The Easter holiday represents a pause, a chance to catch breath and enjoy the texture of my world ... I have mostly caught up on promises made and promises broken – and I am at last free to think about some of the approaches to building deep maths understanding and mathematical innovation observed in the secondary schools I worked in this term - and from there the relationship of creativity to educational policy.
I know it’s only an impression but it seems that ever since the launch of the New Zealand Curriculum, we have been awash with calls to “bring back” creativity in classrooms.
I always smile grimly at this quote from Robinson - our adult literacy results - "380,000 Kiwi adults' whose “literacy skills are so poor they would be unable to determine how to use a fire extinguisher from the instructions written on the bottle.” (Prime Minister Helen Clark 2007) suggest that Robinson is not aiming high enough if he wants to lift creative potential/capital through educational endeavour.
Still it seems the “call creative” is the new cry of the educational wild. And it has grown louder and increasingly wilder with our Education Minister Anne Tolley’s call for the introduction of national standards. A call, which despite Tolley’s best efforts, (see Questions for oral answer 9 April 2009 below), is being widely and possibly unfairly represented in New Zealand schools, as a call for the introduction of league tables.
... and it is hard to counter the need for improving the ways in which we understand student achievement given the ERO statement that despite all the measuring going on in New Zealand schools - 56 percent of them were not using worthwhile achievement data to look at their student learning outcomes.
ERO’s 56 percent statistic reminded me of John Hattie’s key question at the end of Visible Learning.
In the New Zealand schools I work with there has been a lot of talk about national standards leading to league tables which if I take taxi drivers as a measure - seems a prospect that bothers educators much more than it does the rest of the country.
There has also been the suggestion that creative endeavour and creativity, which is widely and for the most part approvingly received by teachers, will be lost if we adopt national standards.
To sum up these lunchtime conversations: we have Tolley’s - National standards “a very bad thing – don’t let them in” , Robinson’s - Creativity in classrooms – “ a very good thing – let’s bring it back”
The weird thing about any discussion about “creativity” in New Zealand is not the “let’s bring it back” sentiment – though that’s kind of weird since it never went away in a lot of the places I work - it is the creative conversation default setting.
When you join a conversation about creativity in education in New Zealand - instead of finding yourself interrogating what creativity might mean in 2009, or evaluating how we might judge creative practice in New Zealand classrooms - you end up revisiting the writings of Elwyn Richardson in the 1950’s early sixties.
This default to the activities of just one male teacher and his mostly self described creative practices from nearly sixty years ago makes me suspicious.
I’d like to ask -
Why are we privileging Richardson’s descriptions of his classroom experiences?
Why was it that Richardson was published and promoted and other creative educators didn’t and aren’t?
I ask this because I do not find it plausible that in a culture that is built upon “number eight fencing wire innovation” Richardson was, (or for that matter is), the only educator designing worthy creative adventures in learning in New Zealand classrooms.
I don’t find it credible that nothing creatively worthy was going on in New Zealand classrooms before Richardson, at the same time as Richardson, or since Richardson.
And I also wonder why - if creative teaching did occur in the past and does occur in the present - we don’t we refer to it today? Why we don’t appear to even know about it?
You might jump in here and declare Richardson an iconic educator on the basis of his writings and the memories of teaching colleagues – but it does not explain why in our discussion and commentaries we fail to reference any creative educators before or since Richardson – For instance I have never climbed a mountain but I know the names of more New Zealand mountain climbers than I do New Zealand teachers famous for their creative teaching practice or creative student outcomes.
It makes me wonder if anyone at NZCER has done a historiography of creativity and creative practice in New Zealand education; has anyone looked at the way creativity has been represented and understood and the way creativity has been written about?
It seems more likely that we have neglected and undervalued the stories and practices of other creative teachers in New Zealand in a way that we haven’t done for mountain climbers both before and after Hillary.
If we did privilege Richardson in the past and if we continue to do so - is this because of gender, or ethnicity, is it simply because our current day commentators are mostly contemporaries of Elwyn, or is it something else?
I suspect we need to clarify “creativity” and to more carefully distinguish creative acts of teaching from creative achievement outcomes if we are to progress.
