July 28, 2015

Biesta (2014) risk of education

Biesta, G. (2014). The Beautiful Risk of Education. London: Paradigm Publishers.

The beautiful risk of education (2013) adds to ideas Biesta presented in his previous books Beyond Learning (2008) and Good education in an age of measurement (2010).  Biesta maintains that schooling has three aims: socialization, qualification and subjectification (i.e. becoming a subject). In this latest book, Biesta proclaims that education needs to embrace risk rather than reduce risk, and he discusses this with reference to creativity, communication, teaching, learning, emancipation, democracy and virtuosity.  Current educational policies aim to make education stronger, more secure, more predictable, and risk-free. However, Biesta asserts that policy-makers oversimplification of learning is potentially damaging and veer away from what education ultimately means. After all education is not a simple transfer transaction between machines. Education is a complex social-interaction between human beings and slow, difficult, out-of-comfort-zone learning that pushes boundaries is the powerful learning that sticks. Instead of seeking to reduce risk, education needs to embrace risk as an essential part of teaching, learning and schooling.

Biesta voices concern over the relatively recent paradigm shift from the traditional teacher as an authority to the constructivist teacher as a facilitator of learning.  Biesta interprets constructivism as a theory of learning not a theory of teaching, and he makes a clear distinction between learning from (leren van) and being taught by (leren aan).  A teacher should not be reduced to an agent that speeds transfer of knowledge from one vessel to another.  Teachers are essential in a learning environment to empower learners to reach beyond their immediate known grasp.  Biesta reminds us that we need to remain aware that teaching does not necessarily result in learning and indeed we cannot predict any of the effects of teaching.

Biesta also discusses teacher education. He declares teacher education has become over-simplified by structuring programs on narrow pre-defined competencies. To be qualified to teach, learner-teachers merely demonstrate achievement of separate competencies. Biesta sees it as insufficient to have knowledge and skills of separate parts of teaching because teachers must be able to perform multiple tasks in complex learning contexts with multiple conflicting factors.  Teacher education also provides a role modelling function so that learner-teachers become aware of the social expectations and shared traditions of teaching. It is this apprenticeship role within an active Community of Practice that Biesta values.  Biesta proposes an alternative to current competency based teacher education, that develops virtuosity and replaces narrow competencies with teachers’  judgements. Biesta states that learner-teachers can learn virtuosity by studying the virtuosity of others. But who is judged as being a virtuoso? Which contexts allow virtuosity to be seen?

March 31, 2015

Schratz (2014) European competencies

Schratz, M. (2014). The European Teacher: Transnational Perspectives in Teacher Education Policy and Practice. CEPS Journal : Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 4(4), 11-27.

Teacher education is usually focused on a single context—country—with strong national traits that limit teachers’ mobility. However, European teacher education appears to share common competencies. Schratz, Paseka and Schrittesser (2011) describe six interrelated and overlapping domains of teaching. 1) Reflective discourse to objectively and subjectively analyze, develop, explain actions. 2) Professional awareness to balance simultaneous involvement and analysis. 3) Collaboration and collegiality to actively share with and across education communities. 4) Ability to differentiate and deal with various forms of diversity. 5) Personal mastery to continuous develop, learn and reflect. 6) Teaching skill and subject knowledge to link to bind the other five domains.

From a European perspective, teacher education needs to be aware of complexity of teaching and teacher education and include self awareness, reflection, diversity, uncertainty, collaboration, and professional image. The European Union shares similar teacher education competencies and identifies a further three desired changes. 1) The impact of social change requires teachers to contribute to students citizenship, promote lifelong learning, and link curriculum competencies to school subjects. 2) The diversity of students and contexts means teachers need to deal with diversity, organise context to facilitate learning, and work collaboratively with all stakeholders. 3) Increasing professionalism requires teachers to activity participate in inquiry and problem-solving learning, and take responsibility for continuous professional development.

Snoek, Uzerli and Schratz (2008) add further suggestion to address the needs of European teachers, i.e. teachers working within Europe with national and transnational policy values. 1) European identity to have a sense of belonging to country and Europe to maintain diversity within unity. 2) European knowledge including other European education systems. 3) European multiculturalism to be open to other cultures. 4) European language competence to enable communication across several European languages. 4) European professionalism to learns across and from various contexts. 5) European citizenship to value democracy freedom, and autonomous active citizenship. 6) European quality measures to ensure quality of education across contexts using Bologna/Copenhagen processes.

Europe wants to position itself as a knowledge society. With less focus on national boundaries, and increased European and international cooperation and research.

