Artichoke

Righteous pedagogies at Learning@School 08

And there ain't no man righteous, no not one. Bob Dylan

Does our focus on the “righteous pedagogies” in New Zealand undermine student learning outcomes?

A contemporary definition of ‘learning’ is a long term change in a person’s thinking and behaviour.  But rarely do schools, teachers, and students assess such long term changes. At our best we focus on the “formica veneer” of learning, the short term outcomes of what has been learned, at worst we focus on “righteous pedagogies”.

My recent experience at the Learning@School08 conference means that I suspect that rather than looking at what we do to build changes in student long term memory, we tend to neglect memory altogether and shortcut to an educational focus on the “righteous pedagogies”.

At Learning@School08 I kept nudging up against a “pedagogical righteousness” ...  that sense that as long as schools (and their edu_conference presentations) string together an educational mantra of words like;

personalisation, putting learners at the centre, New Zealand Curriculum 2007, 21st Century, authentic, inquiry, learning community, scaffolding, assessment for learning, collaboration, engagement, learning intentions, key competencies, evidence based practice, home school partnerships, wisdom and values

when they describe their programmes, they are somehow beyond reproach.

I reckon that this focus on a “righteous pedagogy” comes at the expense of a focus on the learner.

(Note to self: It is an enormous irony that Alton-Lee's Best Evidence Synthesis BES (and the teacher misinterpretation of the iterative nature of the ten characteristics of quality teaching) must shoulder some of the blame for this state of affairs)

This relentless referencing of constructivistic pedagogies (learning_theory) and associated jargon in the conference presentations by New Zealand schools is not matched by an equally relentless unpacking of what these terms might mean to students - nor by any clarity of how we can design learning activities to achieve them in school.   

When I think about what is memorable about my learning experiences today I recall

• laughing over coffee with the sales manager for the publishing company of Science World9 and 10,
• watching the caregivers at the dementia centre wrestling a full size harp into a lounge filled with, residents waving leeks and, the smells of welsh rarebit baking.  (St David’s Day celebrations dementia style),
• sending Nix a mobile phone photograph of Marilyn in full air,
• fighting off some seriously “outlet sale inflamed” shoppers to grab two cushion covers needed by the Magnet ( an easier task than my previous Magnet induced challenge of locating a place that dyes shoes in the wilderness of an Auckland inner city building site)
• strategies that failed to persuade “Stanley the Errant” Labrador to bring back the packet of pita bread he stole from the kitchen
• ordering Eden Catering lunches for our ict_pd cluster lead teacher start up meeting/s next week
• alerting our cluster principals to changes in the MoE milestone reporting requirements in 2008. 

All of which makes me wonder

1. What will I recall from today, tomorrow?
2. What will I recall from today, in a months time?
3. What will I recall from today, in 6 months time?
4. What will I recall from today next year?
5. W hat will I recall from today  in 25 years time?

The activities that made learning memorable are not linked to any particular pedagogy. They are not answered by "Lisa like" "either/or" pedagogical questions ...

Lisa: So, dad, will you be teaching from a standardized text or using the more Socratic method?

I predict that the activities that will build new learning for me, the ones I will remember longest, are the ones that (as Graham Nuthall’s work suggests) I repeatedly experienced in a range of different settings in the day job –

All of which means I suspect will remember how

• the dementia centre staff create magic every day,
• shopping for the bargains identified by the Magnet involves the key competencies of reckless misadventure, ruthlessness and determination,
• sharing the mobile photo trivia of my life builds friendship,
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs thinking is necessary but not sufficient for learning ready teachers,   
• laughter can persuade you to agree to do extra stuff when you know that you should’t.
• the expectation of changing goal posts in the MoE ict_pd cluster milestone reporting requirements is unchanging.

Note to self: Stuff constructivism ... work on building memory ... and helping clarify for students what is needed when you are learning how to learn.

Learning@School 08: A mixture of "Isn't it delicious?" and “chelonian” learning experience.

When Marilyn Monroe's dress is blown up above her waist by a passing train underneath a subway grate she is standing on, she exclaims "Isn't it delicious?"    

We left the conference venue on Friday with a small carry-on sized travel bag and laptop each ... before we hit the intersection of the Old Taupo Rd and Ngongotaha Rd we had added a larger than life sized photograph of Marilyn Monroe with dress blown up  mounted on three hinged screens, an outsized turtle shell in need of linseed oil, a wicker topped table and two chairs and a collection of brightly coloured ceramic pasta jars ... we had all the key ingredients .... with Marilyn and the Mock Turtle on board we were ready to talk ....

