Another revolution?

The Third Industrial Revolution is underway – manufacturing is going digital.  A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article in The Economist revealing manufacturers of the future will focus on mass customisation – tailoring products to our individual needs and specifications.   The revolution will not only affect how things are made – but where, and, importantly – the skills set required to deliver products to the hands of the consumer. This is yet another example of how our future workforce will be required to constantly shift to meet the needs of an ever-evolving economy.

As The Economist’s Paul Markillie reflects, with the revolution firmly underway it is timely for us to consider how we will capitalise on the opportunities this digital revolution presents in order to prepare all students for work in today’s world.  As educators, how do we ensure schooling remains relevant and reflective of the changes happening in the world?  More importantly, how can we respond to trends that have not yet evolved? And how do we deliver ‘mass education’ in order to meet individual needs?

The demand for tools that enable mass personalisation of education is evident in the success of researchers like Ramona Pierson who have made it their core focus to provide educators across the globe with tools to tailor instruction to meet the needs of students and teachers.  It evolves the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to teaching into a differentiated approach that adjusts content and instruction to ensure every student’s voice is heard through tools which focus on the elements of:

-    Real-time assessment;
-    Simplifying lesson planning;
-    Connecting with diverse learners – supporting visual, auditory and kinaesthetic instruction in individual, group and whole-class learning environments;
-    Encouraging participation via an interactive environment;
-    Providing the structure, tools and resources the whole class needs for success while providing individual guidance to students and small groups as they work to overcome challenges

I believe that combining this approach with a focus on refining online teaching access, open content, real time web delivery, independent course-wear provision and virtual learning environments will provide schools with great opportunities to ensure learning not only meets the needs of every student but is in sync with what is happening in today’s world.

These avenues by their nature exponentially build on accessibility. Students who may be based in remote and regional locations now have the greatest level of access to information and support that they have ever had. Retention of students in the education system who are geographically challenged will vastly improve over coming decades as we integrate these tools into all elements of our lives – and also enables the broader population to embrace life-long learning.

Delivery of content using today’s tools also enables niche course delivery – none of us are confined to 9-3pm learning. The opportunity to deliver a course relevant to hundreds of students across Australia that may have only been sought by a handful of students within an individual school means students are better able to ensure their schooling experience is customised to meet their future goals. It also provides a tailored support and like-minded network for each student to tap into – broadening horizons and perspectives beyond local geography.

I came across a relevant quote by Seymour Papert in his essay Education’s 19th Century Thinking in a 21st Century world:

The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill – the one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school.  We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.

How will instruction adapt to this “megachange” if we’re not using all the available things that the technology hands out? Demonstrating that education is now as much about partnerships, innovation and engagement as about the traditional training grounds, the New York Times has enjoyed significant success with its New York Times Knowledge Network. The network offers a wide range of distinctive adult and continuing education opportunities, including online courses, programs and Webcasts.  Also tapping into the revolution are Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The universities have announced a new non-profit partnership – known as edX – to offer free online courses from both universities.

Technology for online education, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental. The new platforms present dual opportunities – to build a global community of online learners and to research teaching methods and technologies. Additionally, the barriers to education which define people’s ability to mould their futures will be broken down.

How will educational leaders become active drivers and leaders of this ever-shifting environment to ensure our students enjoy the greatest of these opportunities?

The road less travelled

I thought it a good opportunity over the next few months to get a fresh perspective on some of the issues and initiatives we are addressing and implementing at the coal face of learning and teaching. I’ve asked our Team Leaders in System Learning to share their insight on bluyonder as a way of providing a lens on some of the work.  My thanks to John Gildea, Team Leader Vocational Educational and Training for his post below on the status of VET in Australian schools.

You may have come across a report released in Britain last year that appeared in the media with headlines such as “Vocational education and training not good enough” (BBC). On first reading this might imply that the commitment of energy, time and money being made in this area is failing. In fact when you read the Wolf Report, one of the key findings is a call to strengthen the quality and range of VET courses to ensure they give students not only solid learning experiences but carry with them realistic opportunities for career in their chosen fields. The British government has pledged to reform the area.

