They looked like tinkers, but there wasn’t one amongst them, she knew, who could mend a kettle. What they did was sell invisible things. And after they had sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked.” P24 The Wee Free Men Terry Pratchett
He appears more tightrope walker than floor sander, with tape measure clenched between his teeth and arms outstretched he treads gingerly, making his way across a floorscape made unstable by a complex inter layering of cast off teenage possessions. Finding a place where it is safe to pause and reflect on this obvious example of egregious early parenting he cannot help but turn and ask me what I do in the day job.
I tell him I am a teacher... and when I say “teacher” I see his eyes glaze over - I know this look - I am being categorised as someone who “thinks that they always know the right answer ..... even when they are obviously wrong” ...
It’s OK .... I explain ....I was one of those kids who suffered from premature closure at school ..... I enjoyed whole school assemblies so much I couldn’t imagine myself not attending them regularly throughout my adult life ....He is not reassured by my explanation ... and when I add that the debate, over who sets the criteria for acceptable levels of bedroom floor messiness in the house rivals that over the significance of the Waiho Loop glacial moraine ... I sense that he is tagging his “teacher category folder” with “unfathomable parenting practice”
All I ever wanted to be was a teacher ... and no matter what happens in the day job ... and how many times I find myself frustrated by people in education who don’t even know the universe is locked .... it remains all I ever want to be ...And I wonder .... not for the first time .... how such certainty of occupation .... how such “I know what I like and I like what I do” ....came to someone whose mind is so restless ...
What is about teaching and learning ... The big “T and L” that so captures me?
I suspect it is the adrenalin rush, that raw intellectual and emotional excitement that comes from finding something new ... and from having “stuff I know” about, the content, the process, the how to do it and the nature of the learner undermined ... so that I can look again .... and again ... and again at the same thing ... and find something different each time.
Pratchett had it wrong to imply that being a teacher is about selling “the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked” – rather being a teacher is discovering each day that the key you are selling is the wrong key and furthermore that you are often attempting to unlock the wrong universe.
It seems that it is the same with hairdressing .... when I asked the hairdresser today why she loved her work ... her answer mimicked mine ... She loves the uncertainty ... the not knowing .... that every client brings a different challenge .... and that every client allows her to experiment with “truths” of her professional knowledge and experience. The daily work of the hairdresser may well look the same to an outsider but to someone who understands hairdressing in a more deeply abstracted and connected way ... each day provides something tantalisingly different to learn.
We do a lot of work on curriculum alignment in the day job .... including sitting alongside teachers as they plan learning experiences (coded against student learning outcomes SOLO Taxonomy) for integrated units aligned against the Achievement objectives and Key Competencies in the (new) New Zealand Curriculum.
This process includes integrating thinking and ICT interventions that enhance the conditions of value for identified student learning outcomes, and the creation of SOLO coded student self assessment rubrics so they can see clearly where they are in the learning process and what they can do to improve their understanding .
When the whole integrated unit comes together it is like entering a Csíkszentmihályi flow state ... euphoria for all involved.
We have many integrated units planned against the new New Zealand Curriculum with schools across New Zealand ... so many in fact ....that claims about the newness of the curriculum document surprise me.
Integrating the ICTs in a way that enhances the conditions of value for student learning outcomes into these units is acknowledged as challenging when working with teacher technophobes.
However, I find the task equal in challenge to planning learning experiences with teacher technophiles who seek to recklessly introduce the latest piece of Web2.0 into everything they do with students.
And reading Postman’s Technopoly whilst waiting for the hairdresser to rescue me from my unruliness today ... helps me understand why ... there is a bit about a “pedagogical peace” between “the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word” that I had forgotten.
Postman argues that I am asking the wrong questions about technology in education when I focus so tightly on how ICTs might enhance the conditions of value in the identified learning outcome ...
I have the wrong key ... or even worse in my work I am attempting to unlock the wrong universe.
“we learn nothing when educators ask, Will students learn mathematics better by computers than by textbooks? .....”
What we need to know consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how in conjunction with television it undermines the old idea of school?
New technologies alter the structure of our interests; the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols; the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the area in which thoughts develop. “ Technopoly p17, 18, 19 and 20
I had a Billy Collin’s moment when reading this – Postman’s argument reminded me of Billy Collin’s argument for the integration of technology into a “death by drowning experience” in his poem - The Art of Drowning.
It is a poem that never fails to make me smile ...