I get a little excited ... ... about the potential conversations on the return road trip from the MoE Learning@School conferences in Rotorua each year –

Over the years these conversations have been associated with moments of significant new learning. Academics would probably categorise this as “historical precedent excitement” – but to me intellectual excitement (historical or not) is hard to differentiate from all those other catalysts for emotional lurch 

I reckon this excitement is because the road trip from Rotorua to Auckland provides an uninterrupted and unmonitored opportunity for “frankly reckless conversations” about those Lewis Carroll “We called him Tortoise because he taught us.” moments –the  what was of value, what was dodgy and what needs more investigation of the Learning@School 08 conference experience.  And it also provides a time where intelligence gleaned from multiple sources is pooled – the she said, he said stuff, he looked, she looked, he was, she was ...

I like to start by thinking about the conference breakouts, spotlight presentations, keynote addresses and trade hall exhibits using chelonian thinking  - I use an assessment rubric based upon the Mock Turtle's analysis for assessing “a really good school” (and translate this to “a really good educational experience at conference”)

So I analyse my conference session notes and memories against rubrics I have developed against the Mock Turtle’s analysis of what makes a really good school.

"Ah! Then yours wasn't a really good school," said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief."

He goes on to flipper the following as essential to goodness ...

"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," ....."and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."

Not too hard to find examples of all of these ....from here it is easy to move quickly onto an analysis of my learning moments of "Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography“  and by the time we hit Tirau I am ready to tussle with my learning experiences that best aligned with “Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils."

When I get to “Fainting in Coils” I bring in Marilyn .... asking

What moments of new learning at Learning@School 08 best meet a “Fainting in Coils” assessment  rubric at the "Isn't it delicious?" learning level – that fusing of mind and heart moment.

From the Keynotes it is easy to pick “Key Messages” from Murray Brown for a current focus, clearly articulated, well sequenced overview of the different flows of information and data happening through eLearning in New Zealand, national student identification and authentication programmes,  and for his identification of the need to look carefully at the new critical literacies that e Learning brings to education.

But the consensus from our teachers would see the overall “Isn’t it delicious?” moment go to “Learning’s the Thing!”- Mary Chamberlain’s Spotlight session on the New Zealand Curriculum -  – a breakout delivered with such passion and relevance that there was hardly a dry eye in the room –

Note to self - Give feedback to conference organisers ... This is a verve filled presenter whose message and delivery needed a bigger audience –mark for an opening keynote position on the next conference programme.

The only thing the Mock Turtle is uncertain about is the role of the Classical master and the importance of “Laughing and grief” in a learning experience.

"Hadn't time," said the Gryphon: "I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, he was."
"I never went to him," the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: "he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say."
"So he did, so he did," said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn, and both creatures hid their faces in their paws."

Learning@School 08 certainly had its share of both ....

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898)
Chapter 9 The Mock Turtle’s Story 

"The New Zealand Curriculum v2.0" and working in tenuous circumstances

Alexander Trevi has a fascinating post on a proposal from Purdue University to build Instanbul  v2.0 as a way “for Istanbul to lessen the humanitarian crisis and economic impact of a catastrophic earthquake striking the ancient city”.

After unpacking the proposal he examines what building the back up city might look like to the occupants living in the first version city.

Let's say a new city is built, a fully functioning metropolis complete with homes, businesses, museums and infrastructure. For twenty years, people would live there, going about their lives, going to work, raising their children, tending to their gardens.  Every day they would hear news of another city under construction at an adjacent site. In fact, they will be reminded of this at every of the day, if not from the news, then from the distant but incessant machine noise and dust plumes emanating from the horizon. It becomes a major aspect of daily life, settling in nicely or not so nicely into the background, like radiation or an impending major earthquake or a Hurricane Katrina, oscillating between states of immediate critical concern and ambience.

When the new city is finished, everyone will have to migrate en masse there, as the now older city will torn down, including the sewers, and everything else burnt to the ground. But in another 20 years, they will again be exiled, forced to a newer city constructed on the very same site from where they had fled decades ago.

And so on and so on.

Trevi's post made me think about what it might be like to work in an education system where the physical buildings and location of schools were constantly changing and students and teachers were regularly relocated.

To ask: what advantages might this bring in terms of undermining the intransigence of tradition bound thought and practice about curriculum and pedagogy? ... what disadvantages might occur when teachers and students become increasingly peripatetic? ... and what might stay the same in terms of our beliefs about teaching and learning when we adopt “impermanence and continual change” in location?.