The direction of VET in schools in Australia and in our system in particular is doing exactly that.  In 2004, the National Council for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) published a report on VET in schools. Research included canvassing over 1400 students and 300 teachers and found that:

VET plays an essential role in making the curriculum inclusive of a broader range of needs. VET was also viewed as a useful means of improving learning and giving many students a chance of success at school, some experiencing it for the first time. (NCVER report on VET in Schools, 2004, P.7)

This and other research demonstrates that students completing a VET course as part of their HSC, increase their likelihood of having life long employment to 85%. These same students also demonstrate an improved ATAR and their VET course is most often their first or second best result. This helps to dispel the myth that VET is a less academic pathway and only students who are somehow “not very capable” should be offered or encouraged into VET courses. VET courses are challenging and require a commitment of time and discernment that could be attractive to any student, which is why all students should have an opportunity to engage in VET courses.

VET provides a tremendously effective way of personalizing learning. Key aspects of VET that support this include competency based performance and assessment, where students can proceed at their own pace and capabilities and where assessment is not about just how they perform against a group of other students but fundamentally centered on whether the student can competently demonstrate the skills and understandings necessary for the qualification and success in the workforce. VET courses are founded in real world contexts and experiences and include embedded work placement.

VET courses allow students to pursue a range of pathways into university, work and further training.

Our system has extended its commitment to VET in schools through two key initiatives. The first was established some years ago and is the Cluster VET model where leadership and management of VET resources and delivery is coordinated by school clusters who through their management committees and dedicated Cluster Coordinators have allowed us to be much more flexible and responsive to change and ensure a strategic vision and direction for VET in schools.

The second initiative is the Trade Training Centre program which began in 2010 with our first Trade Training Centre at McCarthy High School and a second in 2011 at Loyola Senior College. These state of the art centres allow school students to achieve an apprenticeship pathway as well as completing their HSC. No other education system in NSW has the provision for high level qualifications and apprenticeship pathways combined with the HSC that our TTC’s provide. The TTC’s provide access to the ‘traditional’ trades such as carpentry, brick and block and hospitality but also are moving into emerging trade areas in technology, engineering, financial services and transport and logistics.

Students have the opportunity to experience some of the best VET in the state and to access  qualifications pathways that very few others can. The question isn’t why VET but why wouldn’t a student consider it as part of their learning pathway.  It shouldn’t be the road less travelled.

Putting a face to data

I believe data is critical to the work of improving schooling and how well we use data to improve student outcomes and teacher learning is a challenge that some of the best performing systems have had to address.  I sometimes think the fear we have in using data stems from the fact that we aren’t trained in how to use it effectively or systematically as part of our practice and planning.

As Lyn Sharratt and Michael Fullan say in their new book Putting Faces on Data – ‘ some educators are really good at breaking down the data, but most are not trained or experienced at chipping away the marble in their system-reports.’  They argue that in order to build success in schools, we need to see the data not as numbers but as the names and faces of every single student. Simple concept with powerful outcomes.

Lyn Sharratt spent two days in Parramatta with our leaders during the school holidays discussing how we go about doing this. Lyn was the former superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Services in the York Region District School Board, Canada so she understands the challenges at every level: classroom, school and district.

According to Lyn, systems have great visions on paper but most don’t have a strategy for getting there.  In their 2009 book ‘Realization‘, they  identified the 14 parameters that made a difference to school and student improvement. These are:

1. shared beliefs and understandings among all staff
2. designated staff member for literacy/numeracy
3. daily sustained focus on literacy/numeracy instruction
4. principal as literacy/numeracy leader
5. early and ongoing intervention
6. case management approach to monitoring student progress
7. job-embedded professional learning
8. in school team meetings as an example of collaborative examination of student work
9. literacy/numeracy resources located in a designated area
10. commitment of school budget to these priorities
11. action research – staff committed to learning
12. parental involvement in supporting literacy/numeracy
13. appropriate  instruction in all areas of the curriculum
14. shared responsibility and accountability

The only parameter Lyn says is prioritised is the fundamental belief that all learners can learn.  If we share this belief, then we share the responsibility and accountability for our students’ learning. I’m still not sure why this belief is not universally shared by all teachers but as John Hattie says it requires us to believe ‘that intelligence is changeable rather than fixed.’  If we believe intelligence is changeable, then we are empowered to look for better ways of continually moving students forward on the learning journey. Surely this is at the heart of our work as teachers?

Moving students forward is about knowing them as individuals through the use of data walls. Lyn provided some excellent examples of schools using data walls such as Park Manor Public School.  Its principal set up a small private room enabling teachers to see and collaboratively discuss the progress of every student.  The data wall allowed them to ‘narrow their focus to the key areas for effective countermeasures, or instructional interventions, and then to verify all students’ improvement through data.’ (p85) It is critical to identify the point of need for the learner if we are to design learning experiences targetted at student improvement.