To ask –
What are the assumptions we make when we identify a teacher and or their practice as creative?
Does creative teaching result in creative achievements by students who in turn become creative adults?
Should it?
Is a measure of the success of a creative teacher the measure of the creative success of their students?
Should it be?
What is the measure of the success of a creative teacher?
Without a measure of achievement success how can a creative teacher who is teaching creatively tell what they are doing, whether it is going well or not, and what they should do next?
Ditto for the student in a classroom with a teacher who identifies themselves as creative or who describes their teaching strategies as those developing creative outcomes.
Who do we judge to be creative adults in New Zealand today?
Who taught the New Zealanders we judge as creative today, and how did they teach them?
What did these creative New Zealanders remember learning from their teachers that they believe enhanced their own creative abilities?
If we accept Ken Robinson’s definition of creativity
Then J.J Thompson must surely have been a highly successful in enhancing creative thinking in the science students he taught
And Bill Manhire - jumps out as a New Zealand educator who is highly successful in enhancing creative writing in the writers he teaches.
.
Perhaps the researchers of a historiography of creativity in New Zealand education could start by asking the contributers to Manhire at 60: A Book for Bill (ed Fergus Barrowman and Damien Wilkins; 2007, VUP) to identify “How did he teach?” – "what were his rules of thumb?"
Those staffroom claims – both simplistic and expansive, that our current educational focus on accountability, assessment and compliance are dangerously hampering the innovative and original classroom teacher need to be more carefully unpacked.
Because I don’t know that they can reliably or validly be used to reject the Minister of Education Anne Tolley’s push for a national standards policy.
Hargreave’s I’m stuck to the floor keynote address at L@S09 - “The Fourth Way” revealed a man and a mind that was funny, provocative and ever so smart – a great pick by the conference programme organisers to launch New Zealand teachers at the start of our school year. His claims over the freedoms and innovation The First Way afforded teachers seem kind of relevant here
“These policies provided unprecedented levels of support for the poor, but they also fostered long term state dependency without providing any real foundation for long term civic engagement. The First Way granted state professionals, including educators, considerable freedom. In education, it fostered innovation but also allowed unacceptable variations in quality.”
Rather like topology we shouldn’t be looking at the objects involved but rather at the ways in which they work together.
Creativity and creative endeavour is advanced by deep learning, and conceptual understanding and if national standards mean knowing what you are doing, whether it is going well and what to do next then it would seem that national standards and creativity may well be two straight lines that cross over in the middle.
One supports the other and X marks the spot.
It is disappointing to see virtually all politicians and the right wing generally sailing on a course toward league tables - accidentally or otherwise.
Education is not just a brain dump by teachers - even if they are very good at proving through assessment how well this had happened. In the real world, you do not get spoon fed.
You need to be creative to excel at solving the kind of problems you strike in the diverse and complex environment of New Zealand 2009.
Creativity has many forms - not only the visual and performing arts, not only technology, not only fields like design and marketing. There is the whole realm of research - scientific and social - that cries out for original thinking - thinking outside the square for those with a commercial bent.
It is a shame to see the high decile system (with well resourced learners) churning out accountants and lawyers by the mile, when one suspects that a more risk taking approach may produce some stunning leadership in other areas.
Falling back on 1950's mentality projected to the present day is silly stuff. By pretending that all that matters in Education is reading, 'riting and 'ritmetic we drive the spark of youth back to the grim old days - no matter how we try to dress it up. Schools are not production lines, they are living institutions with potetntial for setting their graduates on a fast track into the real world.
Lets not continue to put each other to sleep.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Posted by: www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmNfvYyLCoY9USno523xvxN7a0ASncKNVE | April 17, 2009 at 05:38 PM
RE: It is disappointing to see virtually all politicians and the right wing generally sailing on a course toward league tables - accidentally or otherwise.
It is often disappointing to see people “sailing on a course toward” something ... but it is arguably sadder to see people sailing without a course ...
RE: Education is not just a brain dump by teachers - even if they are very good at proving through assessment how well this had happened. In the real world, you do not get spoon fed.
