Artichoke

On sharing the same space and good intentions

“Inclusion requires new ways of thinking and being that are open to ambiguity, and require porous boundaries in the daily intra-active encounters with difference.” Bronwyn Davies [1]

On the recommendation of a friend, I spent this morning listening to a lecture by Professor Bronwyn Davies at the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato [1]. It was disruptive time – aka time well spent.  The experience made me think about inclusive practices in new ways, especially when Davies argued that “inclusive practices can easily turn into coded structures that conserve, repeat and strengthen exclusion”.

Davies’ arguments make me think more deeply about how an educational policy or practice can be something more than it looks – something essentially darker than simply “sharing the same space and good intentions” [1].

If, as Davies describes, we are “a profession increasingly under pressure to be productive and to produce normative subjects who in turn will be economically productive, responsible and responsive to government norms” [1], then we might describe the New Zealand Practising Teacher Criteria [2] as a state-mandated means of exercising this pressure.

How does this understanding sit with the NZ Practising Teacher Criteria (PTC) #9?

PTC #9 asks us to “respond effectively to the diverse language and cultural experiences, and the varied strengths, interests and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga”. Key indicators include “teaching and assessment approaches that are inclusive for diverse ākonga” [2].  

I started thinking about “inclusive practice” in the context of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – a framework for thinking about inclusion.  

UDL is currently promoted in New Zealand education as a “good thing” and an answer to meeting expectations within PTC #9 [3]. Indeed I have recently co-authored a book about using UDL and SOLO Taxonomy in learning support to build academic and social success [4].

UDL prompts teachers to think about:

• how students can access learning materials
• how teachers can design learning activities in adaptive and responsive ways, which start by putting the student at the centre of teaching and learning  

Using UDL as a framework, we can look at how the curriculum can give every student equal access to opportunities to learn.

The three networks within the UDL framework are:

• recognition networks – how we present learning, “enabling access”
• strategic networks – how students express ideas, “enabling expression”
• affective networks – how we engage and motivate, “capturing attention”.

Although this framework appears promising and is popular with educators, I am also aware it is yet another educational approach that lacks research evidence about whether it has any effect on student learning. When we decide to implement UDL, we are making an educational leap of faith – we are sharing the same space with good intentions.

Given the lack of evidence on its application or effects on student performance, UDL cannot claim to be a scientifically validated intervention [5]. A recent review of the literature on UDL frameworks [6] comes to a similarly worrying conclusion. Further than that, the critique identifies that the research literature also lacks any clear definition of what constitutes a UDL intervention. In other words, we do not know what it means and we do not know if it makes a difference. Until we can clarify what a UDL intervention is, we will continue to meet significant barriers to proving its efficacy.  

“There can be little doubt that UD has made an appreciable difference in the lives of people with disabilities. Houses and other buildings that posed accessibility challenges for people with disabilities are now accessible because of the application of UD principles. Can the same be said when UD[L] is applied to curriculum and instruction, or is it simply an intuitive concept that has little real effect on students’ performance levels? Further research is needed to meaningfully address this critical question.” [6]

But listening to Davies’ lecture this morning has made me dig deeper than searching for simple claims over evidence of any performance advantage. It has prompted me to ask troubling questions over the extent to which inclusive practices like UDL “can easily turn into coded structures that conserve, repeat and strengthen exclusion”.

The lecture led me to ask to what extent:

• …™is UDL a coded structure for a generic set of performative practices that exacerbate othering and exclusion?
• …™does UDL represent a “citational chain” of abjection created by normative educators in response to difference and disability?
• …™is UDL, with its focus on “assistive technologies” to increase access, expression or belonging, a model that helps perpetuate thinking that excludes those seen as diverse or different?  
• …™is UDL an escape hatch from “either/or” thinking for educators?
• …™does UDL help educators re-imagine “inclusive practices” as being a Deleuzian “both … and”?
• …™does UDL offer educators an affirmative, productive and innovative look at inclusive practices?  

These questions have no easy answers. Through them, perhaps I will open up and escape my existing thinking enough to allow new ways of knowing the unknown unknowns – to find ways to answer what is not yet imagined, let alone asked. And that has to be a good thing.

Here’s to porous educational boundaries and leaking at the margins of teaching and learning.

References

[1] Davies, B. (2015). Normativity, abjection and Shildrick's monster. Lecture at Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, University of Waikato, Thursday 9 July 2015. URL: http://www.waikato.ac.nz/wmier/news-events/fascinating-second-lecture-by-bronwyn-davies

[2] Practising Teacher Criteria. Educational Council, New Zealand. URL: http://www.educationcouncil.org.nz/content/registered-teacher-criteria-1

[3] Butler, C. (2015). Universal Design for Learning. Core Education Ltd. URL: http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/podcast/udl-universal-design-learning-101-3-principles-explained-part-1-4

[4] Hook, P., Saxton, R., and Hickman, R. (2015). SOLO Taxonomy in Learning Support. Building academic and social success. Essential Resources Educational Publishers Limited. New Zealand. https://essentialresources.co.nz/Products.aspx?SubjectID=0&SeriesID=SER5866

[5] Edyburn, D. (2010). Would you recognize Universal Design for Learning if you saw it? Ten propositions for new directions for the second decade of UDL. Learning Disability Quarterly, 33, pp. 33–41.

[6] Rao, K., Ok, M.W., and Bryant, B.R. (2014). A review of research on Universal Design educational models. Remedial and Special Education, 35(3), p. 153.

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A "People and their 1000 words" post for the co-constructed  #EdbookNZ project organised by Sonya Van Schaijik and being co-authored by a great set of New Zealand based educators for Connected Educator Month. The #CENZ15 book launch will be held on Friday 30th October 8.00pm-9.00pm (UT + 13 hrs)

Unboxing PIG

Unboxing is the unpacking of new products, especially high tech consumer products. The product's owner captures the process on video and later uploads it to the web.

Some consider the popularity of this practice is due to the ability of showing the product exactly for what it is without any adulteration advertisers usually make around the product. Being able to see what you are getting can contribute to the decisional process.

According to Google Trends, searches for the term "unboxing" began to surface in the final quarter of 2006.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unboxing

Created with flickr slideshow.

 

Unboxing PIG was something of an event – as the photos attest – PIG travelled in a state of personal comfort only ever aspired to by the rest of us – including Air New Zealand.  Refer - refitting of the Air New Zealand widebody Boeing 777-200s.  

His body was enveloped in bubble wrap - snout ears and tail were protected by slabs of polystyrene and Tip Top ice cream container “cones of silence”.  The whole wrap firmly wedged in a cardboard box, wrapped in richly annotated newsprint.

The experience made me think about how we unbox learning.How do we unwrap learning to make learning accessible to students?

My work with the classroom based approach to using SOLO Taxonomy means I get to talk with educators all over the globe. A recent conversation with Canadian educator Chris Horton spilled over into Twitter last week.

@mrcjhorton Change in knowledge, skills, attitudes & or behaviour over time - takes effort, slow, gradual, uneven process. Evidence seen ..

— Pam Hook (@arti_choke) October 27, 2014

@mrcjhorton in cognitive complexity of what we communicate & how we act #SOLOTaxonomy useful model differentiate levels of outcome over time

— Pam Hook (@arti_choke) October 27, 2014

@arti_choke Agreed. Thank you for the input. I felt that you would be able to add to our conversation.

— Chris Horton (@mrcjhorton) October 27, 2014

Chris raises an important question – how can we unwrap something if we don’t know what it is. With PIG I may well have seen the taxidermy as a disposable stuffing used to allow the sheets of plastic bubbles to ship safely. Sharing a model of learning like SOLO Taxonomy with students helps ensure they can distinguish bubble wrap from PIG

The Twitter exchange made me wonder - if learning’ is a long term change in a person’s thinking and behaviour, then why do governments, schools and teacher so rarely assess such long term change. Why are we so future focused that we refuse to pause in the present to assess what has gone before – preferring the rush as we embrace one new pedagogical excitement after another.

Perhaps it is because we no longer value the patience and hard work associated with embedding effective pedagogy – we over value the pedagogical activism associated with “discovering and exploring” and under value the pedagogical approach of educators who dedicate their professional lives to “integrating and sustaining”.

I commonly read blogs and tweets remonstrating at the “limitations” of the so-called pedagogical dinosauria who it seems "refuse" to experience a similar moment of metanoia or spiritual conversion at the roll out of yet another “the latest digital device” across the campus.

It seems a culture of consumerism has us hot-wired for the future – restless in the present – disengaged in the immediate. When living in the moment is inadequate – and we are subsumed by “there must be something more than what we have or where we are” thinking - we neglect “now” for the froth of “next”. We are aroused by new, radical, different - we clamour for change – we want to bleed on the boundary - wrestle on the cutting edge – punch above our weight. We promote ourselves as being different from the rest - and variously describe ourselves as edu_punks, edgy educators, alone in our schools, we fondly imagine ourselves geeks so far ahead of the crowd that we are boundary workers in the next place where “out of whack” is the new "in whack" black – it seems that whatever confronts existing approaches excites us – actual pedagogical value has little to no significance in the conversations shared.

The irony to the outsider is that whilst we are awash in the turbulence of tomorrow – clutching tight to the tyranny of change and the latest iteration of the 10 top trends for the future - we all the time contentedly draw “the salary of the same” from the government of the day.

Take away the descriptors

We are reckless jargon users in education. Just ask anyone coming out of your local supermarket what they think “effective pedagogies” or “student agency” means.

Jargon is used to: exclude; disguise; imply expertise; and to market product.  No one benefits when words are used to divide and confuse.

Nine notable offenders have agreed to have a go at stripping the jargon from the following educational terms (see below). They will seek the simple message within and then express it in a 1000 word blog post. The blog posts form part of a collaborative book project initiated by Sonya van Schaijik. for Connected Educators Month -#CENZ14.

My contribution is the cover art – MAPPING LEARNING.  I used pencil and paper. Click the image to enlarge.

The irony of the endeavour is not lost on me – take a popular educational expression (captured in 2 words and a hyphen) and simplify it by writing 1000 words about it – These 1000 words when published online may well provoke an outpouring of even more words.

People and their 1000 Words
Dr Wendy Kofoed - 21st Century Learning 1000 Words
Annemarie Hyde - Modern Learning Environments 1000 Words
Monika Kern - Cyber/Digital Citizenship 1000 Words
Richard Wells - Digital Learning Tools 1000 Words
Philippa Nicoll Antipas - Future Focused Pedagogy 1000 Words
Craig Kemp -  Digital Collaboration 1000 Words
Sonya Van Schaijik - Connected Educators/Learners 1000 Words
Karen Melhuish Spencer - Digital Communities 1000 Words

Conclusion Tahu Paki - Whanaungatanga
Cover Design Pam Hook The Picture

Note to self: There is no suggestion of any interpretive dance with chickens at dawn, photographs of tummy button lint, or music created from fish scales, from this lot of “connected educators” – the medium - it seems - is the message).

This post is part of a #edbookNZ project organised by Sonya Van Schaijik and being co-authored by a great set of New Zealand based educators for Connected Educator Month.

The #CENZ14 event will be held on Friday 31st October 8.00pm-9.00pm (UT + 12 hrs) Click here for details

Cross posted from HookED News

The impact of sharing breakfast at dawn on teacher professional learning and development.

I have little experience in presenting to breakfast adventurers - so when I was invited to talk to groups of educational breakfasters, I was uncertain about what the experience would be like.

I will admit I was initially anxious about my ability to communicate any sort of pedagogical message at an hour when I am more used to talking with “Volstagg the Certain” and “Stanley the Errant” about the importance of not scoffing more than their share of the dog biscuits.

The occupants off the corridor were no help. When I woke them at dawn to explain I had an invitation to talk about SOLO Taxonomy as a mental model – and as I would be doing this as the first rays of sun broke over the Russley Golf Course in Christchurch  I needed an audience to practise on …. They became just a tad abusive – refusing to come out from under the duvet/s - and worse still became convinced that if I wasn't dissembling I was likely suffering from some kind of rapid onset delusional disorder and needed to be removed from the house and monitored in a secure facility.

Given the lack of interest from the occupants off the corridor I decided to involve Stan and Voly in an early morning educational conversation. It was a heartening experience - both bulldog and labrador hung on my every word – tracked my every gesture – and I feel certain picked up on every educational nuance right up until the moment the bacon rinds I had hidden on my person fell to the ground. Where upon they scoffed the rinds and the wrapping and - ignoring me - and my remaining message - wandered off to find a place to snorf in the sun.