All this Instanbulv2.0 catalysed thinking reminded me of listening to teachers and families ( in schools we worked with) talk about the impact on their communities  before, during and after the Labour Government’s policy of closing state schools with small rolls.

And then, thanks to adopting some focussing strategies from Lucychili - I realised I was thinking about this at the wrong focus level .... 

I don’t need to imagine Instanbul v2.0 in an educational context ... I am living Instanbulv2.0

I am at the raw face of observing what it is like to experience Alexander Trevi’s imagined city reconstruction scenario within an educational setting.

I am observer, researcher and teacher of teachers during the introduction of the new New Zealand Curriculum –

A curriculum whose arrival has been (draftily) trumpeted for ever since I can remember ... all that "oscillating between states of immediate critical concern and ambience" over the 1992 curriculum, the 2000-2002 revision of the curriculum, the process leading up to the The New Zealand Curriculum: Draft for Consultation 2006 and now The New Zealand Curriculum 2007.

“Every day they would hear news of another city under construction at an adjacent site. In fact, they will be reminded of this at every of the day, if not from the news, then from the distant but incessant machine noise and dust plumes emanating from the horizon.”

I am charged in the day job with helping teachers in today’s workforce implement what is for most of them the equivalent of Curriculum v2.0.

Whilst the more cynical and wordly amongst them think “this too will pass” - suspecting in Trevi’s words that  “in another 20 years, they will again be exiled, forced to a newer city constructed on the very same site from where they had fled decades ago.” others are in a more desperate struggle to give meaning to the new documents.

I reckon Trevi asks some great questions for educators thinking about the significance of Curriculum v2.0 changes

Or will they gradually come development cultural traditions favoring the values of impermanence, of continual change? Will their society be based on a culture of experimentation and radical innovation? In other words, will they stop designing buildings and landscapes exactly the same way as before, even if it's been proven to work time and time again, when failure can and will be erased in no more than 20 years' time?

How will you live your life in tenuous circumstances?

All this thinking about Instanbulv2.0 means that our f2f work helping teachers plan learning experiences, success criteria, and assessment for learning rubrics against SOLO Taxonomy with the new New Zealand Curriculum is going to be far more interesting than I initially suspected ...

Just how will teachers plan with the new curriculum, when talk of curriculum change since the late 1990’s has led many to believe they are working in tenuous circumstances?

Learning@School08: “Sitting down there amidst the wallpaper”

I have spent the first three weeks of the school year on the road -  Billy Collin's “striding around like a vivid god my shoulders in the clouds”.

In the first fifteen days The Magnet and I have worked f2f with over 972 teachers from 36 different schools across New Zealand, been interviewed/ grilled by an ERO review team, met with cluster facilitators, and visited six cluster schools -  (and those fifteen days are really twelve given that they include three down days - Anniversary Day, Waitangi Day and a day unexpectedly spent at the eye ward at Greenlane Hospital). I am not even going to attempt to chronicle the phone calls and online exchanges with teachers and principals, the cluster wiki building and blogging.

As a consequence I cannot wait to be “lifted up by the ribs, then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse to sit with the others at the long table.” as it were – at Learning@School in the Energy Events Centre in Rotorua. 

I feel over ready for Learning@School – over ready for a little Billy Collin’s like “sitting down there amidst the wallpaper, staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?” time where the only “striding around” will be done by our ict_pd cluster teachers who are presenting for the first time.

I have chosen my breakouts carefully – on the basis of location – not content – I want to find a seat in one location at the start of day one and remain there throughout – accepting without qualm anything that might waft in front of me.  It is a registration tactic that has worked well for me in the past – choice in edu_conferences is often over-rated and bound to disappoint.   

When I am sitting down there amidst the wallpaper – listening to the presenters allocated the space I have registered for - I will be thinking about how their presentation links to notions of “communities” and the NZ Curriculum Key Competency notion of “Participating and Contributing”

Key Competency: Participating and Communicating - Be aware of local/national/global communities/ understand the purpose of these communities/respond appropriately in a group situation/ make connections with others/ take on a range of roles/display an awareness of local/national and global issues/ be actively involved in community issues/understand the importance of balancing rights, roles and responsibilities/make decisions/ contribute to social/physical and economic environments

Participating and communicating in the Key Competencies seems to be painted as all about community – which makes me wonder if this is why the participation and communication of those who ride as outsiders in education are seldom recognised by those within.

When I sit in the audience at L@S – staring straight ahead with my little plastic face – I don’t think that shared interests will be enough to claim that I am part of the learning community.