I am always excited by claims that teaching and learning is something distanced from “the real world”
It makes me want to ask – just what is the real world? How is it similar to and different from the institutionalised practice of teaching and learning? When I look closely at the real world I have lived and worked with this year – the real world as experienced by multinationals, lawyers, government departments, reserach centers, dementia centers, and taxi drivers ... I am certain that we are more alike than we are different and that claims that distance teaching and learning from the real are more imagined than real.
I have seen spoon feeding and for that matter brain dumping all over.
RE: You need to be creative to excel at solving the kind of problems you strike in the diverse and complex environment of New Zealand 2009.
Too true ... and too false
RE: Creativity has many forms - not only the visual and performing arts, not only technology, not only fields like design and marketing. There is the whole realm of research - scientific and social - that cries out for original thinking - thinking outside the square for those with a commercial bent.
I don't want to explore what bends people but when you unpack what creativity involves and where it has come from you find that it often involves deep conceptual understanding ... and that this great insight is the result of transdisciplinary insights – it has come from individuals who have this deep understanding in more than one domain – renaissance thinkers .. so it seems plausible that innovations that will enhance our world will come from individuals who are literate and or numerate
RE: It is a shame to see the high decile system (with well resourced learners) churning out accountants and lawyers by the mile, when one suspects that a more risk taking approach may produce some stunning leadership in other areas.
I am unsure of your argument here. Is your argument that it would be equally a shame if the low decile system (with your poorly resourced learners) churned out accountants and lawyers ...is it the churning you object to ... or is it what it is churned into ?
School is an institution predicated on churning ... so it is hard to complain about the churning per se
I will agree that it is a shame to see any system simply churning out lawyers and accountants – or for that matter simply churning out any other profession ... I think school if it exists at all should be about churning out people who know what it is to be human ... but I have met too many highly creative accountants and too many maverick lawyers to suggest that these professions only allow housekeeping and template thinking.
Re: Falling back on 1950's mentality projected to the present day is silly stuff.
Projecting must always risk silliness ... to paraphrase Popper ... speculation is our only means of interpretation ... I just object to speculation that is based on such a limited sampling on what creativity in an educational setting might be
RE: By pretending that all that matters in Education is reading, 'riting and 'ritmetic we drive the spark of youth back to the grim old days - no matter how we try to dress it up.
This is an opinion most commonly espoused by people who are already literate and numerate. By pretending that reading and writing and arithmetic do not matter we play god with the lives of the children of others – who are we to decide to limit their future opportunities as adults? - on another but not unrelated note ...it always fascinates me to observe where teachers choose to educate their own children ... (I’d love to see the stats for parental careers in independent school enrolments) and look around you and observe how relaxed teachers are about the level of illiteracy and innumeracy they tolerate in their own children.
RE: Schools are not production lines, they are living institutions with potetntial for setting their graduates on a fast track into the real world.
Try unpacking "institution" – and you will see the significant flaw in this reasoning.
Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.
RE: Lets not continue to put each other to sleep.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Creating human beings who are literate and numerate is a highly skilled and creative endeavour. And human beings who are literate and numerate are not automatically excluded from deliberate acts of creativity ... in fact it is arguable that they are better able to access different ideas to integrate and innovate.
In truth if you track the significant events that have changed our world the literate and numerate were wide awake and right up there.
I think the problem lies in our confused interpretations of the word creativity -
I started thinking about this in the Curriculum Matters article in 2006 – (see below) but it needs more analysis to separate the creative person from the creative activity from the creative product
Our approach to teaching creativity in schools seems to imply the understanding that teaching the creative process will necessarily lead to creative outcome that is marked by originality. For example, the British National Curriculum in Action Project—Creativity, Culture, and Education—describes the characteristics of creativity in the context of schools:
• thinking or behaving imaginatively;
• imaginative activity [that] is purposeful;
• creative processes must generate something original; and
• creative outcome must be of value in relation to the objective.
(Department for Education and Skills, 1999, p. 30)
This understanding hinges on our interpretation of originality and innovation, for to recognise innovation requires that some things remain the same. The telling question is, “How will we recognise innovation if every student is thinking innovatively, in an original way?”