The demographic of a breakfast audience also troubled me – having never attended one of these sessions I wondered about the attributes of a group of educators prepared to throw off the duvet and rise before dawn to share breakfast with others – all on the off chance they might learn something pedagogical.

I searched Timperley’s BES Best Evidence Synthesis on Teacher Professional Learning and Development pdf  but could find no reference to any relevant research studies on the outcomes of professional learning undertaken with breakfast.

And then I got just a little excited when I realised I was thinking in uncharted educational waters. All that was missing from a powerful PhD proposal was the framing of a research question or three. Timperley’s Bulleted “do one of the following” List (below) proved useful in this regard.

Following assessment and interpretation of the relevance, usefulness, and cost/benefit, teacher learners/communities do one or more of the following:

• reject/ignore new theory and practice and continue with prior practice;

• continue with prior practice, believing that it is new practice;

• select parts of new theory and practice and adapt to current practice;

• implement as required;

• actively engage with, own, and apply new theory and practice and change practice substantively;

• demonstrate enhanced regulation of own and others’ learning. (refer Timperley et. al. 2007)

I wondered if educators who rise early and attend professional learning breakfasts before going to work at a local school are more or less likely to [insert an outcome from Timperley’s bulleted “do one of the following” list above] than educators who chose to stay hidden under the duvet for as long as possible before going to school.

Even if this turned out to be yet another research study documenting no significant difference in student outcomes based on mode of education delivery – I could still add it to the research bibliography at nosignificantdifference.org

The day job is all about shifting the learning outcomes of teachers in ways that impact positively on their students – it is is challenging work – and you don’t need to read Timperley’s BES Best Evidence Synthesis on Teacher Professional Learning and Development  to suspect that listening to me whilst munching muesli as day breaks over Christchurch (or anywhere else for that matter) is unlikely to rank highly on the list of initiatives that create any measurable shift in student learning outcomes.

And yet sometimes in education “research-based, classroom-tested, and peer-reviewed” is trumped by “let’s give it a go and see what happens” thinking. The feedback from educators at the CoreED breakfast sessions  has surprised me – both in its quality and its quantity. It seems that educators who are prepared to rise early to wrestle with ideas pedagogical over breakfast are also educators who “actively engage with, own and apply new theory and practice”. Only time will tell if they “change practice substantively” – but the detail in the responses to date means I want to add an “over breakfast” context to Timperley’s list of approaches that get the big tick for deepening key professional understandings and skills (see below).

My experience leads me to suggest that professional development / professional learning activities designed to develop and deepen professional understandings and skills will have a greater impact when shared over breakfast.

For example I suspect:

• listening with green eggs and ham will trump listening without;

• watching with banana bread and French toast will trump watching without;

• being observed and receiving feedback with egg and bacon butties will trump being observed and receiving feedback without;

• receiving student activities and materials with eggs Benedict and a latte will trump receiving student activities and materials without;

• engaging with professional readings with French toast and Earl Grey Tea will trump engaging with professional readings without;

• discussing practice with someone more expert over muesli and yoghurt will trump discussing practice with someone more expert without;

• authentic experience of subject in action over toast and marmalade will trump authentic experience of subject in action without;

• discussing own theories of practice and their implications over mushroom omelette will trump discussing own theories of practice and their implications without;

• examining student understandings and outcomes with blueberry pancakes drizzled in maple syrup will trump examining student understandings and outcomes without;

• analysis of current practice and reconstruction of new practice with apple cinnamon porridge will trump analysis of current practice and reconstruction of new practice without;and

• discussing self or mutually identified issues over a bagel and long black will trump discussing self or mutually identified issues without.

On feed left, feed right and finding your inner chameleon …

Feedback, (and feed up and feed forward) is currently seen as “A GOOD THING” in education. Indeed Prof. John Hattie gives feedback an effect size of a formidable d=0.73 (Hattie in Visible Learning p173).

Being seen as “A Good Thing” is always a dangerous time for an educational idea, because - gaining sacred cow status – and therefore becoming exempt from criticism or questioning - allows all sorts of misrepresentations to flourish (Fischer and Scriven 1997).     

I am as guilty as any in adding to the flourish about feedback - I am a feedback flourisher. I think it worthy of close attention when doing school … and to understand it better … I write about (and talk at length about) how to improve the effectiveness of feedback conversations with students. This usually references the use of SOLO Taxonomy to clarify “feed up” (where am I going?), feedback (how is it going) and “feed forward” (what should I do next?) at the content level, process level, self-regulatory level and the self-level. 

However, it took a chance comment from T (who is editing some of my day job writing at Essential Resources ) to make me realise that I have not done anything like enough work on the misrepresentation of feedback.

Not only have I have never worried about where the terms came from or when we first started talking in this somewhat mechanistic way in teaching and learning – I have never thought to imagine any other directional systems for improving achievement outcomes through “feeding”.

So blinded was I by the GOOD THING status of feedback that I never asked –

If feed up (where am going?), feedback (how am I going?) and feedforward (where to next?) are powerfully influential in raising achievement outcomes then;

• What might “feed to the left” and “feed to the right” offer students?
• Can “feed in front of” and “feed behind” influence the quality of student achievement outcomes?
• How should we understand the influence of “feed north”, “feed south”, “feed west”, and “feed east” on student learning?
• What is the influence of the liminal zones on student achievement outcomes – all that “feed seaward”, “feed landward”, “feed upcoast”, “feed downcoast”, “feed upstream” and “feed downstream”?
• What is the pedagogical content knowledge teachers require when using “feed down” in schools?
• Or even,
• What distinguishes “feed up” from “wazzup” and “sup”?

I would like to start by imagining how to implement “feed to the left” and “feed to the right” in schools.

If feedback is, a consequence of learner performance then “feed to the left” and “feed to the right” must surely represent a pedagogical approach that helps students who struggle to locate a desired learning goal. 

These new feeding orientations/directions - “feed to the left” and “feed to the right” – used when searching for that elusive – yet explicit proximate and hierarchical feed up (on the desired learning goal) - will require the student to explore their inner chameleon.

Step 1: Escape: The “student as chameleon” must reject the notion that to learn we must perch on furniture in an enclosed space, and should make all effort to escape the confines of the branch and the enclosure of the classroom.

Step 2: Changing colour: Next the “student as chameleon” should change colour to match the hue of any prominent institutional surfaces in the vicinity. Those initially challenged by the “becoming the colour of the paint on the walls” task may use food colouring or body paint.

Step 3: The walk: After mastering colour changing, the “student as chameleon” should adopt a slow moving swaying gait whilst at the same time keeping a tight control over the prehensile tail. This is a little like the pat your head and rub your tummy challenge – and may take some practice in front of the cat before attempting this in a school corridor. Students can view an instructional video here.

Step 4: “Googly eyeing” stuff: Once the gait and tail co-ordination thing is sorted, the “chameleon student” should start roaming the institution’s corridors, swivelling each stereoscopic eye separately. 

Cookie Monster and Marty Feldman Episode 518 re-runs will clarify what is required at this step.

 

By focussing the eye swivelling - separately and simultaneously - on the left and the right - the “learner as chameleon” will achieve what most of us can only aspire to - a full 360-degree view of the landscape of learning. This step is key to enhancing those achievement outcomes.

Step 5: Binocular fixation: When a desired learning goal is spotted, the “student as chameleon” should focus both googly eyes in the same direction and attempt to capture it using their tongue.

Note:

If learning as a chameleon proves too exacting, the student can always fall back on “feed in front of” and “feed behind” strategies of the cane toad.  Whilst not carrying the same effect size as “feed to the left” and  “feed to the right” -  “feed in front of” and “feed behind” can still evoke improved achievement outcomes with greater than d=0.4 effect sizes. 

The tricky bit with “feed in front of” and “feed behind” is always in the learner’s ability to distinguish the desired learning outcome from a ping-pong ball. 

 

When you stare into the eye of a whitebait...

The invitation to present to the West Coast Principals’ Conference at Franz Josef offered many unanticipated adventures.

Peering out the window of the Beechcraft 1900D on my way from Christchurch to Hokitika I marvelled at the huge up-thrusts of sheer sided, ice-carved, greywacke rock; the U-shaped glaciated valleys and the ancient forests below.  These were the surfaces I had so often talked about when teaching earth science in the 80s – to see them from above was weird. They had seemed so familiar in our textbook relationship and yet, face to face, their complexity made them majestic and unknowable –strangers.

The experience was not unlike nudging up against a minor television celebrity in a Ponsonby café – without all the majestic unknowable-ness.  You catch their eye – and for a moment you think you know them well… and then, you realise that whilst you have looked at them for months, they have never looked back at you.

Thelma was waiting for me at Hokitika Airport – or was it Louise? Either way, we pass the Bechdel Test for a Thelma and Louise Road Trip: The road trip must have at least two women in it; the two women must talk to each other; the road trip conversation must be about something other than a man or men.

We threw the luggage and handouts into the back of “Phyllis” the 4WD truck and set off on the Thelma and Louise road trip to Franz Josef (and the conference). We were almost immediately distracted (check a map) by the call of Step 2’s Bargain Corner and Jon’s Relics in the Hokitika township. After much searching and many number 8 wire suggestions from the locals we added to the truck a dented aluminium billycan with “Boys’ Brigade” scratched on the lid, a rusting 1950s Griffin’s biscuit tin and a school desk that the mice had gnawed through. 

Buoyed by the romanticism of our finds we went looking for a local white baiter. This was less successful and when the girl frying chips at the Hokitika takeaways suggested the local New World, we decided to get back into the truck and hit SHW6 and travel south for Franz Josef.

The West Coast Principals’ Conference was fun and packed with new learning. I especially enjoyed hearing the charismatic Hana O’Reagan (Dean of Te Puna Wanaka, Faculty of Maori Studies, CPIT) speak on making  a difference for Maori students in school and the equally verve-filled philanthropist Chrissie Fernyhough speak on valuing and learning from the rural sector.  Derek Wenmoth had the last speaking slot on day one and focused on ubiquity, personalisation and collaboration through technology. I always like it when Derek Wenmoth references Neil Postman’s Fourth Idea about technological change: “Technological change is not additive it is ecological.” But I do wish he would reference it within the context of Postman’s original thinking in his article on Five Things We Need To Know About Technological Change. For Postman follows the quoted text with this caution for culture and traditional ways of thinking and being.

That is why we must be cautious about technological innovation. The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible. That is also why we must be suspicious of capitalists. Capitalists are by definition not only personal risk takers but, more to the point, cultural risk takers. The most creative and daring of them hope to exploit new technologies to the fullest, and do not much care what traditions are overthrown in the process or whether or not a culture is prepared to function without such traditions.

Derek shared his draft thinking on how we should understand the connection between teaching and learning, services and infrastructure. I reckon the bit on teaching and learning – the “Learn Create Share” bit – needs some re-thinking, but the underlying message was important, and one too seldom heard in education. It makes no sense to ask what impact deploying UFB fibre connections to New Zealand schools has (or will have) on learning outcomes.

The best question of the West Coast Principals’ Conference came from the sponsor who inadvertently highlighted the importance of this message when he asked:

 “How does furniture impact on educational outcomes?”

It was a “when you stare into the eye of a whitebait” type question.  Because when you stare into the eye of a whitebait, its protruding lens and fixed-size pupil stares right back at you in a very knowing 360-degree gaze.  A “when you stare into the eye of a whitebait” type question is a question that demands/extracts a response.

The question jolted the educators present to think about the credibility of some of the questions we currently raise and attempt to answer about the relationship between technology, services and infrastructure, and learning outcomes. 

It is well answered by John Hattie in his book Visible Learning:  “My own view is that, like many structural innovations in education, computers can increase the probability of learning, but there is no necessary relation between having computers, using computers, and learning outcomes.”  (Hattie 2009 Visible Learning p211)

Intelligence about local communities gleaned from the local principals meant the return trip on SHW6 from Franz Josef to Hokitika was packed with deviation – it was closer to a lateral arabesque than a road trip and took in the people and places that had escaped us on the way in. 