For when you think about it - community requires a sense of belonging, a sense that individuals matter to one another and to the group – a sense that I and others in the audience have influence and something to contribute, and a belief that we will be rewarded for our participation in meeting the needs of others - and finally community requires that as members we share a sense of history – an emotional connection.      

The  first problem I foresee in building a sense of community/ belonging in the brief time the L@S registrants are together in Rotorua is trivial - it lies in the absence of a conference bag this year – perhaps the carbon footprint zealots who dispensed with the conference bag in the interests of reducing our footprint (whilst at the same time retaining the conference buses to ferry participants to venues across the city and maintaining computer servers that are as bad for climate as SUV’s doing 15 miles to the gallon ) - will have granted a carbon footprint concession to the conference name tag.

For without any overt signs of (learning) community membership how will I know if the people I nudge up against in the Pig and Whistle are L@S community, tourist or locals?

I figure that I am going to have to rely on that unmistakable teachers’ dress code (we might not know what this is but ask anyone who isn’t a teacher) and the loud flocking behaviours of teachers in public places  to distinguish the L@S teachers  from the rest of Rotorua. 

Some Days   by Billy Collins
 
Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

"You will understand and pardon my solicitude"

I just know some of you will argue for Pablo Neruda’ s Cien sonetos de amor as a source of love sonnets for "relating to others" on Valentine’s day – and as I leaf through my copy of Stephen Tapscott translations of Neruda's sonnets  I will concede that he is hard to dismiss,

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Pablo Neruda

And yet this year I am choosing Emily Dickinson’s Wild nights! Wild nights!

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Emily Dickinson 

And part of this is because I love the 1890’s exchange between the editors of Dickinson's poems ...

Colonel Higginson wrote to his co-editor Mrs. Todd,

"One poem only I dread a little to print--that wonderful 'Wild Nights,'--lest the malignant read into it more than that virgin recluse ever dreamed of putting there. Has Miss Lavinia [Emily Dickinson's sister] any shrinking about it? You will understand & pardon my solicitude. Yet what a loss to omit it! Indeed it is not to be omitted."

I so want to use "You will understand & pardon my solicitude." in conversation, and will be alert to every opportunity to slip it into a "relating to others" moment -

It seems "Relating to others" is far more complex that the Key Competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum [Interact with a diverse group of people/Interact in a variety of context/ be an active listener/recognise different viewpoints/negotiate and share ideas/be more open to new learning/ co-operate in team situations] would have us imagine. 

And as one of the teachers in yesterday's workshop pointed out - sometimes "relating to others" requires us to be still - to say and do nothing at all.  

The Key Competency: Relating to Others, "How Doctors Think" and ee cummings

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework   identifies five key competencies that are "key to learning" :  thinking/ using language, symbols, and texts/  managing self/ participating and contributing/ relating to others. 

And it is the “relating to others” bit that I find myself thinking about today .... 

Jerome Groopman’s book “How Doctors Think”  explores the thought processes behind the decisions doctors make in the (on average) eighteen seconds they spend listening to a patient describing symptoms before interrupting them, and deciding on a diagnosis and best treatment options. I especially enjoyed the Epilogue: A Patient’s Questions which would be great professional reading for anyone exploring home- school partnerships.

The whole book is an entertaining read – it makes me think that we ought to research and write something similar about common cognitive errors in teaching and learning – call it an attempt to unpack “How Teachers Think” when they are charged with helping individual students learn in classrooms. Adrienne Alton-Lee would be my author of choice in New Zealand.

The experience of sitting behind a curtain in the Emergency Department’s Admissions and Planning Unit of Auckland Hospital with grandpa last year provides  an interesting practical sampling of how doctors and their 21st century patients relate to each other when they communicate – how do you relate when you are vulnerable and the other is under the  pressures of time and performance?

Much like the learning experiences we plan to target specific student learning outcomes- the “relating to others” conversations between patient and health professional are carefully scaffolded - the medics arrive clasping a conversational crib sheet designed to ensure the "relating to others" experience profiles all the important stuff in the shortest possible time.

And yet if you sit back and let all the “relating to others” conversations in the ward wash over you, it doesn’t take too long to realise that the important detail the health professional needs to hear is often not shared at this time

The universal availability of mobile phone technologies means it is easy to hear how the patient health professional “relating to others” experience is outclassed on measures of frequency, length, and  relevance by the “relating to others” conversations the patient behind the curtain initiates with their significant other outside the ward ...