Koestler (1970) argues that creative activity, be it in humour, discovery, or art, is the result of a bisociative act. These are acts that juxtapose two ideas that normally do not get thought of together. Bisociation demands flexibility, and establishes an unstable equilibrium that leads to creative originality. Understanding Koestler’s argument would lead educators to rich frameworks for building creative endeavour, such as the bisociation involved in Fraser’s work with young New Zealanders on building creativity through metaphor (Fraser, 2000).
It is worth noting that novel and innovative thought does not sit comfortably within institutions. The curious mind, the question, and the questioner, are not necessarily valued or encouraged in society, let alone in staffrooms and classrooms. Moltzen, describing the early educational experiences of highly-achieving creative New Zealand adults, uses the descriptors “fraught and miserable” (Moltzen, 2004). Hook 2006
Posted by: Artichoke | April 17, 2009 at 07:13 PM
An interesting post as always! I agree with much of what you have to say about the place of creativity and the importance of literacy and numeracy in education. I can even see that national standards, if built around existing assessment practices could complement this approach. I do have issues with what could happen to this data if available to the general public without any context given in the form of league tables. While Anne Tolley might have stated that the MoE will not be publishing league tables, she is also quoted as saying,
"The Government could not stop the media from accessing the information and producing league tables. We have a society that values freedom of information. Personally, I think the more information that's out there the better."
My concern about the publishing of league tables comes from my experiences as a teacher in London where I worked for four and a half years. There they have the year two and six SATS tests. I saw the following negative impact from league tables.
Narrowing of the curriculum
The children were drilled on the content they needed for the literacy, maths and science tests at the expense of other curriculum areas such as art and PE for the two terms before the tests. The curriculum became incredibly narrow. In one year six class, the writing programme revolved around non-fiction writing as it was considered the children had a better chance at getting a higher mark than if they choose the fiction option in the test. They were not given the experience of writing fiction leading up to the test and were basically instructed to not select the fiction option. While there may not be the same kind of national tests introduced in New Zealand, if results are only collected on some curriculum areas such as numeracy and literacy, that will be where the emphasis will go and I believe that will always result in a narrower curriculum.
Creative test implementation
This is a nicer way of saying that teachers began to cheat a little to bring up results. I was a full time ESL teacher at the time and my students were obviously considered to be a group that would bring down the test results. We gave them 'extra' time to do the tests and I was instructed to walk around and point to an incorrect question while making strong eye contact with the child ie telling them to think again. I felt uncomfortable with this but this was very common. There were many stories around of teachers in other schools cheating in even more flagrant ways. In New Zealand, I can see it would be all too easy to give that extra bit of assistance in a running record or numeracy test to raise the results. As these tests involve interaction with teachers, it would be easy for teachers to feel pressure to make the results look good with just that extra bit of prompting.
Stressed teachers and students
The amount of pressure that went on students around SATS tests was huge. It was all that was talked about throughout the testing year. I have heard stories of children returning to bed wetting with the worry. There was also 'treats' to be earned for those that performed which added to the pressure that children were under. Teachers also had a lot of pressure put on them to get results. I've seen teachers go on stress leave because they couldn't cope.
Sink schools
Another side effect was the way the league tables could create sink schools where one lower set of results would result in a number of parents withdrawing their children from the school. Often these kids were ones that performed well in tests which led to the school getting lower results the next round. This could often mean a school would end up in a downwards spiral.
These are the reasons why I am opposed to league tables and if the collection of data from schools could result in the media getting hold of this to create them, then I am concerned about this as well.
Posted by: suzievesper | April 18, 2009 at 12:58 PM
Thanks for sharing your thinking around this post Suzie,
It is late and I have just suffered two hours of blood splattering as Temudjin sorts out leadership issues with the Mongols - aka I will make them obey... ...even if I have to kill half of them. so you must excuse any perceived brutality in the response
I was thinking about how we misunderstand creativity in this post rather than arguing for or against league tables, but I’ll have a go at answering your concerns ..