Driving through the lurking wilderness and lowland farming communities of Whataroa, Hari Hari and Ross, we stopped for some of Spider’s whitebait in Whataroa and then for whitebait sandwiches at the Pukeko Tearooms & Store, made famous in “Goodbye Pork Pie” in the 80s. We stopped again for free-range, red-shaver eggs and a tour of the hen house from a couple in their 80s who lived on the highway, and again trying to locate a knife maker in Hokitika. Sometimes we stopped for no reason at all and many times when we stopped, we had to put “Phyllis” in reverse or do a u-turn to retreat to what had caught our eye. It was a whimsical and complex journey.

At each stop we had “when you stare into the eye of a whitebait” type conversations. We talked, we laughed, we gleaned new sources and shared our contacts; we had conversations that looked right back at you – we made new friends.  

Crossposted at Essential Resources Blog

What kind of assessment for learning is appropriate in the age of Google and Wikipedia? Facebook and You Tube? Smart phones and text messaging? Twitter and blogging?

Abstract: 

Claims for the transformative effects of e-learning on student learning outcomes imply changes in the nature of learning when learning is mediated by technology.  If it can be shown that the nature of learning changes in a distinctive way when learning is mediated by technology (Andrews 2011) then it seems plausible that the evidence for learning might also change. This paper explores how "assessment for learning" might change in a digital culture where students are "collaborative producers" of learning. It identifies some distinctive changes in the nature of the evidence for learning when learning is mediated by technology and asks whether these changes in evidence needs a new approach and/or theory of assessment.

Introduction

e-Learning remains a speculative field. The many claims made about (and for) e-learning reshaping learning are too often based on studies using small sample sizes and descriptive narrative (rather than systematic observation and analysis). Their usefulness is limited by methodological and conceptual shortcomings. As Wright (2010) summarises in her e-Learning literature review for the Ministry of Education, “there is an international doxa about e-Learning’s inherent benefits to learners. It masks a relatively small amount of actual evidence about its relationship to improved educational and life chances for students.” Part of the problem is undoubtedly that “we approach our technologies through a battery of advertising and media narratives; it is hard to think above the din” (Turkle 2008 p4). 

Haythornwaite and Andrews (2011) suggest we lack a theoretical perspective on e-learning. They ask “whether e-learning requires a new theory of learning; or whether it requires merely an extension and application of contemporary learning theories”.  A similar question can be asked about “assessment for e-learning”.  

To ask what kind of "assessment for learning" is appropriate in the age of Google and Wikipedia? Facebook and You Tube? Smart phones and text messaging? Twitter and blogging?[1] is to make a number of assumptions.

Assumption 1: The character of learning changes when learning involves technology (as in e-learning).

Assumption 2: This change is distinctive. In that when learning is mediated by technology the complexity of the interaction can be consistently, reliably and validly profiled in a way that is different from the way we profile learning.

Assumption 3: The evidence for learning changes when learning involves technology (as in e-learning).

Assumption 4:  This change is distinctive. In that when learning is mediated by technology (in e-learning) the  evidence for learning differs from other evidence for learning in consistent, reliable and valid ways. 

Assumption 5: The distinctiveness of the change in evidence for learning requires a re-imagining of the ways we might do and/or imagine “assessment for learning”.

The alternative is to suggest that e-learning and e-assessment merely replicate old pedagogies in different spaces or through different social interactions.

Does the character of learning change when learning involves technology?

It could be argued that e-Learning utilises the characteristics and affordances of the internet to create distinctive environments and interactions to support learning.  For example, the non-linear architecture of the internet (a network of nodes and internodes) provides different opportunities and structures for learning, communication, collaboration and co-construction than those available in the face to face.  Opportunities for learning can occur: with anyone, at anytime and in any place; through one to one, one to many, or many to many interactions; through push and pull; synchronously and asynchronously; using multi-literacies or multiple modalities (including text, graphic, audio, video, animation, etc.) and within open and flexible access systems.  Andrews (2011) argues that if learning is socially situated then e-learning extends “the horizons of e-learning in space, resource and time.” He suggests that a new theory of learning is developing because in e-learning; the relationship between knowledge and the learner becomes “more democratic, more potentially dialogical”; transduction (the creation of observable evidence of learning) is easier; and the access and use of learning “according to socio-economic, geographic, cognitive and motivational factors” is stretched further (Andrews, 2011 p119).  

Does the evidence for learning change when learning is mediated by technology?

The role of assessment and feedback is critical to learning (Black and Wiliam, 2001; Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick,2006; Boud and Sadler,2010). It seems plausible that learning in a community and environment that uses; Google and Wikipedia, Facebook and You Tube, smart phones and text messaging, and Twitter and blogging may leave different traces, and allow different kinds of useful “evidence of learning” and “assessment for learning” to emerge. If it does we ought to be alert to use of technology in learning in schools and take notice of the forms of evidence available.  We need to critique the different evidence of learning that emerges in terms of its ability to enhance the quality, timeliness and variety of feedback provided for learners – and to assess how well the different evidence meets the accepted principles of effective feedback[2]. Where it can be shown that this evidence enhances conventional feedback and feed forward we should be proactive in planning for its use.

The JISC report (2011) on “Effective Assessment in a Digital Age” suggests that when looking for evidence of learning, some educators will be looking for evidence of increasing competence; enhanced understanding of ideas at the micro-level and of completion of tasks at the macro-level. Feedback in these cases will be provided by experts on the strengths and weaknesses of new understandings. Others will create environments for experimentation, discovery and student inquiry and seek evidence for student collaboration, cooperation and sharing ideas. They will anticipate learner involvement in the nature of the assessment task. Feedback will be self generated arising from reflection and self assessment and/or peer based arising from collaborative activities and dialogue. Yet another group will prefer that students learn in specific and authentic communities of practice.  They will look for evidence in environments that simulate professional practice – think and act like a historian, a scientist, or a playground designer. These educators will look for holistic assessments where feedback is socially produced (from multiple sources) and derives from authentic real-life tasks (JISC 2011 p11).

It is worth noting that the multimodalities available in e-learning support the various views of what constitutes “evidence for learning”. This broader view of what constitutes “evidence for learning” is taken by the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (MOE 2007), the Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) for teachers professional development learning (Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, & Fung, 2007) and the BES for diverse learners (Alton-Lee, 2003). The NZC extends desired learning outcomes to include the social, cultural and economic. It includes learning outcomes from the Key Competencies (“capabilities for living and lifelong learning”) and Values (“to be encouraged, modelled, and explored” so that they might be “expressed in everyday actions and interactions within the school”) (MOE 2007).  The Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) on teachers’ professional development learning identifies “academic, social, personal or performance” learning outcomes (Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, & Fung, 2007 p18).  The BES for diverse learners identifies learning outcomes in learning areas, skills, and values such as “the development of respect for others, tolerance (rangimārie), non-racist behaviour, fairness, caring or compassion (aroha), diligence and hospitality or generosity (manaakitanga)" (Alton-Lee, 2003 p7).

The key question is - What evidence of student learning is available through e-learning that is not available through conventional learning?

In accommodating the different perspectives on learning and approaches to assessment for learning it is useful to imagine a learning experience and think about how opportunities for assessment might change when students become “collaborative producers” of learning through computer mediated technologies.

Sample Learning Experience: Hawera Primary students are collaborating to explore the natural features of Taranaki intent on creating a safe travel resource for visitors to the area.   The senior classes (Year 4 to 6) are each focusing on one area- Rivers and Dams, Gas & Oilfields, Mount Taranaki, Beaches and Coastline. Each class is to become the expert around these manmade and natural resources - sharing their findings back to the wider group, and then heading off for a two day geological adventure looking at safe travel aspects along the way. Students will visit the Patea Museum and the EOTC officer there will share a programme around rivers and dams. That night they will take part in an overnight camp in the school hall before heading off around the mountain taking in Kupe gas field, coastline, beaches, lahars, Puke Ariki Museum. They will have an opportunity to climb up the mountain and take part in a bush walk, before heading back to school where they will build a safe travel resource guide for the Taranaki area.

Some of the different opportunities and structures for “assessment of e-learning” are characterised below. An example is provided to show how each might allow evidence for e-learning that differs from that available through conventional assessment. 

1. Access to the assessment task - any place, any time, with anyone.

Self-assessment is made accessible, immediate and easily shared with others, occuring: with anyone, at anytime and in any place; through one to one, one to many, or many to many interactions; through push and pull; synchronously and asynchronously; using multi-literacies or multiple modalities (including text, graphic, audio, video, animation, etc.) within open and flexible access systems.

The introduction of multiple literacies and modalities creates a challenge for teachers. When students use “images, photographs, video, animation, music, sound, texts and typography” to “interpret, design and create content” they need feedback from people who understand “frame composition; colour palette; audio, image, and video editing techniques; sound–text–image relations; the effects of typography; transitional effects; navigation and interface construction; and generic conventions in diverse media.” Teachers are not necessarily able to provide these understandings. This means when young people use new media to collaborate (and to produce knowledge), expertise and authority no longer resides solely with teachers in schools.  Feedback conversations can occur with anyone in any place. In providing expertise without authority e-learning can create social networks that bypass the teacher altogether.

 Discussion prompt: How might this flexibility of access change the nature of the “evidence for learning” provided by Hawera Primary students?

 2. Immediate feedback

Feedback on how well the student is meeting an intended learning outcome is immediate and continuous when the learning intention is made explicit and the learning outcome is hosted online in a blog, wiki, video or other collaborative space where editing and/or commenting is enabled. The creation of interactive online resources and multimedia for an identified purpose and audience can receive immediate feedback on its usefulness from the web metrics from site visitors and from visitor comments. 

Feedback can also be immediate and interactive when students access online mastery tests like those available through the Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/. The Khan Academy provides an interesting example of how assessment can be re-imagined in online environments. A free, self paced and open-source application the Khan Academy generates exercises dynamically and provides immediate feedback on proficiency. It provides step by step explanations and requires the successful completion of ten questions in a row for mastery. The application can provide data on when the application was accessed, how long it was accessed for and what content students studied before and after the assessment. This information can be made available to student, teacher, parent and/or administrator.

Discussion prompt: How might access to immediate and continuous feedback change the nature of the “evidence for learning” provided by Hawera Primary students?

3. Personalised feedback

Different design structures for online environments expose different traces of learning to those available in conventional settings. For example, access to the edit history of wikis, reveals the contributions of individuals to group process. This allows the “memorably active participant” to become visible. For example, Vi´egas et al. (2004) used information visualization techniques to clarify the history of collaborative edits in Wikipedia. In addition the edit history makes visible iterations in the drafting and development of text by an individual. In the future we may well be able to surface and trace provisional exchanges between learners engaged in collaborative writing through new applications that explore learning analytics and their use in formative assessment (Gestwicki and McNely 2010). 

These new forms of evidence of learning provide an insight into the nature of the learning outcome than is rarely available through conventional assessment.  Both have the potential to add value to formative and summative assessment for individual and for collaborative learning outcomes. 

Discussion prompt: How might personalised feedback change the nature of the “evidence for learning” provided by Hawera Primary students?

4. Range of performance modalities able to be assessed

The collection of evidence of student learning in e-Portfolios reveals the ease with which students can access and use multiple modalities with computer mediated technologies. Student can post images, photographs, video, animation, music, sound, texts and typography online as evidence of a learning outcome. Although web design has some distinct criteria for usability (search, navigation and content), the criteria for assessing and providing feedback on the learning outcomes from other modalities differs little from the criteria used if the same modalities were available offline. The issue is more likely that educators have yet to develop a nuanced meta-language for feedback on student use of the multi-modalities as they have for deep and surface features in literacy.

Performance modalities include those of the NZC Key Competencies. Evidence of student performance (and reflection on performance) when thinking, managing self, relating to others, participating and contributing and using language symbols and text are made more accessible through the multiple modalities in e-learning. For example, evidence of “memorably active participation” is more easily traced in an online forum or blog comments than it might be in a conventional group discussion. Cobo Romani (2010) takes this thinking further by suggesting that e-learning provides evidence for learning outcomes in the e-competencies. He breaks the e-competencies into e-awareness, media literacy, technological literacy, digital literacy and informational literacy outcomes many of which are specific to technology mediated learning. 

Web metrics offer an interesting exception in the type of evidence available. For example, teachers whose students write in blogs will reference the number of “hits” a student blog receives or the different countries that visit a student created site. They are unlikely to reference the number or the country of origin of those who borrow a student created resource from the classroom or those who pause to look at a student artwork in the library. However, Chan (2010) has outlined the dangers of not looking closely at web metrics. He describes validity and reliability errors in log file data, page tagging data, unique visitor counts, visits, and time spent on a page and page views.  It is better to look for metrics around retention, activity (as in repeat use) and recommendation (on other sites) for measures of the “effectiveness” of a student created resource.   