The data wall is a powerful strategy for empowering and enabling teachers.  It places them in a position where they are supported by the wisdom and experience of their colleagues; where they are encouraged to reflect on their own practice and where they can recognise their own weaknesses in terms of the skills and instructional strategies needed to address a particular learning problem. As Lyn points out, teacher learning needs to be differentiated within and across schools based on the data.  Not only must we personalise student learning, we also need to personalise teacher learning if we are to continually improve the quality of learning and teaching for every student that comes through our system.

For me, the message of our work is simple – it’s not about making assumptions but how we can improve lives through learning. It’s about recognising that behind every data set there is a unique and diverse individual eager to learn.

The science of learning

The work of cognitive scientists is becoming increasingly important to the work of teachers as we seek more effective ways to engage learners.  This week, I’ve started reading John Medina’s book Brain Rules.  Medina writes in the introduction that if you want to ‘create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom.’  It speaks volumes about the historical chasm between brain science and teacher practice.  While we are moving towards understanding how people learn, we still see as Hattie says the essential nature of our profession in terms of autonomy – teaching they way we know best, choosing resources and methods we think will work etc.

One of the most illuminating chapters is on exploration.  Medina explains why understanding how babies learn gives us insight into understanding how humans learn at any age.  Babies and young children are naturally curious about their world and they learn through a process of  observation, hypotheses, experiment and conclusion.  As he says if children are allowed to retain their natural curiosity about the world around them, they can ’deploy their natural tendencies to discover and explore until they are 101.’

The problem is our traditional model of schooling often breaks this cycle of curiosity.  Sir Ken Robinson believes this model of schooling dislocates people from their natural talents. Medina supports this by adding that by the time children get to school they understand that they can acquire knowledge about the world around them not because it’s ‘interesting, but because it can get them something.’  The ‘something’ is a higher grade or test score.

The good news is that many people retain their curiosity and remain life-long learners.  The challenge is how we cultivate this in workplaces and schools. Medina actually proposes a ‘learning laboratory’ where brain scientists and education scientists would investigate learning in real-world situations.

This lab would be similar to a medical school in that it would have a teaching facility, research program and staff who work in the field as well as teach. It’s probably no coincidence that Richard Elmore et al has taken the instructional rounds from the medical rounds model. This is the process of  observing, analysing, discussing and concluding.  For Elmore et al, this process is designed to bridge the ‘knowledge gap between educators and their practice’ in order to improve student learning.

What I found interesting about this idea is that teachers would be learning about brain science in learning spaces. They would be learning from cognitive scientists, applying it in real world settings and then working with researchers on what works and why.

In many respects, this idea reflects the early work of John Dewey who established a school for educational experimentation at the University of Chicago in the late 1890s.  Dewey’s lab was an opportunity to learn more about ‘the process of education and ways of improving the conditions of teaching and learning.’  It is a goal we are still committed to perhaps more so in a knowledge age where we have the tools and the opportunities to ensure learning is personalised, relevant and engaging for every learner.

I think Brain Rules re-confirms why it is critical that the art of teaching be informed by the science of learning.

Learning from Jobs

Steve Jobs had a profound influence on the world of technology.  One could argue that under his leadership Apple redefined the user experience so much so that technology has seamlessly integrated with every aspect of our lives.

Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson has written a concise piece in this month’s Harvard Business Review on the Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs. While it relates to Jobs’ business philosophy, I think there are always valuable lessons for educational leaders and teachers.

According to Issacson, ‘focus was ingrained in Jobs’ personality’ and he would often ask his top employees to identify 10 things that Apple should be doing.  When the list was complete, he would cut it back to just three ideas. Jobs believed that “deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” How many of those ‘additions’ to the curriculum or classroom over the years have had a positive impact on student learning? Michael Fullan has often told us that when schools/systems focus on three goals and commit to achieving them, you get results.

The second is simplify.  Jobs aimed for the ‘simplicity that comes from conquering, rather than merely ignoring, complexity.”  He regcongised the importance of understanding the role ‘each element’ plays.  Expert teachers ‘simplify’ the complex in the way they organise and use content knowledge.  As John Hattie says, expert teachers understand the various elements that promote or restrict student success and respond accordingly.