Re: I do have issues with what could happen to this data if available to the general public without any context given in the form of league tables.
I think it is somewhat mischievous for educators to represent an opportunity to create clear measurement targets for judging our own practice and checking for evidence that all our students are learning, as simply bringing in “LEAGUE TABLES”.
This suggests that as a profession we are not interested in taking responsibility for student achievement – for we not only reject opportunities to use evidence to improve our practice and thus student achievement – we routinely represent these professional opportunities to be responsible for what happens in terms of student achievement as the imposition of an unfair accountability -an imposition that will (because of what we do in response to this imposition) – damage children.
It makes me want to ask just what are we prepared to be responsible for in terms of student achievement
Those “league tables will lead to” arguments we produce to reject things like national targets (or even the between school sharing of norm referenced school data provided by things like AsTTle) make me uncomfortable
They suggest that as a profession we believe that
The other way to find out how schools are league table ranked is to sit quietly in any staffroom when teachers are reading the Gazette.
Refer The Quality of Teaching in Y0 to 8 Social Studies (2006) – “Overall, ERO found that a fifth of teachers were effective teachers of social studies. ERO identified 21 percent of teachers who were effective in all six areas of quality of teaching. A further 63 percent of teachers were effective in some areas but less effective in other areas of quality teaching. Sixteen percent of the teachers reviewed were less effective in all of aspects of the quality of teaching of social studies.”
Or check out NZEI’s response to our embarrassingly poor achievements in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study - Science testing of Y5 students last year
NZEI President Frances Nelson says in many ways science has fallen victim to curriculum crowding and schools need to prioritise the work they do. Scoop report December 2008 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0812/S00020.htm
And Freakonomics http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/006073132X has this lovely research from Chicago showing that that five percent of teachers cheated to improve students test scores - check out Catching Cheating Teachers The Results of an Unusual Experiment in Implementing Theory http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/JacobLevittCatchingCheating2003.pdf
So I am certain you are right - some teachers will cheat – there is evidence that suggests honesty is only a function of how likely you think it is you will be caught – accountants, investors, lawyers, car salesmen, plumbers and childcare workers are caught cheating every day – but we don’t use this as an argument to absolve them from responsibility – Can you imagine going to the Securities Commission and arguing that companies should not have to file financial reports because the expectation might cause some of them to cheat
If you were in Auckland Suzie I would invite you to meet with people who are not educators and we could listen to them talk about their local schools (you would quickly learn that league tables are already here).
And then we could listen to parents talk about the learning experiences and achievement outcomes they dream will be provided for their children when they give them over to our care five days a week
John Hattie calls it achieving “desirable curricular outcomes at a sufficient rate.” Visible Learning P252,
Listening to what parents dream for their children is sobering stuff and it makes me hungry to find ways of improving what we do with students so they can achieve desirable curricular outcomes at a sufficient rate – because at the moment we have a whole group of them who don’t and who aren’t.
Posted by: Artichoke | April 19, 2009 at 12:24 AM
i notice you have Outliers on your library. did you like it? thoughts? check out my site, including review of the tipping point (same author) at http://amandadavenport.com
amanda
Posted by: Amanda Davenport | April 22, 2009 at 01:59 PM
Hi Amanda,
Thanks for the comment and for the link back to your edublog - I have enjoying reading about your thinking and your experiences in teaching somewhere far away from New Zealand made me smile - there is something universal abaout teaching and learning and the expectation that it should always be fun.
One of my favorite things to tell my friends was that my back door had the words “Miss Davenport is no fun” written across it for all three years I worked there.
I also enjoy Gladwell’s writing - he makes me re-think so many things that I didn’t even realise were contestable - undermines things I have long taken for granted - so yes I am enjoying Outliers.
In terms of his argument on your blog post regarding crime rates you may enjoy another angle provided in THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2 THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON CRIME*JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf - That is if you haven't already read it
If you haven't you might also enjoy the book Freakonomics or the feed from the Freakonomics Blog - both are full of analysis that change what you thought you knew http://freakonomicsbook.com/
Posted by: Artichoke | April 22, 2009 at 04:00 PM
Hi Arti,
It is not the prospect of Education Standards that concerns me. As a parent AND a principal I WANT to know how my own children and those in our school are doing. How they compare with themselves in the past and with expectations in the here and now. What they will focus on next, and what I can do to support this. The expectations can come from me, our school, research, or nationally.