Discussion prompt: How might the range of modalities assessed change the nature of the “evidence for learning” provided by Hawera Primary students?

Discussion prompt: How might web metrics change the nature of the “evidence for learning” provided by Hawera Primary students?

Peer and self-assessment, reflection, access to assessment outcomes and ease of adminstration of assessment outcomes all change when learning is mediated through technology.  The same process can be used to imagine how the evidence for learning might change when students are peer and self assessing and/or reflecting on their learning outcomes. To ask how changing access to assessment outcomes or enhancing the administration of achievement outcomes might change the way in which we understand assessment and feedback.

Reports on actual collaborative outcomes online help balance claims made for transforming student learning and assessment through technology mediated “collaborative production”. When thinking about assessment and learning mediated by technology it is easy (as Turkle (2008) suggested) to be deafened by the din from the marketplace. For example, Tube Mogul (2010) reports that only 17% of videos viewed on YouTube were user generated. Of the hundreds of thousands of daily edits made to Wikipedia each day it is telling that less than 15% were by women (Glott, Schmidt & Gosh 2010). The average viewer abandonment rate by viewing time shows 20% of viewers have found something better to do online after the 1st ten seconds, by the 30 second spot a third are gone, and by 60 seconds 44% have left  (Visible Measures 2010).

Yet the examples above suggest that evidence traces left by students involved in e-learning are different from those left by students learning in environments without access to e-learning. It is the nature and degree of difference that requires more discussion. We need to assess the “evidence for e-learning” against measures of quality, timeliness and variety of feedback provided; to ask how well the assessment meets the accepted principles of effective feedback (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006) and to use our new understandings about “assessment for e-learning” to question the principles themselves. We need educators who use e-learning approaches to critique current approaches to “assessment for e-learning” less our feedback conversations with students become increasingly outmoded, derivative and irrelevant.

 References

Alton-Lee, A. (2003). Quality teaching for diverse students: Best evidence synthesis. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.

Andrews, R., & Haythornthwaite, C. (Eds,). (2007). The handbook of e-learning research. London: Sage.

Andrews, R. (2011). Does e-learning require a new theory of learning? Some initial thoughts. Journal for Educational research Online. Volume 3, No. 1, 104-121.

Black and Wiliam (2001). Inside the Black Box.

Boud, D. and Associates (2010). Assessment 2020: Seven propositionsfor assessment reform in higher education. Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council. 

Chan, S. (2010).  “Let’s make more crowns”, or, the danger of not looking closely at your web metrics” Fresh and New Blog. January 2010. Retrieved from http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2010/01/09/lets-make-more-crowns-or-the-danger-of-not-looking-closely-at-your-web-metrics/

Cobo Romani, C. (2009). Strategies to promote the development of e-competences in the next generation of professionals: European and International trends. SKOPE Issues Paper Series. Published at the ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, Department of Education, Oxford University & the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. N13, September 2009 [ISSN 1466-1535]. Retrieved from http://e-competencies.org/

Eurydice, (2011). Key Data on Learning and Innovation through ICT at School in Europe 2011 Brussels: EACEA P9 Eurydice. Retrieved from http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/key_data_series/129EN.pdf

 Gestwicki, P. & McNely, B. (2010). Learning Analytics. Visualizing Collaborative Knowledge Work. Emerging Media Initiative. Ball State University. Retrieved from http://emergingmediainitiative.com/project/learning-analytics/  

Glott, R., Schmidt, P., & R. Gosh (2010). Wikipedia Survey Overview of Results. United Nations University. Unu-Merit. Collaborative Creativity Group. Retrieved from http://www.wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf

JISC (2011). Effective Assessment in a Digital Age. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digiassess

Manovich, L., & Kratky, A. (2005) Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database. The MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass.

Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31 (2), 199-218.

Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES). Wellington: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2515/15341

Turkle, S. (Ed.). (2008). The inner history of devices. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vi ´egas, F. B., Wattenberg, M. and D. Kushal. (2004). Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations. In CHI ’04: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 575–582, New York, NY, USA. ACM.

Wright, N. (2010). e-Learning and implications for New Zealand schools: a literature review. Report to the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/ict/e-learning-and-implications-for-new-zealand-schools-a-literature-review/executive-summary

 

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[1] After Manovich on Soft Cinema.

[2] Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) identified seven principles of effective feedback. Good feedback should; clarify what good performance is, facilitate reflection and self-assessment in learning, deliver high quality feedback information that helps learners self-correct, encourage teacher-learner and peer dialogue, encourage motivational beliefs and self esteem, provide opportinities to act on feedback, and use feedback from learners to improve teaching.

 

Learning communities as cryptoforests

Wilfried Houjebek’s Cryptoforestry blog looks for “forests in cities” and for “cities in forests” – a purpose I want to adopt as I travel around different places working with schools in New Zealand. 

He describes cryptoforests as a “cultural and not a biological way to classify nature”.

And claims that “the recognition of a cryptoforest is a visionary act, not a mechanical operation: there is no machine vision here.”

1) Feral forests (Planted tree zones, for instance along motorways, that have been allowed to become wild to the point that their wildness is outgrowing their manmadeness.)

2) In limbo forests (Tree-covered plots that feel like forests but technically probably aren't; states of vegetation for which lay-language has no name.)

3) Incognito Forests (Forests that have gone cryptic and are almost invisible, forests in camouflage, forests with a talent for being ignored.)

4) Precognitive forests (Lands that are on the brink of becoming forested, a future forest fata morgana.)

5) Unappreciated forests (Forests regarded as zones of waste and weed, forests shaming planners, developers, and the neighbourhood. NIMBY forestry.)  

It is a lovely way of looking at forests – one that allows us to more widely imagine what the connection between human systems and natural ecosystems might be.

And it makes me want to look at "learning" and “learning communities/networks” in a similarly "visionary" way.

1) Feral learning communities (Learning communities, for instance associated with a prior event or a conference, that have been allowed to become wild to the point that their wildness is outgrowing their manmadeness.)

2) In limbo learning communities (Imposed or artificially populated teacher learning communities that feel like learning communities/networks but technically probably aren't; communities formed to meet a contract outcome; states of networking for which lay-language has no name.)

3) Incognito learning communities (Learning communities that have gone cryptic and are almost invisible, communities in camouflage, communities with a talent for being ignored.)

4) Precognitive learning communities (Communities that are on the brink of becoming learning communities, a future learning community fata morgana.)

5) Unappreciated learning communities (Learning communities regarded as zones of extremism, immaturity, irresponsibility, belligerence, anecdote, and romanticism; communities embarrassing those with institutional authority, policy writers, politicians and curriculum developers, and the neighbourhood. NIMBY learning communities.)

I can identify examples of each but it is likely I will not understand these learning communities fully until I find a way to join them.

Houjebek uses this lovely extract in his post A forager's critique of the 'Anthropocene' to argue that the Western mind misunderstands wilderness.  It comes from Nelson's 'Make Prayers to the Raven'

This apparently untrodden forest and tundra country is thoroughly known by a people whose entire lives and cultural ancestry are inextricably associated with it. The lakes, hills, river bends, sloughs, and creeks are named and imbued with personal or cultural meanings. Indeed to the Koyukon these lands are no more a wilderness than are farmlands to a farmer or streets to a city dweller. At best we can call them a wildland. 

The fact that Westerners identify this remote country as wilderness reflects their inability to conceive of occupying and utilizing an environment without fundamentally altering its natural state. But the Koyukon people and their ancestors have done precisely this over a protracted span of time. From this viewpoint, they have made a highly effective adjustment to living as members of an ecosystem, pursuing a form of adaptation that fosters the successful coexistence of humanity and nature within a single community.  

 In a society where teachers have always worked for institutions perhaps we are similarly blind to the many learning communities that exist amongst the un-schooled, the ex-schooled, the après-schooled and the post-schooled.

E. M. Forster captured this blindness from a different angle -

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.

Is it possible that we fail to recognise embedded learning communities? – those that occupy and utilise micro-environments and cracks in the surfaces – those that do not need kilometres of corridors, acres of IWB covered walls and square metres of tarmac covered parking spaces?   

Houjebek goes on to cite Ellis and Ramankutty who argue that we have reached a period of geological time (Anthropocene) where it is “we who decide what nature is and what it will be”.  They claim that nowadays we “live in human systems with natural ecosystems embedded within them” rather than the flip.

So “Culture” embeds “Nature”, and “Society” embeds “Ecosystems”.

Furthermore Ellis and Ramankutty argue that our decisions on “what nature is and what it will be” are predicated on economic reasoning. 

“Where wilderness remains, it’s often only because exploitation is still unprofitable.”

They reduce the role of conservation management to “My Little Pony” like species domestication …

“Conservation management turns wild animals into a new form of pets.” 

This seems similar to our interest as educators in taking over/capturing/embedding “unappreciated learning communities” if we think they might add authenticity to our “in limbo learning communities”.  For instance, look at our renewed interest in the learning communities of MMORPG gamers and FAN fiction writers.

“what learning  is and what it will be” is much like “what nature is and what nature will be”  -  both are embedded within society – both are things that society decides.

The recent events in Japan (and for that matter Christchurch) might cause a re-appraisal of these culture embedding nature arguments as hubris and vainglorious ambition.

Camille Paglia would most likely reject them … In Sexual Personae she sees nature prominent - in the driving seat – the embedder rather than the embedded.

"Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from rituals of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements. To this day, communities are few in regions scorched by heat or shackled by ice. Civilized man conceals from himself the extent of his subordination to nature. The grandeur of culture, the consolation of religion absorbs his attention and win his faith. But let nature shrug, and all is in ruin. Fire, flood, lightning, tornado, hurricane, volcano, earthquake - anywhere at anytime. Disaster falls upon the good and the bad. Civilised life requires a state of illusion. The idea of the ultimate benevolence of nature and God is the most potent of man's survival mechanisms. Without it, culture would revert to fear and despair."  Sexual Personae 1991 Chapter 1 “Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art"

Perhaps learning needs to shrug a little.

On limiting learning and impairing comprehension with mobile technologies

I’d guess there aren’t too many educators who are unaware of the research suggesting that using marijuana or drinking alcohol may limit learning outcomes.  Using marijuana can impair short term memory and concentration and blood alcohol content (BAC) readings between 0.09 and 0.25% are associated with impaired memory and comprehension.

The ways in which alcohol and drug use can limit learning and comprehension are common knowledge amongst educators.   Any proposal to introduce marijuana and or alcohol for student use at school is likely to be rejected by governments, parents, educators or students.

The research that suggests reading from a screen is different from reading from print resources seems less well known. 

The ways in which reading from a screen can limit learning and comprehension is not common knowledge for governments, parents, educators, students or sales representatives.  Any caveat over readability issues and the betrayal of learning outcomes is largely ignored.

Educators have instead focused their attention on the research that suggests the personal use of mobile devices is on the rise, and on the growing resource of educational resources available for students to access on mobile devices.  Refer Horizon 2011 Report pdf

For example, notable New Zealand e-learning  conferences like ULearn and Learning at School   widely cite the future trendiness and ubiquity of mobile technologies - I have yet to nudge up against a keynote speaker who references readability issues when reading online.

Indeed it is the ubiquitous nature of mobile technologies that provides the rationale behind many educational proposals to increase student access to mobile devices. At the start of the school year in NZ the edu Twitter stream was awash with primary school teachers announcing the arrival of class sets of mobile devices (IPads and iPods) for student use in schools.

In embracing ubiquity as a rationale for implementation we neglect to ask about the stuff that matters most – learning outcomes.    

How many discussions around the introduction of mobile technologies to primary schools sees BOT, principals and senior management, educators, parents, students and sales representatives discussing the implications for student learning outcomes before the decision is made to purchase and introduce a mobile screen?  

Neil Postman alerted us to the importance of looking at what is enhanced and what is betrayed when we adopt technological solutions a long time ago – check out his essay on the five things we need to know about technological change.

So why aren’t we more curious about how learning outcomes might be betrayed by the use of mobile technologies?

Why don’t we look for the research findings around learning outcomes when students read from a desktop screen or from a mobile device and how these might compare with reading from print?

Anne Mangen’s 2008 exploration into reading with new technologies asks the question that more of us should be exploring as we introduce mobile technologies into classrooms. 