April 7, 2014

Mitra (2014) future learning

Mitra, S. (2014, April). The future of learning. Plenary given at 48th Annual International IATEFL Conference, International Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Harrogate, England.

Mitra’s plenary shook things up. Passionate Twitter comments applauded for and reeled from research that shows that groups of children can learn most things on their own. Mitra is changing traditional learning-cultures and examining autonomous and collaborative learning outside schools.

Mitra showed that children’s test results decreased as distance from Delhi increased. Many factors were constant:  school funding, buildings, and quantity of teaching. But Mitra questioned the quality of teaching. Mitra asked teachers, “Would you like to work somewhere else?” In Delhi, teachers were happy; 100 miles away, teachers wanted to move closer to Delhi; and 250 miles away, teachers answered “Anywhere but here”. Good teaching is rare in remote places. Throughout the world, test-results decrease as remoteness increases (e.g. socio-economic- and ethnical-remoteness). Good teachers and less-able teachers who up-skill, migrate to better contexts. Mitra experimented with removing teachers from learning contexts.

However computers affect learning, computers will affect learning in similar ways in different contexts. So in 1999, Mitra installed computers for dis-advantaged children in India. To keep conditions constant, Sugata provided no adult guidance. After nine months, children had learned computer literacy skills and functional English. Children learned autonomously and collaboratively when teachers were not present. In two months, other children learned English pronunciation, and other children learned advanced molecular biology of genetics, going from 0% to 30% in pre- and post-tests. Observation changes children’s learning behavior, so Mitra recruited a ‘grandmother’ who merely observed and admired, supplying comments such as “Fantastic!” In two months, the children’s understanding of molecular biology improved to 50% in post-testing. In England, groups of children cluster around computers to solve deep cross-curricular questions like “Why is it that almost all men can grow a mustache but most women cannot?” In our digital-world, children can learn most things by themselves, but in autonomous and collaborative ways.

Mitra examines phenomena as theoretical physicist. In the Theory of Chaos, things remain constant in Ordered Systems, and things are random in Chaotic Systems. But where Ordered and Chaotic Systems meet, Self Organizing Systems occur and order appears out of disorder.  Mitra creates Self Organized Learning Environments (with beamed in ‘grandmas’) to facilitate children’s autonomous and collaborative learning.

Children need internet access, big interesting question and room to learn in autonomous and collaborative ways.  In our assessment-driven educational-cultures, changing assessments could instigate changing questions, curricula, pedagogy, teaching, and learning!

March 26, 2014

Bytheway (2014) Top 40 creations

Top40

Create language learning activities from Top40 songs to connect to child and teen language learners. Bring their outside-school world into classrooms. Don’t use your favourite ‘old’ songs. Use learners’ hot songs to to increase motivation and build respectful relationships.

Create these activities fast because you’ll throw them out within three months.

Quickly select a song. Is it 1) hot? 2) safe & 3) learnful?

Hot?
Use Google to find the Top40 songs in your country. In the Netherlands, about 35 of the Top40 are in English. Look at how many weeks songs have been in the charts. Teens consider a song old after about three months.

Safe?
Children enjoy many totally inappropriate songs. However in schools, swearing, sex and drugs are out. Use Google to find the lyrics and scan for anything inappropriate. Learners choose our songs and our agreement is that if principle walks in while the song is playing, I will keep my job. We never had any problems.

Learnful?
The song has to be learnful. If something is full of beauty, it’s beautiful; if something is full of learning, it’s learnful. Some say the word I need is educational; however learning and education are different! Know your learners and context and judge what suits your learners’ needs.

Balance the activities using Nation’s Four Strands.

1)      Use input for meaning-focused listening and reading. The learners are familiar with almost all the language. Support understanding by reading the lyrics while listening to the song.

2)      Use output for meaning-focused speaking and writing. Use the lyrics to scaffold speaking or writing activities. Replace words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions) to create original lyrics with similar structures or use phrases as sentence starters.

3)      Zoom in for language-focused learning. This is new language for the learners. Look at the details of the lyrics (e.g. pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary). Selects aspects for special attention.

4)      Zoom out for fluency development. The learners use language they already know faster and more automatically. Use issues and themes in the song for speaking, writing, listening and reading, activities.