The concern for me is what happens with the information once it is collected, not the concept of the measurement itself. Anne Tollys flip-flopping in the media about her vision for the use/s of the national measurement information has done little to allay the fears of teachers and schools. International experience also shows us many of the negative aspects of league tables in particular. There are places in the USA with no arts, PE (creative?) programmes at all as schools focus entirely on hurdling the cognitive bar of the state-set standards. Classic "teach to the test".
I am not sure how this informs learning and teaching - and isn't this why we assess? To make learning better, more focused, identify next steps and possibilities?
I am concerned that the things that we can already forsee will flow out of any public national comparison of simple end-point summative data will come to fruition. As I have written in my blog simple end point testing is little more than a test of community, certainly not of learning or school/teacher quality. If overseas experiences become the norm here this would be sad for creativity, our schools, our children and a lost opportunity for what we are trying to embrace with our new NZC.
cheers
Greg
Posted by: Greg Carroll | April 27, 2009 at 08:40 PM
Hi Greg,thanks for taking the time to comment on artichoke
It seems to me that like Suzie’s previous comment you are introducing two different ideas here
Help me understand - does the following represent your argument?
You are in support of some kind of national measurement of some kind of student achievement outcomes
In the school of which you are principal you will accept measurement expectations used to create these standards if they come from; yourself, your school, research and nationally.
Do you include parents and the students themselves in setting these targets Greg? You may also find there is an interest at government level in student achievement outcomes or targets that loo wider than national – targets that meet international expectations - connected world – globalisation and all that stuff
Your concern is over data sharing – who gets to see the measurement data from your school –
Does this mean that you also have reservations about other measures of school performance currently available online (e.g. ERO Reports)?
You feel that Anne Tolly flip flops
You believe flip flopping by a Minister of Education does not allay fear
I will admit I do not hold the media in such high regard as you do Greg – May just be my experience but I have not found it to be a reliable or valid source of information about what is happening in our schools or what might happen in our schools – my impression is that educational reporting in our media is designed to exacerbate fear not allay it – so media reports of flip flopping leave me unsurprised and essentially unmoved –
And I’d like to think that this Minister might be different Greg ... I am a trusting soul and hold high apple pie in the sky hopes for each new minister
However, if I thought the media were credible in the reporting of flip flopping - given the policy u turns we have observed in previous ministers I suspect that a little bit of me believes that flip flopping is an expected part of a political role
You have evidence that league tables have had unhappy outcomes in countries outside of New Zealand
Assessment makes learning better but not when it is shared with too many others
You see “National Standards” are “simple end-point summative data”
Simple end point testing tests the quality of a community
This is an interesting claim Greg – I haven’t read your blog but in distancing responsibility for achievement (in simple end point testing) from teachers and schools and claiming that different qualities of communities are responsible - are you suggesting that student ability in simple end point tests is irrevocably linked to the quality of the community their parents live in? How do you determine quality of a community – do you refer to the economic quality/ cultural quality/ environmental quality?
Do you hold this to be true for other achievement measures? E.g kids from quality communities do better in achievement tests a, b and c regardless of the quality of the teaching they receive or school they attend? And if you don’t, can you describe the achievement measures that might test teacher/school quality
Introducing overseas experiences (in national standards?) will bring sadness and lost opportunities
There are many international (and national) experiences in education that have had negative outcomes Greg –
If as a profession we believe that
and lobby strongly against national standards – which you claim to like
Then perhaps we should also lobby for or against some of the other international experiences that have been shown to be bad for students in other countries
If I was making a list I’d want to include the influence of romantic Rousseian educators – check out the findings from Project Follow Through (in Visible Learning Hattie p258) –
Additionally if you respect the opinion of Karen Sewell her Chief Executive Report in the Ministry of Education Statement of Intent 2008 to 2013 suggests that there are many national experiences in education in New Zealand that have negative outcomes –
To use your criteria Greg - we may well have arts PE and creativity in New Zealand and we may well avoid national standards but we have an achievement gap profile and massive lost potential that we should not countenance if we want to live in a culture of collective responsibility -
By international comparisons our students are doing well. Our best are as good as the best anywhere in the world. But the gap in achievement between those at the top and those at the bottom is too great. We know the system is under performing for many Māori, and achievement rates for Pasifika students are, on average, too low.