How does digital technology change the way we read?

You can access her thinking here in  Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion Journal of Research in Reading, Volume 31, Issue 4, 2008, pp 404–419 pdf

Do we neglect to look at the learning outcomes because of the din from the advertising and media narratives? Or are we naively seduced by the e-marketeers?

“We approach our technologies through a battery of advertising and media narratives; it is hard to think above the din.” Turkle, Sherry. (Ed.). The inner history of devices. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. p4

For whatever the reason we cannot ignore that print reading is different from screen reading – and Dr Jacob Nielsen’s  research into web usability is the perfect place for curious educators to find out why

Exploring the research around readability issues leads me to raise many questions about the introduction of mobile technologies for primary and secondary students with varying levels of literacy.

For example

What does it mean for primary and secondary students using mobile technologies in schools if a quick exploration of the research on reader usability shows that;

1. Text comprehension drops when we read on mobile devices.  The ability to comprehend complex web content drops by more than half if adults are asked to do this on an iPhone sized screen.

Research using a Cloze test shows that comprehension scores for adults reading complex web content on an iPhone-sized screen is 48% comprehension scores obtained when reading from a desktop monitor.   

Singh, R. I., Sumeeth, M., & Miller, J. (2011). Evaluating the Readability of Privacy Policies in Mobile Environments. International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI), 3(1), 55-78. doi:10.4018/jmhci.2011010104

If we assume that this research can be generalised to primary and secondary students we can ask

How will the readability issues of online texts on mobile technologies with smaller screen sizes – reduced comprehension -  affect the learning outcomes of students?

2.  Reading text (long-form) is slower on tablets (iPad, Kindle) than reading print text for adults (with at least high school levels of literacy).

Research on reading speeds (July 2010) suggests that reading on paper is between 10% to 30% faster than reading online. (For recent reserach try Jakob Nielsen  and from the past - try Kurniawan, S., and P Zaphiris (2001) Reading Online or on Paper: Which is Faster? In Proceedings of the 9 th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction.)

If we assume that this research can be generalised to primary and secondary students we can ask …

How will the readability issues of online texts on mobile technologies - reduced reading speeds – affect the learning outcomes of students?

3.  Adults with low literacy levels show markedly different reading behaviours when reading on the screen than high literacy users.  

Research conducted for Pizer describes how adults with low literacy levels “plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view”.  Jacob Nielsen 2005 

The most notable difference between lower- and higher-literacy users is that lower-literacy users can't understand a text by glancing at it. They must read word for word and often spend considerable time trying to understand multi-syllabic words.Lower-literacy users focus exclusively on each word and slowly move their eyes across each line of text. In other words, they "plow" the text, line by line. This gives them a narrow field of view and they therefore miss objects outside the main flow of the text they're reading. Unlike higher-literacy users, lower-literacy users don't scan text. As a result, for example, they can't quickly glance at a list of navigation options to select the one they want. They must read each word in each option carefully. Their only other choice is to completely skip over large amounts of information, which they often do when things become too complicated. Lower-literacy users tend to satisfice -- accept something as "good enough" -- based on very little information because digging deeper requires too much reading, which is both challenging and time consuming. As soon as text becomes too dense, lower-literacy users start skipping, usually looking for the next link. In doing so, they often overlook important information. In addition, having to scroll breaks lower-literacy users' visual concentration because they can't use scanning to find the place they left off. Finally, search creates problems for lower-literacy users for two reasons. First, they often have difficulty spelling the query terms. Second, they have difficulty processing search results, which typically show weird, out-of-context snippets of text. As a result, lower-literacy users often simply pick the first hit on the list, even if it's not the most appropriate for their needs.

Nielsen provides some interesting webpage usability metrics comparing low literacy and high literacy outcomes for success rate (whether people could perform the task), time needed to complete tasks and user satisfaction (subjective)

Success rate	46 %	68 %
Time needed	22.3 minutes	14.3 minutes
User satisfaction	3.3	3.7

If we assume that this research can be generalised to primary and secondary students we can ask

How will the readability issues of online texts on mobile technologies affect the learning outcomes of students with low literacy?

How will the time needed to complete tasks by students with low literacy be affected by the introduction of mobile technologies?

I was interested to see that although adult low literacy readers took significantly longer to complete the tasks and had a significantly lower success rate – they self-rated their satisfaction at similar levels to adult high literacy users.

This research on low literacy adults learning outcomes when reading from the web align well with the outcomes recorded in Keryn Pratt’s research on primary students learning outcomes when searching online.  As Pratt explains – internet searching is done a lot in schools – and students are confident even optimistic about how well they search.

One of the most common uses of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools is using the Internet for research (see Becker, 1999; Lai & Pratt, 2003; Lai, Pratt & Trewern, 2001; Smerdon et al., 2000), yet only limited information is available regarding children’s Internet searching behaviour (Kuiper, Volman & Terwel, 2005). What is clear from the research that has been done is that children are generally not very successful in doing this ( Bilal, 2000; Schacter, Chung & Dorr, 1998), and that they use only limited search strategies (Bilal, 2000; 2001; 2002; Large & Beheshti 2000; Shacter et al 1998; Wallace & Kuperman, 1997). A review by Hsieh-Yee (2001) of children and adults’ search behaviour found that:

Children could interact with the Internet; they did not search systematically; they preferred browsing; and they had difficulty typing search terms, formulating search statements and judging the quality of Web pages. However, all the children felt confident about their Web searches (e.g. Kafai & Bates, 1997; Large et al 1999; Schacter et al., 1998) (p. 172).  

From Children’s Internet searching: Where do they go wrong? Keryn Pratt University of Otago CINZS Vol 21 No 1 2009 

4.  Children are not very good at doing internet research.

Although the usefulness of mobile technologies is often framed in terms of the ease of access to information – anywhere, anytime etc -  Pratt’s research with NZ students confirms that of many others – students may appear, confident, connected and engaged but they do not get good learning outcomes when researching online.

Pratt describes how Year 4 and Year 8 students in Dunedin schools did not get good learning outcomes when using the internet to search for information (both well-defined and ill-defined searching).  One of the problems seems to lie in their inability to comprehend (think critically about) the content they access.

In line with previous research, students did not perform particularly well on these searching tasks. However, examination of the results shows that it was not the mechanics of searching that seemed to be the problem. All but one student at either year level had navigated to a page containing the information for which they were looking (either a website they visited or a results page for one of their searches), which suggests they were able to identify appropriate search terms. Instead, the problem these students had was identifying the correct information within the site. This would seem to fit Lazonder’s (2000) model, which divided searching into two stages: locating the site and locating the information. However, many of the students did have trouble with locating the site, albeit not with the mechanics, but rather with the identification of it as the correct site. Children’s Internet Searching: Where do they go wrong 

If we assume that this research can be generalised to other primary and secondary students we can ask

How will the learning outcomes of students be affected when they are encouraged to use mobile technologies for researching and reading content online?

It all makes me wonder why we do not look out for the ways that mobile technologies might undermine and compromise student learning outcomes before we rush to adopt them. 

What is our professional responsibility in looking for strengths and weaknesses when introducing a screen reading technology that can limiting learning outcomes?

It is hard to imagine a future when home-school communication might read like this …

Dear Parents,

We are determined to take education at [insert school name here] truly into the 21^st century. We want to reinvent our school to meet the needs of the 21^st century and we need your help to shift a few paradigms.

Select one of the following to insert

1.  We’d like your approval to introduce a technology to classrooms that research shows will slow the rate at which high literacy students will be able to read and comprehend text.

2.  We need your help to fund the introduction of a technology that research shows will most likely compromise and limit learning outcomes for low literacy students at our school BUT will leave all students feeling optimistic and confident about their learning outcomes.

3.  We can offer special placement options for your student to learn in a digital classroom where they can have ready access to the internet for researching content – something research shows will result in naff learning outcomes in the locating relevant information bit and the finding the important ideas bit. 

We want [insert name of school her] to be bold. We want [insert name of school her] to break the mould.  We want to be flexible, creative, challenging, and complex.  We need mobile technologies to be all these things for your children. 

Regards  ….   

On taking the pandas out of the NZ Curriculum

The young man with the oversized WWF panda on his jacket was not in the least surprised by my response.

I didn’t know that the NZ Government had taken “wildlife” out of the curriculum.  

“Not many people do”, he answered conspiratorially. “What’s more your neighbours don’t think “wildlife” should be taken out of the curriculum, and nor do we …. we all want children to learn about “wildlife”.

Mr WWF was voluble, enormously sincere and quite compelling. Misunderstanding my initial reaction (to the audacity of his claim) as belief in its truthiness, he was emboldened to make wilder and wilder claims. 

Apparently the NZ government had not been content with deleting all mention of “wildlife” from the curriculum – it had gone further and expunged anything relating to “the environment” as well.

“The NZ government doesn’t think our children need to know about our clean green environment”. His eyes widened in genuine distress.  “… so what do you think of that?”

I let him continue without once letting on that his arrival had dragged me away from the NZ curriculum document where I had been critiquing some teacher planning featuring both “wildlife” and “the environment”.

Sometimes in life it is best not to spoil the moment – this was suburban street theatre and quite the most entertaining interruption of a day spent writing resources and answering email. 

And all too soon we got to the kicker – the need for a generous donation of my money to get the “wildlife” back in the curriculum.  I still regret that I did not press him for detail at this point – a curriculum is a political document and if a global multinational can buy space for their product placement it would be good to know.

It must have been the newness of my black T-shirt because I got the double donation offer - I could make an additional donation and help fund teams of people to clean up “the environment” – the one that our government and curriculum documents so neglect.

At that point I explained (as gently as I could) that I did not want to pay to put “wildlife” back in the curriculum or for that matter for teams of people to clean up “the environment”.  Perhaps there would be others more caring than I further down the street.  We parted on good terms.  The man in the panda jacket took his script and his clip board and went to find another audience - I returned to the NZ Curriculum document. 

The interesting thing about the whole exchange was that contrary to the WWF script playing out on doorsteps in my neighbourhood, “wildlife” and “the environment” have not gone anywhere – they remain strong players in the NZ curriculum documents. 

I can find places for learning about pandas and the environment in all curriculum learning areas - English, The Arts, Health and Physical education, Learning languages,  Mathematics and statistics, Science, Social sciences and in Technology.

To take something obvious - the achievement objectives in Learning Area > Science> Living World> Ecology have many opportunities for learning about “wildlife”.

Living World

Ecology

Level One and Level Two

- Recognise that living things are suited to their particular habitat.

Level Three and Level Four

 - Explain how living things are suited to their particular habitat and how they respond to environmental changes, both natural and human-induced.

Level Five

 - Investigate the interdependence of living things (including humans) in an ecosystem.

Level Six

 - Investigate the impact of natural events and human actions on a New Zealand ecosystem.

Level Seven

 - Explore ecological distribution patterns and explain possible causes for these patterns.

 - Explain how the interaction between ecological factors and natural selection leads to genetic changes within populations.

Level Eight

 - Understand the relationship between organisms and their environment.

 - Explore the evolutionary processes that have resulted in the diversity of life on Earth and appreciate the place and impact of humans within these processes.

 - Understand how humans manipulate the transfer of genetic information from one generation to the next and make informed judgments about the social, ethical, and biological implications relating to this manipulation.

In truth if I had my way I’d be voting to limit the amount of panda and enviro - study that goes on in NZ schools and balance it with explorations of the material and physical world and the nature of science – which do seem to be underrepresented in curriculum overviews. 

It made me wonder if the WWF really does believe that “wildlife” and “the environment” have been deleted from the curriculum or if it was just some kind of cynical WWF spin to extract funds from those who live in the suburbs - the middleclasses with their identified weakness for celebrity wildlife - the photogenic pandas and their ilk.

Perhaps it is all about how we interpret and understand words. A situation where "wildlife" is not seen as a subset of living thing.  Ecosystems and habitat are not seen as being connected to "the environment".

Perhaps it is that learning is seen as being far more tightly scripted than it is in New Zealand classrooms.

Words are funny things – so many educational conversations seem simply an exchange of slogans – we are careless with meaning – failing to elaborate on what we mean by what we claim – which in turn limits our progress in making any real change to the outcomes that bother us most.  