 

Bytheway, J. (April, 2014). Create original language learning activities from Top 40 songs. Presented at 48th Annual International Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language Conference. Harrogate: IATEFL.
Retrieve Prezi from https://prezi.com/avbqkk6plzwb/

Bytheway, J. (July, 2014). Create Language learning activities from Top 40 songs. Presented at TeachMeetNZ Virtual at the National Conference for Community Language and ESOL. Wellington: TESOLANZ & CLANZ.
Retrieve Slideshare from http://www.slideshare.net/Julie_Bytheway/julie-btw-createlearningtop4020140712.
Retrieve video from http://teachmeetnz.wikispaces.com/Bytheway_Julie

March 16, 2014

Darling-Hammond (2006) teacher education

Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Constructing 21st-century teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 300-314.

I’ve been skim reading a few books on teacher education and so many refer to this article that it jumped to the top of my reading list.

Teaching is often viewed as simplistic by laypeople and novice teachers; however, teaching is non-routine, unpredictable and requires diverse and flexible teaching and reflective skills to handle diverse learners’ needs in increasingly complex contexts.

Novice teachers need to overcome three challenges. First, “the apprenticeship observation” (Lortie, 1975), i.e. past student learning experiences need to be separated from new learning to teach experiences. Second, “the problem of enactment” (Kennedy, 1999), i.e. more than just understand teaching, but be able to actually teach. Third, “the problem of complexity” (Jackson, 1974), i.e. “understand and respond to the dense and multifaceted nature of the classroom, juggling multiple academic and social goals requiring trade-offs from moment to moment (Darling-Hammond, 2006).

Teacher education must address the influence of previous teaching observations, perceived separation of theory and practice, limited cultural perspectives, and the need for multiple tasks in complex settings. In addition, teacher education must focus on knowledge about learning and learners, and skills for curriculum development, classroom management, teaching and assessment. To achieve this, teacher education programs need to use a clear single vision for theory and practice; have transparent achievement standards; integrate theory and extensive, intensive, reflective practice (Ball & Cohen,1999); use real cases and research; confront assumptions; work together with schools to improving learning, teaching and teacher education.

Although novice teachers enter teaching with existing beliefs from student learning experiences, many teacher educators argue that novice teachers who have teaching experience are better prepared to integrate the theory and practice of teacher education (Baumgartner, Koerner, & Rust, 2002; Denton, 1982; Henry, 1983; Ross, Hughes, & Hill, 1981; Sunal, 1980). However, many short cut programs designed for working novice teachers minimize teaching and curriculum theory and focus on survival needs. Furthermore, novice teachers frequently demand classroom management strategies instead of improving teaching and curriculum knowledge, a lack of which may cause classroom difficulties (Shields et al., 2001).

March 13, 2014

Claxton (2008) inside/outside schools

Claxton Claxton, G. (2009). What’s the point of school? Rediscovering the heart of education. Oxford: Oneword Publications.

I read Claxton for relief from my heavy-going reading list, but Claxton’s comparison of learning inside and outside schools was worth reading.

Claxton says schools offer learning just-in-case for its own sake in narrow pre-graded pieces, with prejudged students achievement levels, and smooth learning that avoids mistakes. Whereas, learning outside schools is just-in-time for real achievement in broad complex ungraded contexts, with gradual increasing skills, and steep zigzagging learning filled with risks. Learners outside schools are curious, collaborative, and seek unknown answers.

Historically, schools are monasteries and factories.  As monasteries, schools preside over knowledge, select knowledge, sever knowledge into subjects, dispense knowledge, and examine knowledge. As factories, schools forge standardized subject production lines for batches of students to manufacture workers who will do the bidding of authorities. Successful students copy, memorize and reproduce (soon outdated) knowledge, but are not prepared for our messy complex real-world. However, Claxton proposes Epistemic Apprenticeships with guides who role model learning and encourage learners to be curious, resilient, balance creativity with logic, handle feedback, approach problems calmly, and be emotionally engaged.  Learners need responsibilities, respect, reality, choices, challenges, and collaboration, which is what I strive for, but many students still demand spoon-feeding and prefer to regurgitate pre-packaged knowledge.

I live outside my original learning culture, and even after ten years, occasional culture-clashes surprise me. Here many teachers appear to believe in the fixed intelligence and predetermined achievement levels that Claxton is so against. Beliefs are powerful self-fulfilling prophecies. For me, the basic core of teaching is believing people can learn and then helping people learn. Piaget defines intelligence as knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. Intelligence is not what learners can do easily: intelligence is how learners respond to unknown and difficult situations. Grit, resilience and perseverance are better predictors of performance than IQ tests. Believing in labels as valid and fixed only encourages people to give up in difficult situations (the Pygmalion effect).

I’ll re-read Building Learning Power soon.

