long learner as well.

Schools of inquiry

In March the NSW Government announced its blueprint for improving schooling.  The action plan includes raising entry requirements for teaching courses at universities and ensuring the quality of initial teacher education is regularly assessed.  This is a positive move.

Attracting the best and the brightest is something that all education systems desire. Yet attracting is one thing, retaining teachers is something else when we continue to operate as Richard Elmore says as a profession without a practice.

I believe the most important work is preparing teachers to teach in today’s world.  The demands on schools are great, the work of teaching is complex and the needs of students are diverse.  Add to this the ubiquitous nature of technology and the need for a rigorous teacher education model is apparent.

Some time ago on bluyonder, I raised the idea of an apprenticeship for teachers.  Students would be able to connect the theory in practice by continuous exposure to models of good teaching in classrooms. Observation, inquiry, reflection, analysis and collaboration become the norm.  As knowledge and skills develop, student teachers under supervision either by a teacher educator or mentor actually learn to teach.

Coincidentally the British Government is promoting ‘higher apprenticeships’ for professions such as law, accounting, engineering and possibly teacher education. British Education Secretary Michael Gove has recently said he was keen to move away from higher education providers determining how teacher education was delivered:   “The best people to teach teachers are teachers.”

The best people to teach teachers are effective teachers.

Kevin Donnelly also reflects that since “former teachers colleges closed and education become the preserve of university-based faculties of education, teacher training has become overly theoretical and divorced from classroom realities.”

Linda Darling Hammond in her excellent paper asserts that schools of education must design programs that “help prospective teachers to understand deeply a wide array of things about learning, social and cultural contexts, and teaching and be able to enact these understandings in complex classrooms serving increasingly diverse students; in addition, if prospective teachers are to succeed at this task, schools of education must design programs that transform the kinds of settings in which novices learn to teach and later become teachers. This means that the enterprise of teacher education must venture out further and further from the university and engage ever more closely with schools in a mutual transformation agenda, with all of the struggle and messiness that implies.”

I can’t help but notice how many educators refer to experts who are either providing ideas or visiting schools. Why aren’t we looking to our teacher colleagues for guidance, support and ideas?  Elmore says you do the work by doing the work not having experts do it for you.  I wonder whether this is a symptom of below par teacher training courses? Are we training teachers they way we want students to be taught as they do at Singapore’s National Institute of Education?

The Australian Institute for Teaching School Leadership (AITSL) is about to begin assessing the quality of instruction at universities to ensure that all graduating students meet common standards. AITSL chairman Tony Mackay has flagged that new national standards for accrediting teaching courses would see a “shake-out” of programs offered by higher education institutes.

If the work of teachers is to be continually re-evaluated and shaped in response to the needs of learners and a changing world, then so must teacher training courses.  It is absolutely essential that the next generation of teachers are proficient practitioners; good clinicians and diagnosticians.

We must move away from a commonly held view that anyone can teach fairly well.  Teaching is highly specialised and complex work. As Darling Hammond says teacher training programs must help teachers “develop the disposition to continue to seek answers to difficult problems of teaching and learning and the skills to learn from practice (and from their colleagues) as well as to learn for practice. These expectations for teacher knowledge mean that programs need not only to provide teachers access to more knowledge, considered more deeply, but also to help teachers learn how to continually access knowledge and inquire into their work.”

In a previous blog I reflected on leadership from the inside out.  This is another example where this maxim applies. We have never needed better teachers than we do now.

In moving towards a culture of wide-spread excellence, perhaps we need to stop referring to schools of education and start referring to them as schools of inquiry.  Afterall, isn’t this what learning and teaching is about?

Delivery or design

There is no doubt that globalisation has created a greater demand for quality education and there are pressures to rethink the nature and rationale of our curriculum.  It leads us to ask questions such as how can we continue to confine knowledge within old frameworks? What possibilities are opened up by the availability of new tools for learning? What and how can we teach in a way that offers students a variety of new and challenging experiences?

Earlier this month I was invited to speak at a workshop hosted by the Association of Independent Schools South Australia (AISSA) on how the Australian curriculum could create the capacity for transformation. Also speaking was Rob Randall, CEO of ACARA who provided an update on the national curriculum.

While the national curriculum signals a shift from text book to e-resources and from prescriptive to a more flexible delivery, my point is that it is the teacher and not the curriculum that creates the capacity for transformation.  If we perceive the purpose of teaching as simply delivering a curriculum, then we not only perceive students as passive recipients but we diminish the purpose of education. Our role is to teach students how to think not what to think.

When I was at University I majored in European and Australian history with a minor in English Literature. I trained as a History teacher but my first job was as a full-time English teacher at a secondary school. As you would expect, I was concerned because I was not a ‘trained English teacher.’ On the first day, I met with the English master who told me it didn’t matter because all I needed to know was contained in the English syllabus. The document listed the content, the prescribed hours and the specific texts I was to follow. The syllabus became ‘the bible’ and I wasn’t to deviate from it. These approaches were ill conceived even as we used them.

Dewey said ‘the notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of pre-digested materials.’

When we change the construct of the curriculum from content to learning, we change the nature of teachers’ work. Teachers move from being deliverers to creators, from sages to learners and from cogs to critical thinkers.  If we think about the relevance of a curriculum in today’s world as everything intended to promote wisdom and learning then we give teachers freedom to be creative and responsive to helping students make connections between their lives and the world.

The less prescriptive a curriculum is, the more opportunity there is for experiential learning; giving students space to discern information and construct their own knowledge. Personalising learning means finding out what matters to students and then designing a curriculum that invites them to deepen their understanding, ask questions and importantly fail. Diane Laufenberg, an American History teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia discusses this in her TED talk.

I know I’ve written about Singapore’s skinny curriculum before but we should all be working towards a goal of ‘teaching less, learning more’.  When the curriculum is centred on learning, students become active participants rather than passive recipients.  Their focus shifts from why do I need to learn this to how can what I have learned make a difference.  What better way of empowering students to become active citizens then giving them a voice in their own learning.

Albert Einstein said: “I never teach my pupils; I just provide the conditions in which they can learn.”  I hope the national curriculum is an opportunity for teachers to see themselves as designers and therefore critical to the process of improving education for all students.