The third is engage face to face.  Jobs believed in the spontanaeity of face to face meetings.  The article states that Jobs even designed the Pixar building to promote ‘unplanned encounters and collaborations.’  This is why the way we design schools and learning spaces is critical.  We know that stimulus rich environments stimulate learning.  Secondly, agile learning spaces offer opportunities for teachers and students to work, plan and learn together. I saw this in action recently when I visited Parramatta Marist as boys sat around a table working on project based learning.  Jobs recognised the creative possibilities when people engage to solve problems.

The fourth is combine humanities with science.  Isaacson says the essence of Jobs’ life was bringing humanities and science together.  This is what a 21st century curriculum aims to do – the integration of everything intended to promote students’ critical thinking and learning.  It balances the various aspects of learning by focussing on the practical, social, aesthetic and creative aspects of human endeavour.   Isaacson predicts that the key to building innovative economies will be the intersection of humanities and science.

The last is stay hungry, stay foolish.  Jobs was a perfectionist who continually pushed the boundaries.  Good teachers continually push the boundaries because they are passionate about their work.  Thinking differently and taking risks are the norm if it means understanding how to teach more effectively.  At a system level, staying hungry is about keeping the momentum going – the desire to continually improve the quality of learning and teaching even if it challenges the status quo.

Expert teachers and visible learning

Our system’s strategic intent seeks to: improve the learning outcome for all students and ensure a professionally rewarding working life for teachers.

A professionally rewarding work life for teachers is more than having a well-paid and contented workforce.  It concedes that without highly professional, committed, passionate teachers who believe every child can learn, there won’t be great improvements in learning outcomes. In my experience this is what drives good teachers in their profession.

I’ve been thinking about this as I read John Hattie’s latest book ‘Visible Learning for Teachers‘.  The path to visible learning begins with teachers thinking about the impact they are having on student learning – not annually or each term but every week, every lesson. And by learning, Hattie doesn’t mean passing ‘surface-level tests’ but the kind of learning that develops a deep sense of wonder and recognises students as agents of their own development.

This emphasis on the connection between quality student learning and quality teaching and teachers in our strategic intent provides the motive for our work as a system. As Hattie states ‘the fundamental quality of an expert teacher is the ability to have a positive influence on student outcomes….for students to achieve these outcomes, teachers must set challenging goals, rather than ‘do your best’ goals.’  As a system, we don’t want to marginally improve learning outcomes, we want to move students as far as possible towards becoming creative and competent individuals.  This means assisting teachers to be able to move into the ‘expert’ group.

Hattie discusses the differences between experienced and expert teachers in Chapter 3. Expert teachers:

1. have high levels of subject knowledge and understanding
2. are able to guide learning to surface and deep outcomes
3. monitor learning and provide effective feedback
4. attend to attitudinal attributes of learning (e.g self-mastery)
5. provide defensible evidence of the positive impacts on student learning

Several years ago, I used the metaphor of the web to describe learning in today’s world but I believe this metaphor reflects what expert teachers do – they build scaffolds for students that allow them to connect the dots of prior and current knowledge. This builds trust and encourages risk taking, both essential to learning. Everything is organised around this; knowledge is interconnected and weaknesses are immediately addressed to ensure learning continuity. This may seem like a simplistic description of what expert teachers do but web structures are complex, flexible and responsive to internal and external factors.

Richard Elmore believes that if you can’t see it in the instructional core, then it’s not there. I think this is what Hattie means by visible learning – watch an expert teacher in action and you see an optimal climate for learning, you see learning being monitored, you see respect and care for students, you see passionate teachers who are working with and for every single learner, you see learners being challenged and encouraged to take risks and importantly you see teachers continually seeking evidence and feedback on the effect they are having.  Is this what you see in your school – how visible is the learning?

I agree wholeheartedly with Hattie’s conviction that the aim of the profession is to encourage collaboration in order to ‘drive the profession upwards’ – to move teachers from good to great, from experienced to expert etc.  It takes a village to raise a child and a profession to ensure a positive influence on student learning.

Hattie drives one point home continually -it’s about teacher professional learning not just the teacher.  We all need to improve and that’s a powerful challenge.

Alan November

Last week we had one of the world’s ed tech experts, Alan November make a whirlwind visit to Parramatta. I had an opportunity to take Alan to  one of our primary schools to see how students and teachers were working in an agile space. He then spent a few hours sharing his insights and expertise with a group of leaders and teachers, many of whom have been following Alan’s blog and podcasts for years.  We’re certainly grateful that Alan could make some time in his hectic schedule to challenging our thinking.