Too many young people are leaving school early with low or no qualifications. Forty percent leave school with less than a level two NCEA qualification. It is estimated that 20,000 15- to 19- year-olds are not engaged in learning or work. That’s a huge loss of potential for New Zealand and lost opportunities for a large number of young people.
We don’t need to wait for league tables to create negative outcomes – our practice has already created them -
And before I could start to think about engaging with the whole "league tables are created by national standards" argument and then "league tables are bad" arguments Greg I’d like to better understand what happens when you create national standards with clear targets in the first place
For example I’d like to read more about the results shared by Andy Hargreaves from England’s Raising Achievement Transforming Learning Project in England. Will similar clear targets improve learning outcomes in New Zealand?
Then I’d be in a better position to think about whether clear targets create league tables - whether league tables reduce learning outcomes – and whether any positive effects created by clear targets overwhelm any negative consequences.
Posted by: Artichoke | April 28, 2009 at 12:39 AM
me again .... thinking out aloud ...
Help me understand - does the following represent your argument?
You are in support of some kind of national measurement of some kind of student achievement outcomes? Don't we already have national measures? NEMP, ASTTLE, ERO, ENP/ANP, Reading Ages and veritable forest of other capital letters. Why yet another set? I don't have particular issues with the introduction of national standards but I do have reservations with what the forseeable flow-on effects will be.
Does this mean that you also have reservations about other measures of school performance currently available online (e.g. ERO Reports)? I do have a few reservations about ERO reports knowing the depth of understanding and engagement with schools on which they are sometimes built. I have had considerable issues in the past with ERO personnel with little understanding of the primary school classroom or pedagogy.
I will admit I do not hold the media in such high regard as you do Greg - I don't believe the media are necessarily pervayers of the truth. My first principal position was following Robin Bain into Taieri Beach School. Waking to find TV cameras filming our bedroom windows in the school house, and dealing with a staff member who has had a TV news team send her flowers so they can get footage of her answering her front door for a story are the sort of things that make you rather cynical about editorial motives. It is however the role of the political creature to carefully manage what they say and the messages they give. "Flip-flopping" publicly is not doing this. A key part of effective leadership is being predictable.
I don't believe end point assessment IS a test of school quality. Seeing how many children in a school 'pass' any sort of national standard really tells us little if we delve a little deeper:
* where did the children start? ... this is the thrust of my comments about being "a test of community". Children who start further below any measure obviously have further to go to get above the bar. Research shows us some communities are more likely to be in this situation than others.
* what difference has the teaching in the school actually made? Is it greater than Hatties 0.4 or would the children done just as well, or better even, being alive and present in some other classroom?
* Can we measure a trajectory of learning? What about the able child whose learning is flatlined but is over the bar of a national standard? Are we happy simply they have passed? What about celebrating the learning and teaching for a child who has been well below the 'standard', has made great progress, but is still 'below'?
* is it not the difference between where the children were on the measure and where they are now that is the school effect? Simply knowing where they are now is only half the picture.
* Is not the higher performing school the one that makes the largest difference to the learning of its children? This can be measured irrespective of where the beginning point is, and the end point makes no particular difference either. It is the movement from 'then' to 'now' that makes the difference, not how high the 'now' is.
Simply setting targets does not mean there will be any effect on learning. Fullan in his seminar series in NZ quoted research (sorry don't remember any reference) showing an inverse relationship between the 'quality' (as measured by ERO type criteria) of school strategic planning and school learning outcomes. Does the same logic come into play here? I wonder ...
cheers
Greg
Posted by: Greg Carroll | April 28, 2009 at 09:57 PM
Thanks for unpacking this further for me Greg - the trouble with the words we use in teaching and learning is that mean different things to the different people using them.