The Art of Drowning
By Billy Collins
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.
I especially love linking this last bit to claims made for integrating technology in teaching and learning ...
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
I need to think again about; the things I think about, the things I think with, and the area in which my thoughts develop in education
At the moment it seems likely that in an educational sense I am the fish..
You never fail to give me a laugh Pam. You know I am sure you would always be welcome at our school assemblies - in fact I would be happy to pop out for coffee while you watch my class...
I think in terms of the 'how does technology enhance this' that in junior primary school the question is more:
How can ICTs help the children take ownership of their own learning.
How can ICTs capture the children's learning and help them to reflect on it.
How can the ICTs make this learning accessible to everyone involved, no matter what special needs they have.
How can the ICTs build a learning community link between home and school.
And lastly:
How can ICTs maximise the learning and feedback time for these students rather than having them doing something 'busy' while they wait for their turn to have teacher time?
Perhaps these are more answers to how the technology enhances the conditions of learning and I am on the wrong track rambling here!!
It is frustrating that in teaching we never (and will never) find the right key, but hopefully each key fits the lock a bit better... it would be so boring if we could already unlock all doors. Also it would be so disappointing for the children if someone unlocked their door for them - that pleasure needs to be their own.
Posted by: Marnie | July 03, 2008 at 09:11 PM
Hmm...I have a feeling that I would fit neatly into the Technophile basket at times but I don't know if I would have classified my experimentations in class as 'recklessly introducing technologies (as I didn't know about web 2.0 when a classroom teacher!) into everything I did'. I always tried to ground my practice in what would best enhance the learning of the children which may be the approach that you consider we need to move past. Still, I think to really move into altering our conceptions of learning itself, we need to understand how learners will respond to these technologies. We don't know what we don't know! I think that there is a lot of validity in having 'sandbox time'. I know that the learners in my class did not suffer for this. We had learning and thinking routines established in the class and it wasn't all about the technology. Still, the kids were proficient users of technology and they did have a teacher that experimented from time to time just as I experimented with different teaching approaches and theories from habits of mind to moving from child-centred conversations to idea centred conversations. I added things to the programme that worked and looked at things that didn't and either reworked them and tried again or decided that they were not going to work in that class context. Is that not the nature of good teaching?
Posted by: Suzie Vesper | July 04, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Hey thanks for the comment Marnie ... to know that in the last week of the New Zealand school term you are still reading edu_blogs is remarkable ...
To know that you have the passion and fortitude to read, analyse, synthesise, and then formulate a thoughtful comment in response to an Artichoke post takes you close to edu_blog sainthood. I would claim it as Mother Theresa stuff Marnie ... if Mother Theresa had not been exposed as fraudulent
According to Postman we are equally guilty Marnie ... Your flawed thinking about ICTs and learning is aligned to mine ... for we are both looking at how ICTs can enhance learning outcomes ...
Postman’s argument is that looking at learning outcomes is simply too shallow Marnie ... we are both asking the wrong questions about ICT’s
And to pretend that there aren’t keys worth sharing about to how we learn ... or to suggest that it would be disappointing if someone unlocked a door for you is to misunderstand the metaphor ...
is the nonsense of that I am a guide on the side ... that I am a facilitator stuff that a reliance on one pedagogical model allows ...
For to argue that we have to unlock our own doors before they have value Marnie ... is to argue that the professional expertise of teachers is not needed in classrooms ... if we allow this belief about learning then the logical extension is that teachers are redundant ...
...if the kids have to do learning and unlocking of doors all by themselves for it to have meaning then the Government and the MoE will be able to save a whole heap of money that is used to align teachers salaries with other professionals ....and use it to resouce greater connectivity and ICT resourcing in schools ... and they'd have money left over to resource health
...if our role is simply to keep kids safe whilst they find their own keys to the universe (perhaps using ICTs and connectedness of this latest froth we call Web2.) ... then our salaries should match those of other caregivers in society ... and knowing what caregivers in dementia centres have to do makes me certain that caregiver teachers equivalents would/ should earn less ...
We have professional expertise Marnie, I have and I believe you have ....
.... we both have keys to share and we should not let our current MoE enthusiasms for constructivist pedagogies allow us to pretend that we don’t
Posted by: Artichoke | July 04, 2008 at 08:21 PM
Thanks for the feedback Suzie,
As you might suspect “fitting neatly into any basket” is foreign to me, and given that I don’t understand basket fitting it is inappropriate for me to comment on your self identified technophilia – but it is probably safe to observe that a “Technophile” would be unlikely to describe what they do as a “reckless” introduction of technologies, ......
