Friday 29 November 2013

Glimpsing The Future : What is Modern Education For?

I have written and spoken many times recently about the concept of preparing students for a future about which we know nothing. It can be a difficult idea to explore because, by its very nature, we know nothing about it. It is a theme that emerges regularly at education conferences in a variety of guises. Sir Ken Robinson emphasises the importance of teaching creativity to allow students to be able to become, and to remain innovative. Sugata Mitra and Ann Knock tell of the importance of developing personal attributes like resilience, determination, collaboration, problem solving and communication, telling us that what ever the future may bring, these will be the keys to success. Some, such as Joel Klein talk of economic changes, saying at the recent London Mayor's Education Conference that we are 'loosing the race between education and technology'

While browsing articles on twitter today, I came across an article published on Wired.com that presented the vision of a Japanese power company to one day build an ambitious solar power station on the moon and return the electricity to earth for the ultimate clean energy source.

It seemed particularly topical as I had spent the morning listening to reports on BBC Radio 4 about the current motions in parliament to try and control energy prices. As we face up to the reality that the planet is running out of resources our children's generation will need to embark upon an industrious new era of ambitious, innovative and bold projects such as this. What struck me as an educator as I read this was how the children in today's classrooms, will be the adults of tomorrow that are faced with challenges such as this.

As the article points out, the difficulties and obstacles to such a project would be daunting. Firstly, and most obviously would be the tremendous engineering challenges that would surely require the sustained and collaborative efforts of the finest engineers int the world. But more than this, the article points out that 'space law' is notoriously difficult to apply in practice. Skilled legal professionals, politicians, civil servants and business people would have to have highly developed academic knowledge as well as refined skills of collaboration, negotiation, resilience and problem solving to have any hope of ever over coming such a challenge.

It is the education system that we build today that will be the determining factor in whether projects like this could ever become a reality. If we teach our children to be consumers to knowledge then they will go into the world as consumers of knowledge. If we teach our children to be resiliently innovative and skilled problem solvers they will go in to the world with the skills to overcome the great challenges that lay ahead of mankind. It is glimpses of the future, such as this, that must been seen as an urgent mandate for building a new kind of education.

Friday 22 November 2013

Live Blogging from Mayor of London's Education Conference 2013

#LDNeduconf

Final Session - Professor David Hogan University of Queensland Brisbane Australia.

What features of the Singapore pedagogical approach are significant in high achievement?

1) There is a very tight coupling between the textbooks and the curriculum. In Singapore, textbooks are created in house by the educational ministry. This is a key feature of the system. Textbooks are the basis of instruction. Workbooks and worksheets are a basis of instruction.

2) There is a much higher percentage of teachers who give test questions every 2 weeks or more. 39% in Singapore and only 9% in the UK. Assessments require application of knowledge.

In comparison, London's strengths are in 'knowledge building pedagogical structures' as well as assessments that require students to explain, justify and search for patterns and relationships.

However this data does not adequately capture the picture of the Singapore pedagogical structure.

Teachers in Singapore are not choosing between pedagogical structures. They have a hybridity in instructional techniques, and it is within this unique feature that its strength lies.

In addition to this Singapore dedicates an overwhelming majority of time and learning support to procedural learning. Singapore does well because it focuses on factual and procedural knowledge, rather than conceptual understanding and this has to be reconciled to the PIZA success. The conclusion we draw is the importance of rigorous, domain specific knowledge acquisition.

The modal interaction in classroom talk in Singapore is IRE exchanges. Initiate, respond, evaluate answers to closed questions. Only 7% of talk in Singapore classrooms is conceptual and 1% is explanatory.

The focus is on exam preparation and teaching to the test, there is a strong focus on procedural learning and a sense of mastery.

Key features of the Singapore Pedagogy:

1) Curriculum coverage - teachers have to cover the curriculum
2) Teaching to the test, bureaucratic accountability
3) Meritocratic advancement
4) Highly prescriptive national curriculum
5) National high stakes assessment system
6) Extensive curriculum support from ministry of education
7) Pervasive folk pedagogy (beliefs, teaching scripts, interactional genres)
8) An integrated, tightly controlled, coupled systems of popular education that preserves sufficient autonomy at the school level ti ensure responsiveness to local circumstances and the professional judgement of teachers.

Singapore teachers overwhelmingly believe that their responsibility to ensure that pupils score well on the high stakes national assessment. The system is orientated to performance.

Limits of the pedagogy

1) Aversion to risk and innovation
2) Depth of curriculum
3) Perverse instructional incentives

The results of this is restricted attention to knowledge building and 21st century skills. Limited development between ICT mediated tasks and the integration of technology into instruction. A focus on task infidelity, task implementation rather than task design and finally, limited us of high leverage instructional strategies.