Immediately after the Initiation (medic) Response (patient) Elaboration (medic) conversation finishes the 21st C patients in the admissions ward grab their mobile phones and share the detail they withheld from the medics with someone they choose to relate to outside the hospital.

I can claim this because there is an interesting deceit that occurs when you Christo wrap the space around a bed with fabric – I don't know if anyone has recorded this before but my experience is that enclosing someone in a fabric space makes them act as if when they cannot be seen by others in the ward they also believe that they cannot be heard ... ...and  they indulge in mobile technology afforded “relating to others” conversations in voices so loud that the detail withheld from the nurses/doctors is freely broadcast to all the other curtained spaces in the ward. 

“I’ve  got a blockage ... its been coming on for a while but now it has happened ... I  can’t pee ... I want to pee though .... I ‘ve  had this problem for quite some  time.”
“ he put some Vaseline on his finger and he put it up my bum ... oh no .... he put a rubber glove on it first eh!”
“I’ve got clots forming around the aneurism  ... apparently I’ve got sticky blood and have got to increase the Cartia and stop smoking ... oh I know ... I can’t stop smoking”
“I am on a waiting list for a lung transplant ... I cannot have sex until I can go up 2 flights of stairs without getting breathless ... well that’s going to discount sex for the rest of my life ..”
“I have 28 years of renal failure dialysis treatment and yet no one wants to know that when I have a bowel movement it feels like I am passing a .....   “

All of which made me wonder what we would find if we sampled the mobile technology afforded conversations students have when they are in school.

I guess I am imagining an elaboration of that fabulous Graham Nuttall and Adrienne Alton-Lee  type research in capturing “the significant and often very subtle classroom interactions which influence learning”.

But whereas Nuttall’s research used microphones and video to  focus “on the intimate relationship amongst students and the teachers within classrooms.” this research would tap into the digital communications that connect learners in school with the chosen other – both inside and  outside the classroom.

I suspect that much like the doctor patient check box question exchanges – much of what we fondly describe as scaffolded learning experiences  would be revealed as anything but ...

The “Build it Kenny and they will come ... blog”  uses a simple photograph of African women waiting for water ...   to capture one of the problems of “relating to others” be they in hospital admission wards, or school classrooms.

Kenny suggests that before IT will become relevant in developing countries

People need to accept, and see relevance, in the technology or solution
Care needs to be taken in how the technologies are described
We must remember that ICT is a tool, and not a solution in itself
What problem is being solved? Whose problem is it? Is it a problem?
“African women who do most of the work in the countryside don't have time to sit with their children and research what crops they should be planting. What is needed is clean water and real schools”
Are grand, large-scale, top-down solutions such as OLPC appropriate?
Are there language issues? What are they? How can they be overcome?
Will there be access or ownership issues over the technology/solution?
Care is needed when breaking down traditional systems of trading, etc.
Communities should not be seen only as passive recipients. They are “content generators” in their own right and should be treated as such!
The internet – mobile or otherwise – will not bridge the digital divide alone. Appropriate, relevant, community-led applications will be key

These are interesting criteria and so easily tweaked for thinking about "school" as a technology or "way of doing stuff".  I suspect that, in our secondary schools at least, student conversations tracked through mobile technologies would reveal that many students are “waiting for water” rather than “researching what crops they should be planting”?

Perhaps the technology of school will only become causally linked to student learning when we interpret the key competency "relating to others" to mean taking time to listen to students in a similar way to the way the people patients choose to ring on their mobile phones do.

And if I was making a self assessment rubric for the Key Competency “Relating to others” in the context of conversation - for use in classrooms and emergency admission rooms it would read a little like this

SOLO Extended abstract:

I can balance listening and replying.  I can reflect upon what I have heard and evaluate it or elaborate it. 
I can offer relevant ideas as alternatives.
[Generalise, predict, evaluate, reflect, create]

SOLO Relational:

I can listen to others and respond appropriately.  When I reply I can explain how I understand what has been said.
I can explain my ideas clearly.
[Sequence, compare contrast, classify, causal explanation, part whole analysis, analogy]

SOLO Multistructural:

I can listen to others and reply to them. 
I can explain my ideas to others in an appropriate way.
[Define, describe, identify, name, list, label]

SOLO Unistructural:

I find it hard to listen to others without interrupting.
I can respond to what I have heard.

Prestructural:

I find it hard to listen to others.
I respond without thinking about what I have heard.

But if I was thinking about "relating to others" as a poet rather than an educator I'd settle for the "relating to others" rubric captured in an ee cummings may i feel said he conversation.