Falling helplessly in lust/love ... as anyone who has ever experienced falling like a stone for someone or something will attest is accompanied by the inability to see the recklessness of ones actions, - in fact the absence of caution or reasoned action is a necessary and arguably sufficient characteristic of the state of being helplessly in love with something.
I described the symptoms of techno lust a couple of years ago in a post called ULearn06 The Breast Pussy and Behind Edu_Game ... is a very popular Artichoke post according to my Google Stats ... but not for the reasons that it was written ... when I re-read it now I suspect it will still be relevant for ict conferences in 2008
Re: I added things to the programme that worked and looked at things that didn't and either reworked them and tried again or decided that they were not going to work in that class context. Is that not the nature of good teaching?
The short answer is probably not Suzie ... I know the New Zealand Curriculum identifies Teaching as Inquiry (page 35) but Dr Adrienne Alton-Lee has fingered this affection for “craft practice” in New Zealand classrooms as a cause for concern
‘Craft practice’ is used here to mean the model of teaching where practice is based on teachers’ experience, where there is discussion about teaching matters but involvement in other teachers’ day-to-day practice in classrooms occurs normally only in the context of pre-service practica. There is emphasis on management and discipline, evaluation is based on judgement about how the teaching went rather than consideration of the children’s learning, and the prevailing norms and practices of classrooms are maintained. A craft practice approach does not involve engagement with R & D around pedagogy.
Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis:
Strengthening Research, Policy and Practice Links to Improve Outcomes
Dr Adrienne Alton-Lee, Chief Education Adviser. Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme. Medium Term Strategy Policy Division, New Zealand Ministry of Education. 4th Annual Policy Conference: Policy Evolution 29 March, 2006
I am currently reading Jonathan Zittrain - "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it" and Alan Liu "The Laws of Cool" to help me clarify the deep unease I experience when educators hype Web2.0 ... both authors are quite useful in clarifying what Postman is asking us to think and talk about as educators ...
Posted by: Artichoke | July 04, 2008 at 11:00 PM
I think I need to get reading to be able to enter this debate from a more informed angle (and probably not try posting after midnight either :-) Still, the quote that you have used on a 'craft practice approach' does not, I think, entirely represent what I meant in relation to my practice in the classroom. I believe that I did look at the impact of initiatives in relation to the change in student learning rather than from a management and organisation perspective as the 'craft practice' describes. As part of the action research cycles that I was part of in the classroom, I did a lot of reading around the topic first in order to challenge my assumptions and to clarify my own approach. I would also move away from my original line of inquiry if needed as the research evolved. I think it is simplistic to equate teacher inquiry with a craft practice approach. When reading the description above, I think the two things are not exactly the same.
I do know what you mean about web 2.o hype. I am a believer in the power of a lot of these tools (I have a whole wiki devoted to them afterall :-) but I do not think they are the holy grail and many tools may one day vanish as they realise they can't monetise their products. I feel uneasy too when I hear people saying they are doing 'web 2.0' because they are blogging when many of the blogs are little more than digital classroom newsletters put together by the teacher with little impact on the students (other than giving them a sense of audience of course). That is not to say that there is not the potential in some of these tools to have a large impact if they are used correctly with reflective thinking going into why it is being used and how is it developing thinking and understanding in children. I think the work you are doing with the SOLO taxonomy is therefore a really exciting approach (btw - are you going to share all these wonderful plans you are co-constructing with teachers? What an amazing resource that would be!). How is the use of the tool going to develop children's thinking, what level of thinking is being encouraged by the design of the task and how can the children assess this. I think this targeted use of ICT will ensure that there is a baseline for both the over enthusiastic ICT teacher and the unenthusiastic staff who probably need to see the power of the ICT through evidence of the children's improvement.
I have rambled on and I'm not even sure what my point is anymore! Too late at night :-) Got to love blog dialogues. I must start doing some wider reading. Feel free to send me a list of your top reads [email protected]
Posted by: Suzie Vesper | July 05, 2008 at 12:34 AM
It is nice to think we might claim otherwise Suzie, and I do wish I could agree with you because I don’t want to think of myself as the equivalent of a lust fuelled maker of macramé pot plant holders who relies on the ICT equivalent of the Women’s Weekly for my professional reading either
BUT if we are brutally honest about what we do with ICTs in our classrooms in New Zealand how can we be anything else but ....