A study that clearly shows the perils of using words in education without carefully teasing out their meaning is this one by Westby and Dawson which found that whilst elementary school teachers claimed to value creativity in classrooms - they reported distaste for students demonstrating personality traits associated with creativity. I don't know if the results are generalisable - the sample size is small - but it is disturbing nonetheless.

As Jonah Lehrer opines in this post  creativity is complicated.

Everybody wants a creative child - in theory. The reality of creativity, however, is a little more complicated, as creative thoughts tend to emerge when we're distracted, daydreaming, disinhibited and not following the rules. In other words, the most imaginative kids are often the trouble-makers.

Reference: Erik L. Westby; V. L. Dawson (1995) Creativity: Asset or burden in the classroom? Creativity Research Journal, Volume 8, Issue 1 January, pages 1 – 10 pdf

What would Zorro do?

Sitting in the hairdressers' chair on the last Friday of summer

I refuse the black mask and flat-brimmed hat

but allow myself to be reverse wrapped in Zorro’s black cape -

the many mirrored reflections of my fellow caped crusaders reproach me,

forcing me to wonder what the masked avenger would make of it all.

 

Perhaps El Zorro would fall into a slough of despond,

despairing at the absence of waving swords and cracking bullwhips,

or perhaps he would get excited by the technologies of the future,

and (after carving a “Z” in the wall) gallop off into the night

to find an adult education class in

“how to use chemicals, heat and aluminium foil”.

 

I don’t know about my caped companions but I’m betting

El Zorro would choose night classes over self imposed exile in the marshlands,

I can imagine him swashbuckling through the glass doors of the salon,

loudly proclaiming that he has come to join the fight

against the (newly imagined) injustices of the 21^st century -

age, desire, ambition.

“The Master Switch”, digital citizenship, and WWIC

There has been a not so subtle shift in what is promoted as pedagogically worthy in NZ ICTPD cluster schools in the past 12 months – a shift from helping students adopt cyber-safe practice online to helping students become responsible cyber-citizens.

It seems that what you do when no one is watching becomes more significant when we live in a time where everyone is – watching that is.

Identifying the classroom practices that are suitable for learning about any kind of citizenship is a big and somewhat fraught territory for educators – there is that immediate tension between declarative and functioning knowledge – between teaching for active and passive citizenship

“While educators have always talked about active citizenship and critical thought, classroom practices have emphasized passive acquisition and character development. Teachers' philosophical assumptions that enable them to train future citizens to become passive spectators are discussed.” In Teaching for Passive Citizenship: A Critique of Philosophical Assumptions. Shermis and Barth Theory and Research in Social Education, v10 n4 p17-37 Win 1982

If our goal is for students to become successful active citizens in the digital domain – then as educators we are looking to;

• Increase capability of students to build knowledge and skills of their roles, rights and responsibilities, when participating and contributing as digital citizens.
• Increase capability of students to take actions as digital citizens to change their communities for the better.

How would we know if students had met these goals?

Perhaps as success criteria - evidence will show that:

Schools have implemented a programme of professional learning for successful digital citizenship based on feedback on the learning needs, interests and abilities of their students and the pedagogical content knowledge of their teachers to meet these needs.

• Schools are carefully and diagnostically assessing the declarative and functioning knowledge of their students as digital citizens to determine what they need to “learn next’.
• Schools are carefully and diagnostically assessing the pedagogical content knowledge of teachers to teach the declarative and functioning knowledge needed to meet the identified learning needs of their students around digital citizenship.
• Facilitators are providing the specific pedagogical content knowledge identified as being needed by teachers for them to move their student’s declarative and functioning knowledge of successful digital citizenship.
• Teachers are being observed when teaching students the declarative and functioning knowledge they need to “learn next” to become successful digital citizens and take part in feedback and feedforward conversations afterwards.
• Students are building knowledge and skills of their roles, rights and responsibilities, when participating and contributing as digital citizens.
• Students are taking actions as digital citizens to change their communities for the better.

• Schools are carefully and diagnostically assessing the impact of these declarative and functioning learning experiences on valued student learning outcomes and using these assessments to advise the future professional learning needs of teachers.   

And if that doesn’t daunt you then the culture in which we are charged with creating active digital citizens might …

For what makes the “creating active digital citizens” initiative more complicated is that we are charged with doing this in contemporary democratic countries - countries where sociologists note an increasing public “apathy” “cynicism” and “mistrust” towards political systems and those holding political authority – we are living in an age of the politically disengaged citizen.

Frank Mort’s paper in The Making of the Consumer – (Competing Domains – Democratic subjects and consuming subjects in Britain and the United States since 1945) frightened me – for Mort explores how “political culture” is increasingly being subsumed by “consumer culture”

“Since the late 1980’s sample profiles of the British population have been monitored for their main leisure patterns. What came out top in survey after survey was a list of contemporary pleasures that were principally made available through market based forms of provision; personal shopping, eating out, DIY, and video watching.  Right at the bottom of the list came politics; going to a political meeting ranked on par with a visit to the circus as one of the British public’s least likely things to do!” p225

“According to Bauman, politics is now seen only as a nuisance, a barrier to real life, which lies elsewhere, in the world of personal freedoms, the market, human relationships and so on”  p226

Ironically at the same time that we have lost interest in the politics of democracy – it seems that citizens in a consumer culture expect to be consulted on most everything else in the content service industry

For example, we expect to be consulted on whether it is OK for “British computer-industry millionaire Clive Sinclair to marry a younger woman and on the proposed changes to the Starbucks logo (refer to that fabulous post about "Why wasn’t I consulted (WWIC)" in The Web is a Customer Service Medium by Paul Ford and  to Logoland by Schumpeter in the Economist 

 “Why wasn't I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.” Paul Ford

Reading Mort makes me wonder if in preparing students to be active digital citizens we are preparing them for a role that has already been subsumed by consumer culture in a contemporary democracy like New Zealand in 2011. Perhaps we should instead encourage and prepare students to broaden the scope of their existing activity as Ford's digital consultants.

A clear first step is to teach ourselves and our students about “the Cycle” – the history of the information business – the open and closed ages of radio film and telephone – so masterfully explained by the glorious Tim Wu  in his wonderful and wonderfilled book The Master Switch – The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. 

[note to self: Add The Master Switch – The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.  to “must read and discuss” booklist for teachers charged with implementing information communication technology in school this year]

 “History shows a typical progression of information technologies: from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel – from open to closed system.  It is a progression so common as to seem inevitable, though it would hardly have seemed so at the dawn of any of the past century’s transformative technologies, whether telephony, radio, television, or film. Wu 2010 P6

History also shows that whatever has been closed too long is ripe for ingenuity’s assault: in time a closed industry can be opened anew giving way to all sorts of technical possibilities and expressive uses for the medium before the effort to close the system likewise begins again. “ Wu 2010 p6

Then we might better understand that “choice, freedom and openness” is not a given in the information business.

And then by broadening the focus of what we want to be consulted about we might become more alert to asking “WWIC” when personal communication devices (we find it hard to live without) are increasingly presented to us as closed platform devices – designed to operate on only certain carriers, certain wires, or certain airwaves.

If we neglect to ask WWIC about products and policies that are designed to centralise control by others – we allow public and private power arrangements that compromise net neutrality – and our future digital communication may not be open and personal any more.

It is a big read book - Wu’s arguments take time to process – he ties together many different personalities, products and policies – but “The Master Switch” is also a great read - it is time well spent – Wu takes the understanding I had taken previously from Larry Cuban’s Oversold and Underused Computers in the Classroom   and Carolyn Marvin’s When Old Technologies Were New – Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century to new places and new spaces.  

Reading Wu meant that for the first time I understood the vulnerabilities facing Google when its corporate design means “it owns no connections and no content”

“He who controls the wires or airwaves can potentially destroy Google for it is only via these means the Google reaches its customers. …..... Nor is this matter of infrastructure the firm’s only weakness. A concerted boycott among content owners – website operators or other sources – could achieve the same choking effect.  Under long established protocols, any website can tell Google that it doesn’t want to be indexed. In theory Wikipedia, The New York Times, CNN , and dozens of others could begin telling Google , “Thanks , but no thanks.” Or conceivably strike an exclusive deal with one of Google’s rivals.” P284  

But most of all if you take the time to read “The Master Switch” you will better appreciate that the whole Google versus Apple debate - all that is contested in the information communication empires of the 21st century  - has happened many times before. And no outcome is certain.

An aside:     

WWIC also makes me want to re-imagine schools as customer service mediums hell bent on selling education.

Paul Ford suggests that to be successful as a customer service medium we should

Create a service experience around what you publish and sell. Whatever “customer service” means when it comes to books and authors, figure it out and do it. Do it in partnership with your readers. Turn your readers into members. Not visitors, not subscribers; you want members. And then don’t just consult them, but give them tools to consult amongst themselves. These things are cheap and easy now if you hire one or two smart people instead of a large consultancy. Define what the boundaries are in your community and punish transgressors without fear of losing a sale. Then, if your product is good, you’ll sell things.  Paul Ford

So how should we change schools to make them a successful customer service?

On table-sharking as "real" problem solving

When Stanley was a puppy he loved to “table-shark” stuff that wasn’t his. And after sharking he would race recklessly around the house often spilling out into the garden to avoid his outraged pursuers. 

He is a much larger Labrador now. Visitors often imagine they have stumbled over an elephant seal when they spot him snorfing on a rocky outcrop in the back garden.  Regardless of his girth Stanley still loves to bounce around with stuff that isn’t his. And it doesn’t have to be edible stuff.  An incautiously placed iPhone, a Firefly DVD, a discarded Danger Mouse sweatshirt, all capture his attention to the same degree as the pile of grated cheese, freshly baked foccacia, and the charred BBQ sausage.

His problem solving strategies have been refined over the years and he can shift from a seemingly   comatose Labrador to a verticalised and surface hoovering Labrador in microseconds. 

In turn we have refined the problem solving strategies we use to Stanley-proof our possessions. From impossibly high surfaces to a panopticon-like kitchen design we have upped the expertise needed to successfully table shark.  

Stanley is an expert problem solver with “many powerful domain specific problem solving techniques at his “paw and nose tips”.  Furthermore these problem solving techniques have been refined through solving the many opportunities we have presented through our incautious placement of sought after items on accessible surfaces.  [I note that my experiences with Stanley mean my definition of “accessible” is under constant revision]

As his table sharking expertise has built so the distinction between “real problem” and “routine exercise” has blurred.  Pulling on a tablecloth and nosing up shutters, once innovative solutions to real problems are now in truth routine exercises for Stan.

This distinction between the “real” activity and the “routine” activity is frequently misunderstood in schools where we are encouraged to provide students with the real over the routine – with “challenging, open-ended, ill-defined and ill-structured problems”.

However there is a problem with this pedagogical prompt.  As Stanley’s experience reveals - the distinction between “real” and “routine” does not lie in the activity itself.  The distinction lies in the domain specific knowledge of the learner –  a routine problem for one person can be a challenging, open-ended, ill-defined and ill-structured problem for another and vice versa.

Real and routine is an “in the eye of the beholder thing”.

If learning results from an interaction between student (a) and learning activity (b), and one persons real activity is another person’s routine activity it makes no sense to isolate the activity from the student by labelling it real or routine.  In doing so we privilege activity over individual and this may not be a good thing if it means we ignore the intersect. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that labelling activities can limit both teaching and learning – when we eschew learning experiences labelled as routine for learning experiences labelled as “real” (and rich and authentic) we neglect the nuance that should capture our attention  in the interaction between the learning activity (b) and the learner (a).

I am thinking about what happens when we privilege the activity over the individual (by labelling it as real/or routine).

How is the labelled activity perceived by students?

How is the labelled activity perceived by teachers?

How do these perceptions (of teachers and students) interact?

What are the outcomes of this interaction?

How is the labelled activity approached by students?

How is the labelled activity approached by teachers?

How do these approaches (of teachers and students) interact?

What are the outcomes of this interaction?

It helps me to think about this in the context of student writing – in the NZ Curriculum – the genres - descriptive, explanatory, information report, narrative, persuasive, procedural and recount – have identified surface and deep features.  Showing audience awareness and purpose through deliberate choice of content, language and writing style for different genres is a literacy challenge for our students.

We have commonly labelled student writing as “real” when it is done online in a blog that is accessible anytime from anywhere by any one and “routine” when it is done in an exercise book where access is individual and invited.  But I am not sure that we know how a student perceives the writing activity when it is done in an exercise book or online or how the teacher perceives the activity? What are the similarities and differences in perception between what is labelled real and routine – what are the similarities and differences student and teacher perception?   