Sustainable Education: The 21C Curriculum equivalent of the garden designer’s “soft pornography of the flower”

The New Zealand Government is quite clear about where “environmental sustainability” sits in a “dislocated by bulleting” list of conflicting goals for our Economic transformation -

Government Goals
Economic transformation
This goal aims to progress our economic transformation to a high income, knowledge-based market economy, which is both innovative and creative, provides a unique quality of life to all New Zealanders and includes:
•    growing globally competitive firms
•    world class infrastructure
•    innovative and productive workplaces, underpinned by high standards in education, skills   and research
•    an internationally competitive city - Auckland
•    environmental sustainability.

I cannot help but imagine how much more faithfully these ideas for economic transformation might have been presented had the governmental policy writers been banned from using dislocated bullet points and were instead charged with presenting their claims in a systems map complete with feedback loops.

But my question is more narrowly focused:

If we are “To give the leaders of tomorrow the knowledge they need to operate in a world rapidly running out of resources and facing the challenges of climate change.” MoE SOI 2007 what learning experiences should we include?

I keep coming back to this question because in 2008 to 2010 we are working with a new ict_pd cluster of five Auckland primary schools looking at the nexus between “environmental sustainability” and ICTs. 

I am working to understand how we might best design learning experiences for developing primary student understanding of “environmental sustainability”. 

What ought we to include in an “education for sustainability curriculum” for Years 1 to 6?

I am trying to capture notions of Kaitiakitanga (guardianship - all life connected - managing the modern day environment based on a Maori world view) and Environmental Sustainability (balance between human needs and those of the natural environment). My “Planning for Sustainability” Inspiration™ concept map has grown so dense with inter-connections as a result that I find it hard to read it all on one screen.

I figured that the most immediate connection (read authentic) primary students might have with “human needs” was food. So I mapped from field to lunchbox (or with older students from field to burger) against impact on the natural environment with respect to what happened the past, present and might happen in the future ... through

Hunting and gathering lunchbox/burger food/ Growing lunchbox/burger food/ Harvesting lunchbox/burger food/ Preserving lunchbox/burger food/ Transporting lunchbox/burger food/ Marketing and advertising lunchbox/burger food/ Packaging lunchbox/burger food/ Preparing lunchbox/burger food/ Decomposition lunchbox/burger food/ Politics lunchbox/burger food/ Aesthetics lunchbox/burger food/ Economics lunchbox/burger food/ Cultural, country, regional, religious, 21st C lunchbox food/ “We are what we eat” – food chains, food webs, energy flow, digestion, healthy eating, eating smart;

And then I tried to connect this “human needs thinking” with  the “economic”, “political” and "cultural" considerations of resource management, environmental law, energy consumption, carbon footprints, peak oil, peak carbon.

To do this I had to unpack the “ecosystem”as community plus environment, and look at the processes – flow of energy and cycling of nutrients, the community (all the species in a given area) and notions of biodiversity, and the balance between autotrophs and heterotrophs; the environment – the biotic and physical surroundings; to consider the way humans impact on all of these – how humans and their desire for a burger or a lunchbox modifies our physical environments and living things through selective breeding, introduced species, monoculture etc etc  ... it just gets more interconnected every way you look.               

And yet the more I read about the MoE suggested initiatives and approaches for studying sustainability online the less connected and more insular the thinking suggested – the more bullet pointed the ideas suggested. 

In truth I find it hard to distinguish “education for sustainability” from the thinking that we used to see siloed as “environmental education” in the 1970's.

All that seems to have happened in the MoE “education for sustainability” curriculum is that the; establishing worm farms, organic gardens and school composting, recycling schemes, school walking maps, local stream studies, re-vegetation initiatives, water cycle study, mapping school energy usage, adopting local environments, endangered species, ecological energetics studies and practical exercises on pollution that used to form part of the Y9 to Y13 secondary biology curriculum in the 70’s has been reframed as “environmental sustainability” topics for Years 1 to 6.

It makes me feel that I am trapped in a curriculum equivalent of the “soft pornography of the flower” all over again.   

Environmental sustainability is a notion more complex, deeply connected, integrated, coherent and at a higher level of abstraction than environmental studies – sustainability cannot be understood by a simple focus on school recycling, and we should stop pretending that it can. 

Much like the revelations in the New York Times article A Landscape in Winter, Dying Heroically on the Dutch avant-gardener   Piet Oudolf  (thanks to Alexander Trevi at Pruned (whose blogging sustains me) for the link.) both “gardening” and “sustainable education” can suffer from reductionist and “at a certain moment in time” thinking.