The point that Alan made which I think is beginning to take root is that while you need technology to facilitate change, it isn’t in itself the change agent. If we use technology to do the same thing we’ve always been doing, only more efficiently, then we miss the mark. We need to change what we teach, how we teach and why we teach it.

Alan believes the greatest challenge we face is teaching students to become ‘researchers’ and critical users of the internet (Alan’s website has more information on digital literacy). I was surprised that Alan hadn’t met one student in Australia that understands how to do detailed Google searches. You don’t know what you don’t know and there is still a lot I am learning about technology and the web but it’s incumbent on teachers to understand the architecture of information and to ensure students have the skills to analyse information not just search for it.

Google cannot do it but teachers can in the way they ask the question – this is the value add of teachers in today’s world. Alan believes we need to teach by questioning not by teaching. The focus shouldn’t be on the technology but on the problem.  How many schools are using technology as a $1000 pencil?  If we want to see real change in student learning, then the essential question for school leaders is – what is the process change and what will we do differently (pedagogically) with the technology? In effect we have to re-engineer the whole back end of teaching, to modernise it and refine it as we reflect on student learning. This should not frighten nor over burden teaschers. It should energise them since it gives the profession greater control ove rthis critical process.

I came across a vodcast this week of film executive Peter Guber talking about ‘state of the heart’ not state of the art technology.  It resonates with Alan’s argument – technology isn’t the answer but the enabler.  How do we build those connections between learner and content, between teacher and student, between family and school?

I think it was the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire who said the question was the foundation of human existence – it’s also the foundation of 21st century schooling.

Why student success makes economic sense

Unfortunately, I missed the evening in Sydney last week with Dr Ben Levin, Canada Research Chair in educational policy and leadership at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Levin has co-authored several books on leadership and system wide reform with Michael Fullan. I’ve always liked their common sense approach, which is why Levin’s article in last month’s Kappan magazine titled ‘Failing Students is a (financial) loser‘ struck a chord.

While systems around the world exist in a climate of economic instability and face increasing financial pressures, the challenge for systems and schools is to meet those challenges by making educationally sound decisions. And such decisions don’t always have to be predicated on spending more money or slashing expenditure.

In the article, Levin says that a retention policy (holding students back a year) is ineffective and expensive.  According to recent research, there is a link between grade retention and lower long term achievement.  As a system, we don’t encourage holding students back because the cohort in which the child finds themselves is not the major factor in improving learning outcomes. Cohort based progression is an artefact of the mass production of schooling based on the further asumption that students of a particular age all learn the same way and at the same pace.

We recognise this is not the case because the focus must be on learner as individual not cohort. This requires a reframing of schooling from the concept of “many” to “one”. Responding to individual differences among students has always been a challenge facing progressing teachers,  However, a commitment to personalised learning can be served by the skilful utilisation of today’s technologies.

Levin makes the point that every organisation including schools should operate on the principle of high quality and low failure.  It requires early intervention and remediation. Early intervention is what highly effective teachers do well. They are able to recognise when students aren’t learning, adapt their teaching style and implement strategies that make a positive impact on the learning.

Effective teachers are always analysing, problem-solving and reflecting on what is happening in their classrooms.  They don’t want to wait until next year to deal with the problem of low achievement. They know when it is obvious and take steps to fix it at the point of need and adopt a just in time approach. The assumption that you have to wait until an end of year assessment to diagnose has been superceded with rich, relevant and timely data on each student. Using that data well is the challenge.

To counter the financial burden of student retention, Levin proposes extending the amount of independent learning students do.  I’ll attempt to summarise his argument:

1. Everyone is passionate about something
2. Allowing every student to work on something of interest means less intensive support from teachers
3. The same number of teachers would have more time to support more students
4. Highly motivated students working on their own projects are likely to be more successful
5. Increasing independent learning would alleviate the financial and social burden of students failing

Levin admits this is not so much about policy change but rethinking schooling in an age of declining resources.  What Levin attempts to illustrate is that more often than not, sound educational decisions make economic sense.

Big changes for NSW education

The big news over the weekend were the reforms announced by NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli linking teacher pay to professional standards and giving principals greater control of their school funding budget.  It’s been described as the ‘greatest revolution to hit NSW education in 50 years” and while I don’t wish to disagree with the intent here, I think we need to see this policy position as the next stage in an iterative process that has been underway for sometime.