If we label student writing as “real” when it is done online in a blog and “routine” when it is done in an exercise book, then how does the student approach the labelled activities? How does the teacher approach the labelled activities? Just what are the similarities and differences in approach to an activity labelled “real” or “routine”?

When students lived experience blurs the real with the routine – as it does and will - and students find writing (and commenting) online “routine” – how will students and teachers respond to the mislabelling of an activity (a school requirement to write posts on a student blog) as real when to students writing online for an audience may be a routine exercise?   

How will teaching and learning be influenced if as teachers we continue to believe we can label activities as “real” or “routine”?

I wonder if we will we hang onto the pretence of the label “real” long after it has become “routine” in the eye of students?  I suspect so - the edu_twitter stream is choked with tweets from teachers touting for comments so as to make their students’ blog writing for an audience experience appear “real” in a Potemkin Village kind of way. 

It is more fun to imagine that we will we look for a new “real” for student writing  – perhaps will we simply reframe genre to include learning how to write for Wikipedia as has been happening for a while at the University of East Anglia

Wikipedia - banned by some academics as a source for student essays - has been made compulsory reading (and writing) for a new course at the University of East Anglia.

Students are assessed on editing and writing articles on Middle East politics for the online encyclopaedia, which is open to contributions from anyone.

Or maybe to keep it “real” we will we embrace retro writing – and prepare students for a “World Made By Hand” like future - where preparedness for re-engineering available resources will ensure that students can continue writing and showing audience awareness and purpose albeit that this involves scratching text onto home-made parchment with nibs crafted from found materials using pigments extracted from the bark of native trees.

Pedagogical Promiscuity and "Assessment for Learning"

What kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate in the age of Google and Wikipedia? Facebook and You Tube? Smart phones and text messaging? Twitter and blogging? (after Manovich on Soft Cinema).

In December each year futurists read the e-market-place like goat entrails and share the “tech trends most likely” with the rest of us.

The assumption wedged underneath each forecast is “if stuff changes so should we” - that sense of “you can’t step into the same river twice” thing – first raised by Heraclitus 2,500 years ago.

The underlying message in the goat entrails remains the same each year – if you didn’t know better you’d swear it was the same goat - we learn that doing school with young people is taking place in a “runaway world” - a “here and now” world – a world where changing technologies mean migration, economics, politics, ecosystems, climate - everything is changing – so should school.

As a consequence of all these predicted trends of technological change - school – all that teaching and learning risks irrelevance if pedagogy doesn’t adapt to [insert the latest temporary and ever transient technology] that schools/students will be purchasing/using (this year we are looking at mobile technologies, cloud computing, augmented reality, open content, electronic books etc).

The e visionaries and thought leaders claim that because of [insert your preferred technological trend here] the actors (teachers and learners), the play (teaching and learning) and the performance space (school) have changed.

Yeeha - this is the season when the what, the how, the where, and the when of teaching and learning is up for critical review (once again or some things don’t change).

Determining what kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate is quite a challenge with all this “are we, aren’t we”, “shall we, shan’t we”, “should we, could we” going on. 

Forced into pedagogical promiscuity by the futurists, I spend each festive season wrestling over what kind of “teaching”, “learning” and “assessment for learning is appropriate in a school where [insert the latest divination - mobile technologies, cloud computing, augmented reality, open content, electronic books etc]are ubiquitous? 

I do this whilst all the time knowing that “the better question to ask” is always the one that focuses on the culture (what people do to belong) rather than the technology. 

Thinking about “assessment for learning” In a culture of consumerism – where students are consumers and commodities

What kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate in a consumer culture?  In a culture where data mining and consumer profiling makes our every activity something to be bought, sold and traded. In a culture where our preferred pleasures are principally made available through the market place (personal shopping, dining out, game playing and video watching)? In a culture where all aspects of our lives (including teaching and learning) are commoditised?

When students are both consumer and commodity, schools are charged with setting targets and meeting standards, to make the product of “providing school” visible. An abundance of measures and instruments are developed to determine if what is consumed is adding value to student learning outcomes, student engagement, student enrolment, student retention, and teacher professionalism.

An abundance of arguments result – many proposals address accountability - very few address context.  Some of the best new thinking about “assessment for learning” in this regard is the ideas and open source applications coming out of Salman Khan’s latest initiative from the Khan Academy free self-paced applications for math … personalised assessment for learning with where to next advice.

My not-for-profit Khan Academy, which has recently gotten support from Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has a free, self-paced application that generates exercises for students dynamically. It is being developed as an open-source project and is already used by several tens of thousands of students. Over the next two years, we intend to have unlimited exercises covering every major math concept through calculus, and then to continue even further.

We collect data on when a student does a problem, how long it takes, and what happens before and after a video is viewed. And we can present this information in real time to the student, professor, parent, or administrator. We provide immediate feedback on proficiency and give step-by-step explanations of every problem. Most important, students continue to get exercises until they correctly answer 10 questions in a row (not once they have answered 70 or 80 or 90 percent of the questions correctly).

We are developing other applications to create repositories of teacher- and student-generated questions (on which we would collect the same metadata and ratings on quality, difficulty, and importance). Between these apps and our 2,000-plus and growing on-demand video library, which is being used by more than a million students a month, there is a genuine opportunity for educational institutions to rethink the system so that it is both more effective and more economical. We have decided to do this as a not-for-profit venture, so that our goal of optimizing learning never conflicts with profit maximization (which leads to the type of behaviour we see in publishers). Khan S.2010

Thinking about “assessment for learning” In a culture of participation: students as collaborators and producers.

What kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate in a world where traditional media converging with digital, interactive and social media is creating a new participatory culture?  What kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate for a digital media culture where students are not only “consumers” and “commodities” but are also “producers” of learning?

To think about “assessment for learning” in this participatory cultural context requires a couple of leaps of faith.  The first occurs when we accept the claims that a significant proportion of students ARE collaborating to produce new content – It is difficult to accept that young people are actively participating in this much vaunted “participatory culture” –  as a number of commentators who use statistics uncontaminated by the din from the marketplace have commented - this is not necessarily warranted … refer the myth of user generated content

Educational reformers suggest that the advent of new technologies will radically transform what people learn, how they learn, and where they learn, yet studies of diverse learners’ use of new media cast doubt on the speed and extent of change. Warschauer (2007)

It seems that much like Twitter being a force for democracy when analysis showed that “Twitter users at the time of the revolution made up 0.082% of Internet users in Iran."  (Leadbeater 2010) the participatory producing thing may be an espoused outcome not an actual outcome for young people.        

Be that as it may, “blogetic license” allows me to imagine the changes I might hope to see in “assessment for learning” if a majority of students were actively involved in a participatory culture where they used using “images, photographs, video, animation, music, sound, texts and typography” to “interpret, design and create content” and a majority of their teachers understood … “frame composition; colour palette; audio, image, and video editing techniques; sound–text–image relations; the effects of typography; transitional effects; navigation and interface construction; and generic conventions in diverse media.”

How should we think about “assessment for learning” when students collaborate to take part in participatory culture as producers of knowledge?

We could focus here on the challenges in giving feedback on collaborative or group projects. However this thinking around the challenges in determining the relative individual contribution to a collaborative project has already been well teased out in the context of old media.  Many commentators settle on individual reflective reports that explain how individual contribution enhances the project outcomes as a whole.  It is more interesting to think about assessment for learning changes when the collaborative or group project produces new knowledge using new media.

This first difference is that when young people use new media to collaborate and to produce knowledge, expertise and authority no longer resides with teachers and authority figures in schools.

The MacArthur Foundation report “Living and Learning with New Media” Nov 2008 (pdf) reveals that in collaborating to produce new knowledge students rely on their peers (peer based sharing and feedback) more than they do authority figures. No surprises here then.

Critique and feedback can take many forms, including posted comments on a site that displays works, private message exchanges, offers to collaborate, invitations to join other creators’ social groups, and promo­tion from other members of an interest-oriented group. “Living and Learning with New Media” Nov 2008 p35

However, when peers do provide feedback that might count as “assessment for learning” it is not met with uncritical acceptance as might happen with feedback from an authority figure in school.

The mechanisms for getting input on one’s work and performance can vary from ongoing exchange on online chat and forums to more formal forms of rankings, critiques, and competition. Unlike what young people experience in school, where they are graded by a teacher in a position of authority, feedback in interest-driven groups is from peers and audiences who have a personal interest in their work and opinions. Among fellow creators and community members, the context is one of peer-based reciprocity, where participants can gain status and reputation but do not hold evaluative au­thority over one another. “Living and Learning with New Media” Nov 2008 p35 

It seems student producers of new content are discerning about the value of the feedback from peers. 

So what kind of “assessment for the learning” is appropriate for outcomes in a participatory culture when anecdotal comments from students suggest that they do not necessarily find review by their peers valuable? 

For example blog commenting by other students may no longer be appropriate “assessment for learning” in a participatory culture - if student bloggers have wised up to the endless astro-turfing of their blog posts with comments that have been solicited by their teachers – they want discerning and authentic feedback as “assessment for learning”.

Study participants did not value simple five-star rating schemes as mechanisms for improving their craft, although they considered them useful in boosting ranking and visibility. Fansubbers generally thought that their audience had little understanding of what constituted a quality fansub and would take seriously only the evaluation of fellow producers. Similarly, AMV creators play down rankings and competition results based on “viewer’s choice.” The perception among creators is that many videos win if they use popular anime as source material, regardless of the merits of the editing. Fan fiction writers also felt that the general readership, while often providing encouragement, offered little in the way of substantive feedback. “Living and Learning with New Media” Nov 2008 P35 

The second and I find significant difference when students collaborate online to produce new knowledge lies in how we interpret “peers”.  In online participatory culture a peer is a co-conspirator and as such may well be an adult – just not an adult with conventional institutional authority as occurs in the F2F culture of school.

In contexts of peer-based learning, adults can still have an important role to play, though it is not a conventionally authoritative one. In friendship-driven practices, direct adult participation is often unwelcome, but in interest-driven groups we found a much stronger role for more experienced participants to play. Unlike instructors in formal educational settings, however, these adults are passionate hobbyists and creators, and youth see them as experienced peers, not as people who have authority over them. These adults exert tremendous influence in set­ting communal norms and what educators might call “learning goals,” though they do not have direct authority over newcomers.” “Living and Learning with New Media” Nov 2008 P43

The kind of “assessment for learning” appropriate for students in a participatory culture is - assessment feedback where adults (with considerable expertise and experience but without direct authority) set “learning goals” for students. Kind of like the flip of how we would describe most classroom teachers who have direct institutional authority over students and often lack work experience in creative/productive sector having never really left the institution of school - gone straight from school to university to teacher training and back to school.

A third challenge arises when you hear educators suggesting that web metrics – online visitor stats provide feedback for learning for their students. Do web metrics provide appropriate feedback for learning for students creating outcomes online in a participatory culture? The short answer is “probably not”.

I have referred before on Artichoke to Seb Chan’s thinking about web metrics in the context of feedback for museums - Seb Chan’s analysis reveals that traditional Web analytics and metrics are inadequate in terms of the feedback they provide.  

Each measure a school might suggest useful as feedback has a validity and reliability error. Aka - The Problem With Log File Data, The Problem With Page Tagging Data, The Problem With 'Unique Visitors', The Problem With 'Visits' And 'Time Spent On Site', and The Problem With 'Page Views'. 

 Even the number of visitors who click on an interactive such as a student created video talk or download a student created podcast is exposed as dodgy “assessment for learning” when a more detailed analysis shows so few visitors watch the whole video or listen to the whole podcast.   Chan suggests an alternative that might well prove useful for students trying to find a metric useful for “assessment for learning”. 

“In many ways the best measure of the success of a podcast is how much feedback and discussion it generates. This is far more valuable than the total number of downloads”.

Chan argues for  third party web metric measures of visitor behaviour using  RSS feed tracking, comments on the museum website, but also on other blog posts and comments, tagging and comments on museum content on Flickr Commons photos and how these are used in other conversations in communities and blogs,  Trackback, and Facebook friends, fans and profile comments.  All of these gave a better indication of the success of museums and exhibits and events than number of visitors/page views. It seems likely they will also provide better “assessment for learning” for collaborative student created outcomes and knowledge production.