When it comes to creating and designing a garden Piet Oudolf argues 

“You accept death. You don’t take the plants out, because they still look good. And brown is also a color.”

Looking out over his perennial meadow, Mr. Oudolf articulated it this way: “You look at this, and it goes deeper than what you see. It reminds you of something in the genes — nature, or the longing for nature.” Allowing the garden to decompose, he added, meets an emotional need in people.

“He’s gotten away from the soft pornography of the flower,” said Charles Waldheim, the director of the landscape architecture program at the University of Toronto. “He’s interested in the life cycle, how plant material ages over the course of the year,” and how it relates to the plants around it. Like a good marriage, his compositions must work well together as its members age.

“Most people think in a formal way: if you put A and B with C, it will look like this — but only at a certain moment in time,” ...

Reading blog posts on Pruned make me boldy claim that what is limiting in most school recycling schemes is the placement (read hiding) of the school compost heap ...

Trevi's The Rich Hour of the Compost Pile  is a persuasive post - the school compost heap needs prominence – it belongs in the highly visible entrance lobby of any school – with online webcam to all classrooms if notions of sustainability are to escape the bullet pointed list. 

Visitors and school community alike need an opportunity to embrace decomposition and its role in sustainable outcomes.

As for burgers no one does it better than István László G

I think I might launch the SustainED ict_pd cluster teacher workshop with a reading of “Burger King” as a metaphor for dislocation - check it out

Burger King
by István László G

As if their heads were conkers,
brown cracks of light pressing through split cases,
the men eat.
They don’t think about women, the waiting years,
but unravel instead the grease – proof paper,
the mayo bleeding the white napkins,
and sink into the burgers,
pulling away like gauze from half-healed skin.
The food turns in their mouths,
gropes about the palate of bone
as if it might be born in this swallowing,
the men eat, alone.

(translated from the Hungarian by Owen Sheers)

“.... over 65% of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation."

I have just finished reading Max Brook’s oral history of the zombie war - “World War Z”

My decision to pick up the book and idly leaf through a few pages (after which I was completely and helplessly captured) did not come from; the Instant New York Times Bestseller sticker on the cover, or the WWZ 24 hour dislocation of the “fiction novel” adverse software engineer from his screen, or for that matter from any affection for zombie world fiction.  I don't read much fiction nowadays.

My decision to pick the book up came as a direct result of a curiosity over the WWZ catalysed 21st Century learner conversations I ear-jagged whilst sitting in my corridor – conversations about how we might be mistaken in our assumptions about our economic, political, technological, governmental and global future.

These bewildering, and enticing conversation broke out amongst the 21st Century learners in the house who read the book – and trust me the more they talked, the more everyone else wanted to read the book.

I listened in on fierce debate around the appropriateness (economic, political, religious, scientific, medical,  governmental, physical health, communication, business, basic needs, cultural, emotional health, social, technological, arts, transport, environmental, media and educational)  of diverse local, national, and global responses to pandemics and disasters – conversations that made risible the MoE’s sneeze into your armpit pandemic advice site.

These conversations catalysed by the oral histories catalogued after World War Z  were richer than anything that ever been catalysed by our current NZ curriculum at our place  and made me suspect that as well as reading about peak oil  and peak coal – politicians, public servants, educators and 21st Century Learners ought to be reading Max Brooks analysis in World War Z.

It so happened that at the same time that I was reading “World War Z”, I was tracking local media responses to the launch of the latest attempt to make learning relevant to both the 21st Century learner and 21st Century New Zealand – The New Zealand Curriculum, and the educational content in the election year opening speeches of both Labour and National - main political parties in New Zealand.

“If Key's speech struck a public nerve, Clark's by contrast seemed bloodless. The idea of requiring students to be in recognised education or training until the age of 18 is simply a raising of the school-leaving age by another name. There is undoubted merit in developing the proposed youth apprenticeship options for students who lack academic inclinations, but in trying to characterise these two moves as a development of the knowledge economy for the 21st century, Labour risks looking foolish. The youngsters concerned are those who, until now, left school at 16. On the whole - and there are impressive, even legendary exceptions - these are not our best and brightest. Little wonder that educationists are so wary at the prospect of having to implement the proposal without extra and specialised resources.”  Editorial: Support for Key's boot camp is sign of widespread anxiety   

Having learned nothing or showed no aptitude for learning by the age of 16, what on Earth makes Labour think that these kids will suddenly kick-start themselves into becoming Rhodes Scholars by age 18? Should the Government's plan come into effect, I fully expect in another nine years to see a statistic that says 40 per cent of 18-year-olds are leaving school with no qualifications. Bill Ralston: Schools Out for Many Youths

I will admit that I continue to struggle with any initiatives that involve limiting the ability of individual students to make choices for themselves, to vote with their feet about the learning that most matters, the learning they most need.