In the UK the debate is about how broad should the curriculum be, in Singapore the debate is over depth. Recently the Singapore curriculum content was cut by 20% to facilitate greater depth.

Blogging Live from the Mayor's Education Conference 2013

#LDNeduconf

Session 2 Q&A with the Mayor of London - Boris Johnson

John Major said recently that too many of our country's leaders went to public schools. In the 1970s London schools were not well thought of. Many families would try and get their children into school sin the home counties. Now families are sending their children to London schools, they are choosing to educate their children here. London now educates 16% of all 3 - 11 year olds in the country. 83% are achieving L4 at KS2 compared to 79% nationally. London has fewer NEETS then elsewhere int eh country, we have the highest number of students going on to university than elsewhere in the country, even though London has 4 of the poorest boroughs in the country.

Boris sees a creative and fresh attitude in teachers and phenomenal leadership, but there remain challenges. 1 in 4 still leave without being ale to read and write well enough and we face a tragic shortage of engineers. We have a long and illustrious history in science yet we do not have the people to build the next generation of nuclear reactors. young people in London are so often ruling themselves out of these opportunities. Boris wants to give us the teachers the skills to inspire our young people.

Young people today have a tremendous energy and confidence and technical savvy, all they need is an extra 'twist of the dial' to be successful.

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Blogging Live from the Mayor of London Education Conference 2013

#LDNeduconf

Session 1 Welcome from Munira Mirza, Deputy Mayor for Education

Wisdom begins with wonder -

How do we prepare children in London to live and work in a global city?

There are more outstanding schools in London than anywhere else in England

What can we learn from the American perspective? Joel Klein CEO of Amplify

London and the U.S are joined by a critical challenge. The greatest issue we face is the growing gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. Will the american dream become a memory under our watch?
The best cure for poverty and social mobility is to ensure that we educate all of our children, especially those with the greatest challenge to the highest levels. We must not loose our focus for doing things deeply differently.

In the 1950s 60% of the US workforce were high school dropouts. Now it is only 6%. We are loosing the race between education and technology. The economy we are educating our kids for is vastly different from the one we have today.

Lots of jobs today that used to be done domestically are now done globally. We must educate our children to a different level. UK are spending more than almost any one else but failing to keep pace with Singapore, Korea, Australia, New Zealand etc. This is the nature of the challenge. If we don't, we will find a constant hollowing out of the middle class

Key Challenges

1) Blame Game - Time spent blaming is time wasted

2) Pupils with vast challenges- Different pathways to success. Poverty and family circumstance can never be an excuse for the failure of the school system.

3) We are not being remotely bold enough!

3 bold things that can change the game in education

1) Competition and choice. Competition is nobel, not destructive. We who are fortunate insist on choice. Why isn't this the case for the under privileged. US K-12 schools are never looked at globally because they were a choiceness system. US universities are globally admired because they are built on choice and competition.

2) Professionalisation of teachers. No school system is better than its teachers. We have to move teaching from a trade union model to a true professional model. As long as there are no consequences, as long as the discussion is not about education we are playing a game with who has the power.

3) Innovation in education. Every other sector in our economy has undergone a massive transformation, it is time for K-12 to do the same.
Graduation rate had been stagnant in NYC for over a decade and improved 2+ points per year. Doubled college readiness rate.

If we fail to educate our children for the 21st century we will fail. The future depends on taking our game to a different level. This won't happen with small bore, incremental change. The 21st century won't be nearly as forgiving as the 20th century.

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Andreas Schleicher

If the UK had seen the change in schools that London has, we wouldn't be worried about the PIZA rankings.

People are at the top end of the skills gap are seeing life's opportunities growing and those at the bottom are seeing opportunities falling away. The world economy doesn't pay you for what you know, but what you do, with what you know.

Spending on student represents less than 20% of the success seen on the PIZA rankings. Quality of teaching is more important than class sizes. Learning must be central.

Modern learning environments are social and collaborative. How good are you at mobilising knowledge and connecting the dots to other areas of learning. High performers support the professional in pedagogical innovation. Teacher in Finland are required to complete a masters level research dissertation, why? Because we want teachers to remain inquisitive. In Sweeden, leaders challenge teachers every day. How do we know that? How do we know what other teachers are doing?

Teachers need to acquire strong technical skills. The Le@rning federation is an excellent example of this.

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Dame Sue John

There remains massive challenges in London. If we don't work together to move educational creativity forward we will not achieve. We have a track record of innovation in London, but we need to be bolder. We must harness the capacity of other sectors, including business, the arts and technology.

The so called soft skills such as resilience, team working and collaboration are in fact hard skills.

There is a need to measure our impact on the world stage. If London is so much further ahead than the rest of the country then we must measure ourselves against the world not the UK.