He refers to “measures of recommendation” – “how likely is it that you would recommend [the company/ experience] to a friend or a colleague? – a broader sense of those net promoter score stuff .  He suggested that recommendation (and hence allowing recommendation and sharing) is how we should understand the way people interact with museums. Perhaps this is the way students could assess their collaborative learning outcomes online.  How likely is it that “experienced peers” would recommend your student created outcomes to others?

Thinking about “assessment for learning” in the culture of language, symbols and texts.

It is easy to get caught up in change rhetoric in education – in the demand to embrace the new literacies (digital literacies/ multi literacies, twenty-first century literacies) so that students are not left behind. In focusing on the “culture of consumerism” and the “culture of participation” it is easy to neglect the culture of the text.  

I think Jenkins says it best in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century pdf

Much writing about twenty-first century literacies seems to assume that communicating through visual, digital, or audiovisual media will displace reading and writing. We fundamentally disagree. Before students can engage with the new participatory culture, they must be able to read and write. P19 Jenkins 

Warschauer (2007) makes some important points in this regard in “The Paradoxical Future of Digital Learning” pdf – the first being that our need for people versed in the new literacies is making the need for traditional literacies even more important.

He argues that … “For example the development of a computer based international economy has brought about the loss of millions of manufacturing, mining and agricultural jobs in the US that demanded little or no literacy, whilst creating in their place large numbers of office jobs requiring substantial amounts of reading and writing.”

 His second point that - successful entry into the world of new literacies requires competence in the traditional literacies - is often neglected when we enthuse about student engagement in the multiliteracies in schools -

Here Warshauer cites a qualitative study by Attewell and Winston (2003) of two groups of 11–14-year-old children in New York City as they make use of computers and the Internet.

One group consisted of school children from more affluent families who attend private schools. The group exhibited high degrees of both information and multimedia literacy. For example, a typical fourth grade student posted messages to bulletin boards, read political candidates speeches online, answered online polls to make his opinions heard, and even developed a Website so that his school could carry out its own class president elections online.

 The second group consisted of African-American and Hispanic children from poor and working class families who scored below grade level in tests of reading. The limited reading ability of those children virtually eliminated their possibility of exercising information literacy. And multimedia for them became a crutch to avoid use of texts rather than a means of to further expand their knowledge.

 The authors illustrate through the example of Kadesha, who spends ample time surfing the Web for pictures of rappers and wrestlers or advertisements for hot new sneakers or Barbie dolls, but ‘‘as image after image flashes by...Kadesha rarely settles on printed text.’’ In an after-school enrichment program, Kadesha was encouraged to research a future career, but stopped in frustration after she could not spell ‘‘bakery’’ correctly, while her classmates similarly stumbled on ‘‘burger’’ and ‘‘pediatrician.’’ Warschauer (2007)

Finding that without traditional literacies “multimedia can become a crutch to avoid use of texts rather than a means of to further expand their knowledge” has high significance for educators asking what kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate in the age of Google and Wikipedia. Facebook and You Tube? Smart phones and text messaging? Twitter and blogging?

Thinking about “assessment for learning” in the culture of Google and Wikipedia.

Finally there is the notion that in the age of Google and Wikipedia  we live in a time where “knowledge is a verb not a noun” Educators of all persuasions (including those in our MoE) are want to claim that the instant availability of information online makes the memorization of facts unnecessary or less necessary.

 Mary Chamberlain, overseeing the project for the Education Ministry, says that although people are "rattled" by the changes, "there's no use (students) being little knowledge banks walking around on legs.

"We've got computers, we don't need people walking around with them in their heads... People just have to get used to that." In Curriculum change shifts emphasis from 'what' to 'how' Stuff September 2007

What kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate for an age where “we’ve got computers”. Is assessment for learning of declarative knowledge inappropriate in an age where “we’ve got computers”? Is it better that “assessment for learning” focuses on functioning knowledge? On the processes of critical thinking and questioning for validity and reliability? 

Larry Sanger (2010) in “Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age”  presents a compelling argument against rejecting knowing content and factual knowledge. I enjoyed the whole opinion piece but this excerpt is relevant here 

But this argument seems fallacious. It implies that the new information has either replaced or made trivial the old information. And this is obviously not so in most subjects. Think of all the things typically taught in primary schools: reading, writing, mathematics, basic science. How much of this has changed in the last one hundred years? Even granting that some of our understanding, especially in more advanced education, has been replaced (as in nuclear physics and geography) or refined (as in biology and history), the vast body of essential facts that undergird any sophisticated understanding of the way the world works does not change rapidly.⁶ This is as true in biology and medicine, fields with stunning recent advances, as it is in mathematics and philosophy.⁷ And to return to my point, unless one learns the basics in those fields, Googling a question will merely allow one to parrot an answer — not to understand it.

It also won't do to make the facile reply that there is no such thing as "the basics." The basics can be understood as what is commonly taught in introductory courses or what commonly appears in introductory textbooks. Granted, there are some (new) specialized fields in which there are relatively few basics that everyone is taught — I am thinking of knowledge management, computer programming, and social media. But in most fields, there is certainly a body of core knowledge.

To possess a substantial understanding of a field requires not just memorizing the facts and figures that are used by everyone in the field but also practicing, using, and internalizing those basics. To return to my "glib" argument, surely the only way to begin to know something is to have memorized it.

Attewell and Winston’s (2003) research of two groups of 11–14-year-old children in New York City as they make use of computers and the Internet supports Sanger’s contention.

Conventional wisdom is that students need knowledge of how to search rather than mastery of basic facts. However, for Kadesha and her classmates, ignorance of basic facts restricts their ability to search. One of her classmates, for example, had difficulty searching for the mayor of New York due to lack of understanding as to whether Buffalo was part of New York City or New York state. Warschauer (2007) P43

It seems that exposure to the multiliteracies most advantage those who are already advantaged.

There is a lot more thinking needed here – but it seems plausible that thinking critically about what kind of “assessment for learning” is appropriate in the age of [insert your preferred descriptor] is useful thinking. It may protect us (and our students) from futurist induced pedagogical promiscuity next year – by preventing the indiscriminate adoption of too many different pedagogical approaches.

Potalanoa (talking into the night) and conversational transience

I meet all sorts of educators in the day job, but my opportunities to talk with them for any length of time are limited.  I am a conversational transient. A conversation started with one educator in one place is abandoned only to be picked up and carried on with another educator in another place, before being abandoned, again and again and again.  In place and in conversation I am always moving on; moving on to another place, to another school, to another classroom, to another school hall, to another staffroom to work with another syndicate, another department, another team, and another teacher.

I have learned to snatch opportunities to talk about the things that matter most wherever and whenever I can.  As well as snatching torn corners and strips of conversation, I rip images of the ordinary from each place locating them carefully in the corners of memory.  For the ordinary of doing school in one place is the extraordinary of the next.

The loneliness and lack of any long term conversation in my daily wandering is disguised for the most part by a nomadic lifestyle that allows me to embrace the unexpected.  No two days are the same.  The rhythm of a fresh start to each day is unlike the rhythm available to me when I was an educator pinned to a thick waxy layer of institutional belonging.  And I toss between the two – do I want to allow myself to be etherised and pinned and play where the ongoing conversation is able to be explored in depth or do I want to keep on living as a conversational transient skittering across the wild uncertain surfaces of what matters most? It is that old “do I want to be a pet mouse or a wilding mouse?” thing all over again

Whilst downing a coffee and peeling open the itinerant’s lunchtime muesli bar earlier this year I was approached by three teachers who wanted to talk about issues I had raised in the opening keynote.  One wanted to talk further about e-learning through juggling and PowerPoint , another wanting to talk about using SOLO Taxonomy in her post graduate research and a third wanting to talk about parallels between “positive deviance” and the Tongan Kainga as an approach to creating educational, social and economic success of Tongan's in New Zealand.

It was the positive deviance conversation that excited me most – for I was able to re-start a conversation I first started in Artichoke in 2007.  Ever since I read and blogged about  Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande   I have looked out for a conversation about positive deviance – one that could be used to make a difference in educational policy and programmes.  I am certain you can knock out an edu_ground hog day list, most of us can.  Those issues/outcomes that despite numerous initiatives/ projects/ contestable funding etc we consistently fail to change in classrooms and schools. Indeed the enduring nature of things we never seem to fix when “doing school” makes even the most enthusiast educator cynical in time – or else sees them prone to “this too will pass thinking” behaviour like becoming educational facilitators or consultants - or adopting other escapology tactics like applying for study awards – anything that allows them to keep thinking about school but at a safe distance from the doing of it. If you don't believe me check out the Twitter stream balance of tweets from educators who have just made “a presentation” to show someone else “how to do teaching” against those “who are doing the teaching” and tweet about their classroom planning. I am always fearful that one day we will run out of the people prepared to keep doing school and be left with those who want to tell us all how to do it.   

Gawande’s chapter “On Washing Hands” (describing the inability of medical institutions to persuade their staff to adopt simple measures to prevent hospital acquired infections) reminded me of the simple issues that we never seem to resolve in school.  The Positive Deviance Projects showed me that this approach can stretch much further than changing hand washing behaviours in hospitals. 

We attack the “unmovables” in education by bringing in “experts”, “facilitators”, and specially funded research programmes etc into our schools –But in every community there are certain individuals (the "Positive Deviants") whose special practices/ strategies/ behaviours enable them to find better solutions to prevalent community problems than their neighbours who have access to the same resources.

Positive deviance is a culturally appropriate development approach that is tailored to the specific community in which it is used. 

By relying on identifying people within a community to model the behaviours for change, we ensure these changes are doable, manageable and achievable and avoid charges that so commonly arise when “developed” world’s institutions see themselves as catering to “underdeveloped” people’s needs. The results from the Positive Deviance Projects persuades me that we might be better off looking for and funding interventions that explore “positive deviance” within a community and within a school.  

All of which was why I was so excited when Tofi’a followed up on our snatched lunchtime exchange by sending me a copy of a recent Masters Research Thesis from Massey University written by Sione Tu’itahi. 

Langa Fonua: In Search of Success. How a Tongan Kainga Strived to be Socially and Economically Successful in New Zealand by Sione Tu’itahi is a description of intergenerational positive deviance and what I have long been looking for.  You can get a copy from The Directorate [email protected] Office, Albany Campus, Auckland.

The thesis “Langa Fonua” argues that “to find solutions to the low socio-economic status of Tongans in New Zealand, research should focus on their demonstrated strengths and positive achievements, rather than their deficits.” p82 Tu'itahi uses the Tongan model of fonua – ongoing inter-connected relationship between people and environment (reciprocity) as the framework for understanding the successful progress of the Tongan Tahi kainga over the last 30 years.  

He reveals how migration from a small island in the Ha’apai group in the Kingdom of Tonga, to the main island Tongatapu to New Zealand. The United States and Australia was the result of a consistent vision and strategy, a model that each generation followed that focused on balancing material, intellectual and spiritual development and contributing to the wider community. The Tahi kainga worked and studied hard but critical was how the kainga defined “success” (ikuna) and how this became an influential narrative for the success of each generation that followed. Success was a holistic construct and nuanced around: 

• Spiritual well being. Mo’ui Lelei Fakalaumalie
  
• Intellectual well being. Mo’ui Lelei Faka’atamai
• Physical health and well being. Mo’ui Lelei Fakasino
• Collective kainga health and well being. Mo’ui lelei e Kainga
• Contribution to Society. Tokoni ki he fonua

Langa Fonua uses observation, interviews, focus groups and two traditional Tongan methods of constructing and sharing knowledge and social realities.

I was quite taken by these traditional methodologies and how well they expressed what was missing from the day job.  

Potalanoa (talking into the night) refers to a form of conversation in which Tongan participants analyse and reflect deeply on a subject or range of topics and issues that leads to constructing of new ideas or deconstructing and rearranging of existing ones(Manu’atu, 2000) (Cited in Tu’itahi 2009 page 16)

Fakalotofale’ia (creating within the house) is the in-house meeting of the extended kainga to investigate perspectives, facts and Tongan socioeconomic realities, and to plan on how to apply knowledge skills and information for the benefit of the extended kainga.  (Tu’itahi 2009 page 16)

Apart from discovering positive deviance research that could be useful when imagining how best to enhance academic outcomes for Tongan students, the thesis was a powerful reminder that as a conversational transient in the day job I need to make more time for potalanoa and fakalotofale’ia with Artichoke in the evenings.