It seems that our MoE rhetoric about personalising learning – the emphasis on putting the learner at the centre etc is about institutional provision only - it only lasts until the learner starts to exert themselves about the how, and the where, of what they want to do when they are lifelong learners, then the rhetoric does a sharp U turn, and we start hearing talk about raising the compulsory school leaving age to 18 years old. No wonder students mistrust us ...

Raising the school leaving age for the disengaged and disenchanted by school is a classic Senge systems thinking  bandage solution – it might massage those parlous OECD percentages for young New Zealanders not in training school or employment  in the short term, but in the long term it can only exacerbate the real problem for young New Zealanders whose needs have manifestly not yet been met by the learning opportunities moderated through schools to date.

If what schools provided through all their various programmes was adequate then how can we explain the 11.5% of adult New Zealanders who are unable to determine how to use a fire extinguisher from the instructions written on the bottle. 

If what schools provided through all their various programmes was adequate, how can we explain the tertiary sectors concern over literacy levels in the workforce (note we are talking literacy levels amongst the employed not unemployed here) .... and the resultant call for businesses to take on the core activities of schools.

The irony being that whilst businesses are being asked to take on the core numeracy and literacy work of schools,
 

“Businesses will be expected to teach workers reading, writing and maths under a complex new plan to raise the skills of the workforce”

... the MoE is claiming that schools will increasingly be taking on the teaching of the core activities of business.

The educational redundancy of our existing approach allows the the Business New Zealand Chief Executive to claim that educational outcomes in the NZ workforce are poor by world standards, not something we are used to hearing about the work we do in school ... we usually focus on upbeat reports on our OECD PISA test data 

"We've got a problem in terms of functional illiteracy and innumeracy in our workplaces. We are poor by world standards,"

And just what does poor by world standards mean?

“the literacy level of about 800,000 workers is such that they might struggle to transfer printed information to an order form - a deficiency cited as a factor stifling the country's economic growth.”

All of which makes me wonder why we would imagine that extending the time students must stay in a system that has in 12 to 14 years of compulsory attendance failed to teach them the most basic of literacy skills is a good idea...

And then in my despondency I wondered if I had failed to factor in the transformations promised by the new NZ Curriculum and its key competencies –

Perhaps the expectations within the new curriculum  will prove to be the panacea to all our educative woes and mean that all students across New Zealand “can reach their potential and develop the competencies and knowledge that will prepare them for adaptation and change as they meet the complex demands of an increasingly diverse and interconnected community and globalised society.” Hon Steve Maharey  The NZ Curriculum Draft for Consultation 2006

But after reading World War Z and thinking about peak oil, peak coal and various other pandemic scenarios I began to wonder if all this focus on transforming young New Zealanders into highly skilled, highly motivated workers in the Thomas Friedman flat earth like 21st-century global economies isn’t just a little narrow in its focus.

And that is why I reckon educators charged with policy development and educators charged with policy implementation ought to read the oral history of the Zombie Wars ... before we get too entrenched in our thinking about what the 21st Century learner needs to learn in school to participate and contribute in society.

Perhaps in valorising everything digital in our future thinking about teaching and learning we have neglected Gatto's what really matters Perhaps we have neglected what it will take to survive ..

It was slow going.  Air traffic was nonexistent, roads and rail lines were a shambles, and fuel, good Lord, you couldn’t find a tank of gas between Blaine, Washington, and Imperial Beach, California.  Add to this the fact that prewar America not only had a commuter-based infra structure , but that such a method also allowed for severe levels of economic segregation.  You would have entire suburban neighbourhoods of middle class professionals, none of whom possessed even the basic know-how to replace a cracked window.  Those with that knowledge lived in their own blue-collar “ghettos,” an hour away in prewar auto traffic, which translated to at least a full day on foot.   

Ours was a postindustrial or service-based economy, so complex and highly specialised that each individual could only function within the confines of its narrow compartmentalised structure. You should have seen some of the “careers” listed on our first employment census; everyone was some version of an “executive,” a “representative,” an “analyst,” or a “consultant,” all perfectly suited to the prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the present crisis.  ... The first labour survey stated clearly that over 65% of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation.  We required a massive job retraining programme.  .. P139 World War Z