It just has to be craft practice ... when you read the following from the same report on the iBES by Adrienne Alton-Lee
The OECD Report includes an assessment of educational research in New Zealand and estimated educational research funding to be even lower than that for other OECD countries at between 0.17- 0.20%:- the uneven distribution of the excellent researchers across tertiary institutions;
- much of the quality research may not be oriented towards R & D (only a proportion of the available quality research focuses on improving educational practice which is small subset of the wide-ranging interests of academics in education);
- the relatively low prevalence of quality research in some teacher education institutions,
- research quality in New Zealand education was assessed as lowest in teacher education, e-learning and curriculum (with the exception of mathematics and science); and
- undermined social capital in the form of networks and relationships fostering trust and reciprocity in New Zealand educational research was identified as a national weakness in the OECD Review (2001)16.
At the same time New Zealand invests far less in research and development of any kind than other developed countries, and has far lower R & D personnel per million population than Australia or Western European countries. New Zealand is successful educationally, but is, by R & D standards, not becoming a knowledge economy. (p. 89).
Government strategies in New Zealand have followed or been in train to lift research activity. For example; the establishment of a $2 million annual grant for researchers to work in partnership with institutions to do R & D focussed on needs identified by researchers and educators: The Teaching and Learning Research Initiative.
Tertiary policy has also led to the establishment of additional funding to Centres of Research Excellence in tertiary institutions. However, none of the new Centres is focussed on education. In 2003 the first national assessment of the quality and extent of research activity of the tertiary sector was conducted: The Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) Quality Evaluation.
The results of the PBRF showed educational research in New Zealand to have the third highest actual numbers of A-ranked researchers (research of world-class standard) of any discipline. The number of A-rated researchers in education was outranked only by academics in engineering and technology.
However, the evaluations indicated that the submitted research portfolios for almost three quarters of tertiary academics working specifically in education were evaluated as either research inactive, emergent or not demonstrating good-quality research; which meant that education was one of the poorest performing subject areas across the board. Even if the poor performance underestimates valuable unreported R & D activity such activity is unavailable to inform development more widely through publication.
The Education Peer Review Panel (2004)concluded that the ‘there is clear evidence of a critical mass of nationally and internationally excellent researchers in education in New Zealand and this augurs well for the future of our discipline’ (p. 283)
Despite this optimism for the future, the need for R & D to improve practice for diverse learners is pressing, and there are areas of concern.
Closer links between research and practice are mitigated against because of at least five factors. These are:
This last factor raises concerns that many educational researchers may be working in quite siloed ways in New Zealand. This can mean researchers ‘rediscovering the wheel’ rather than engaging with, and building on the work of others. This problem has been highlighted by the authors of a recent review of New Zealand research on initial teacher education.
Overcoming these barriers to the escalation of R & D in New Zealand education is critical because to understand and strengthen New Zealand education we need New Zealand R & D. The international research provides a substantial resource for public policy in a small economy. But, when using international research, New Zealand educators and policy-developers need to know if what the evidence indicates works in other countries would apply in the New Zealand context, given regulatory, policy, institutional, cultural, language, professional and other contextual differences. For example, educational policy and practice needs to understand the ways in which indigeneity is salient and the nature of school-based self-management in New Zealand.
Further, to bring about effective change we need the practice and benefits of R & D to permeate New Zealand education. Critical to the potential role of R & D as a lever for change is the degree of inter-relationship between research and development. The potential of collaborative and systematic action research for change exemplifies the power of an ongoing and iterative cycle of feedback and improvement when R & D inform each other.
This notion of an interdependent process between R & D in education contrasts with traditional approaches where educational resource development, innovation and research may be occurring independently of each other. This siloed approach lacks the leverage for realistic, effective, synergistic, cumulative and sustainable development possible when R & D are interdependent. Such fragmentation also carries risks for teacher burnout and ineffectiveness for learners that bandwagonism and isolation can bring.
The goal of the Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme is to bring together previously inaccessible research evidence about what works in an iterative process of synthesis development that builds upon R & D, informs R & D, is a capability building tool for R & D and becomes a stimulus for intensified R & D activity across policy, research and practice in ways that improve practice.
This sure reads like what we are doing when we integrate ICTs into student learning in New Zealand is mostly craft practice to me Suzie
Posted by: Artichoke | July 05, 2008 at 09:02 PM