 

February 27, 2014

Kear (2011) online communities

Kear

Kear, K. (2011). Online and social networking communities: A best practice guide for educators. New York: Routledge.

The internet is not transmission and reception. Users are not passive: they learn interactively and create supportive communities using email lists, newsgroups, podcasts, e-portfolios, social bookmarking, media sharing, chat rooms, instant messaging, conferencing, virtual worlds, shared documents, micro-blogging, VoIP, discussion forums, social network, wikis, and blogs. Digital communication is synchronous and/or asynchronous, private or public, and shared one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many. Digital tools constantly evolve and converge, are convenient, flexible, collaborative, can mimic face-to-face contact, engaging, community building, and integrative with everyday life. However, digital-technologies can discourage participation, be impersonal, delay responses, and be overwhelming (information-overload/failure to filter). Formal digital-learning is improved by making navigation simple and transparent, encouraging social participation, providing face-to-face meetings, integrating online activities with everyday activities and assessments. Be aware that learners’ ages, attitudes to studying (deep and/or surface), topic, and discussion and skill development affect learning.

Communities were based around locations; however, people linked by shared beliefs, values, purposes, practices and interaction are communities: “network of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, belonging, and social identity” (Wellman, 2001), and include digital groups (Preece, 2000; Palloff & Pratt, 1999; Renningar & Shumar, 2002; McConnell, 2006). Online communities are groups (mutual commitment) or networks (known/unknown connections) or collectives (aggregations/actions performed by unconnected individuals) (Dron, 2007; Wiley, 2007). Traditionally information is filtered then published; however, internet information is published and then filtered (Shirky, 2008). Digital communities use stygmergy, contributions from many to develop something valuable.

Communities of practice have mutual engagement, joint enterprise, shared repertoire: members share common purposes, initially observe, actively learn through ‘legitimate peripheral participation, and develop identity (Wenger, 1998). Social presence is required to be perceived as real in digital contexts (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997). Digital learning communities integrate social, cognitive and teaching activities by including open communication, group cohesion and affective responses. Communities of inquiry move through a cognitive trigger-event, exploration, interaction, resolution cycles (Garrison et al, 2000). The Conversational Framework explains dialogue, interaction, and feedback (Laurillards, 2009). The Five Stages Model explains learning with digital-communication: access and motivation, online socialization, informal exchange, knowledge construction, development/reflection (Salmon, 2004).

February 24, 2014

Selwyn (2011) education & technology

Selwyn

 

 

 

 

 

Selwyn, N. (2011). Education and technology: key issues and debates. London: Continuum.

I recommend reading Education and technology: ‘the’ comprehensive overview that questions how technology-use affects education.

Education is formal learning provided by an institution, usually structured, assessed and credentialized (Selwyn, 2012). Formal learning is managed by educational institutes (Rogers, 2003); whereas, informal learning is controlled by learners outside intuitions without external criteria (Livingstone, 2000). Learning is a “means to acquire a new skill or insight” (Illich 1973) and is frequently viewed as a product or process. Selywn briefly explains Behaviourist theories as passive and externally-shaped process; Constructivist theories as exploration and meaning-making; Sociocultural theories as situated within cultural contexts; Bloom’s (1956) psychomotor, affective and cognitive domains;  Situated learning as peers co- constructing knowledge; and Sfard’s (1998) learning through participation. Education is not isolated, but intertwined with families, income, gender, race, households, workplaces,  institutes, communities, cultures, commercial markets, national states and global economies.

Technology in education includes artifacts and devices, activities and practices, and social contexts (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2002).  Previously, technology was used to seek and access information; however, currently technology enables social interaction, any time any place, and interlinks to other technologies. Information is networked and remains unfinished in a constant state of development by multiple users.

Technology can change learning processes: making learning accessible, affordable, flexible, and active (McLoughlin & Lee, 2008); enabling self-management of learning; encouraging reflective and reflexive practice (Beck-Gernsheim, 1996), promoting critical thinking (Bugeja, 2006), and providing interaction for learning communities. Online communities of practice enable learners to share knowledge in social, informal ways. Learning can now be discovered rather than delivered and negotiated rather than prescribed. We are moving towards user-driven education  (Edson, 2007), where learners seek own learning instead of institutes proving education (Collis & Gommer, 2001).  Learning-technologies may finally challenge persistent educational structures, identified by Illich in 1971, that encourage reliance on educational institutes, discourage self-management of learning, and reinforce societies’ inequalities. Here’s to the future of learning-technologies that may facilitate a change in learning cultures.