The policy recognises what we already know about effective teaching and teachers.

In some ways, these reforms are moving closer to Finland’s model where for the past 20 years schools are autonomous and teachers have the authority to do what is needed to improve student learning.  Pasi Sahlberg, Finland’s Director General of Education said recently that this was one of the keys to their international success.

I think we have reached a general consensus that:

1. The school community is where learning is improved
2. Good teachers supported by instructional leaders influence student learning outcomes
3. The industrial model of school will become irrelevant as we develop and promote professional learning communities
4. We find new ways to recognise and reward teacher excellence by encouraging greater investment in professional learning
5. Highly centralised systems stifle innovation

The government sector is able to draw upon examples from international and local education sector experience in moving towards a model where principals and teachers are given greater autonomy where it counts – in schools and learning spaces.

As Minister Piccoli said, the reforms will set “principals and teachers with great ideas free from the bureaucracy to try them.”

From the outside in

I’m in Singapore this week, giving a keynote and doing a workshop for the 3rd International Project Based Learning Symposium. It is easy to see why Singapore is among the world’s top five performing school systems when there is such a strong focus across the education sectors on developing learner and teacher skills such as inquiry, collaboration, deep knowledge and independent learning.

Interest in PBL is growing in schools across our system but it has been a success in transforming the learning for students at Parramatta Marist High. For me, Parramatta Marist’s experience is an example of our broad approach to improving learning and teaching based on the principles of inquiry (ref Timperley’s teacher inquiry cycle).

Inquiry is about open-ended questions – moving from having the right answer to being comfortable asking the right questions. Brazilian educator Paolo Freire believed that:

‘It is impossible to be human without curiosity, without questions. The questions is in the foundation of human existence…One of the sad things, for example, is how we sometimes become accustomed to the absence of the question. For example, pedagogy, as it is generally practiced today, is exactly a pedagogy of the answer….Professors enter the classroom on the first day of the term, for example, and talk, giving answers to questions that have not been asked by the students.’

In the case of Singapore’s National Institute of Education, teachers’ engage in inquiry so that they are better able to teach a curriculum focussed on ‘critical thinking, inquiry and collaboration.’

We are seeing that high performing systems are committed to teacher and student inquiry. Teachers learning about student learning and students learning through discovery.

Last week I attended a talk by Dr Ben Jensen of the Grattan Institute on what we can learn from the best school systems in East Asia.  What was interesting but perhaps no surprise is that these education systems have high levels of equity – there is less gap between high and low performing students in Korea, Shanghai and Hong Kong compared to other countries like the UK, US and Australia.  According to OECD figures, the bottom 10% of maths students in Shanghai perform at a level that is 21 months ahead of the bottom 10% of students in Australia.  This rises to 28 months in the USA. That is a gap of more than two years.

There are two points to make here. We know that key to overcoming issues of equity is having quality teachers and teaching in every classroom.  This is what is happening in East Asia.  The second is that the business of schooling is big business in the sense that economic growth is contigent on having a highly skilled workforce.

It is the second point that is the focus of the article ‘Rethinking School‘ in this month’s Harvard Business Review.  It’s estimated that if the US had closed its achievement gap with better performing nations, then its GDP could have been $1.2 to 2.1 trillion higher.  The figure is based on the work of Stanford economist Eric Hanushek who found that countries where students had higher test scores also had higher rates of growth in income per person.

This is why China which outranks both the US and Australia in maths and reading is a serious competitor and why the Obama administration has implemented education reforms such as Race to the Top.  The article makes the point that after forty years of research we know what makes the greatest difference to student learning but initiatives to improve the quality of teaching have not yielded the desired results.  In fact, according to the HBR article, ‘it will take 40 years for 80% of New York city students to reach math and reading proficiency, let alone the level of excellence that Chinese students are already achieving.’

I don’t believe that personalising learning using technology is the silver bullet to improving the US’ education system.  As I’ve said often enough, it’s not about the tools, it’s about the teacher.  What the Grattan Institute report shows is that East Asia’s education systems have implemented reforms that provide high quality teacher training, mentoring to continually improve learning and teaching and continual evaluation of teacher practice.

What is evident is the knowledge building that comes from inquiry – the application of new routines of practice explicitly linking learning and teaching.  And it’s the engagement in this collective inquiry that teachers and students will benefit from.