The value added thing you suggest has always interested me – and assessment is not really my thing but I suspect that this is also not as straight forward as we pretend it to be
You claim that
"Making the largest difference" may not be as meaningful a measure of high performance as you suggest
If we look at value added in terms of “direct measures” of what the kids know or can do – and your "beginning and end points" then we need to ask about the relationship of incremental growth in learning/or rate of learning in all of this – is rate of learning linear? Is it affected by student ability? Is it affected by the conceptual difficulty of the material being mastered?
The difference between "then and now" gets even muddier when we assume relationships between “now” and “then” that do not necessarily hold –
For example - is progress in learning even and incremental or is learning something that goes in fits and starts? – does the rate of learning between now and then have an exponential trajectory, direct proportionality or is it subject to levelling off - and plateaus?
How does rate of learning progress across surface, deep and conceptual learning outcomes? How does rate of learning correlate with student ability? Etc etc
And then I wonder - when we are designing assessments to determine what value the institution adds to the individual - are direct measures the right/only way to what measure value added?
Perhaps we should we look at value added in terms of the NZC key competencies – all those competencies that the MoE identifies as necessary if students are going to “live learn work and contribute as active members of their communities.”
Or is the real test of value added not in something we design and measure but rather in what the students themselves determine as value added –
For example should we perhaps wait until the kids leave a school and ask them to defend the learning they received at their primary, secondary or intermediate school? – to self assess how well they felt able to cope in the next institution or in life as a result of what they experienced in school?
– it would be easy to set this up online in a sort of post dated “rate the value added by my teacher/school” exit interview that students could reflect upon and complete immediately on leaving and then after 1 year 3 years and say 10 plus years later .
The last approach to value added may well be the most interesting – one reason being that typically a contemporary definition of ‘learning’ is a long term change in a person’s thinking and behaviour and rarely do schools and teacher assess such change when they claim to be making a difference.
And then we should probably decide on the purpose of measuring value added - are we collecting this value added data so we can identify how to improve teaching and learning for students within the institution – or are we bac to one of those “league table” things where we fear that the value added will be used for public accountability.
Posted by: Artichoke | April 28, 2009 at 11:43 PM
Hi again Arti
you can see the things we have been playing with wrt assessment here http://blog.core-ed.net/greg/2009/01/data-presentation-capturing-the-individual-and-the-collective-using-scatterplotting.html and http://blog.core-ed.net/greg/2009/04/more-on-data-presentation.html. As always with aggregating data there are issues but the thing I like about this model is:
* It shows the individual AND collective
* It show progress over time and the learning trajectory
* It is intuitive and you don't need a degree in stats to 'get' what it means
* the same graph can perform multiple functions - teacher analysis and programme tweaking and redesign, BoT reporting, my monitoring of achievement, etc ...
I am also hoping longer term to put in best fit lines of the 'last time' and 'this time' assessments so the growth is immediately obvious. Fun stuff!
I am playing in my head with using SOLO levels in the same sort of way as a track of learning in Inquiry too. I have found a model that splits SOLO into 7 levels so this may even work :-) So now we track reading ages, numeracy levels, writing levels (all instructional level) and are working on PE fundamental skills and Inquiry.
I am not sure assessing effectiveness out in time from the end of primary schooling is formative enough for me. I need to know how children are achieving in shorter time frames than that. It would be fascinating information though!!
anyway .... back to the newsletter ...
cheers
Greg
Posted by: Greg Carroll | April 29, 2009 at 12:12 PM
Love this new feature! love this page.
Posted by: zhang | November 25, 2010 at 08:04 PM
I am a university student and a parent of a university student. Ken Robinson’s definition of creativity “I define creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value” appears somewhat disturbing. As a student, I hope teaching methods to be supported by research. Innovations are welcomed, but must be backed up by something substantial. It is because any methods that are ineffective or even having negative effect will waste precious study time which may not be able to compensate.
Posted by: Holly Chun | December 12, 2010 at 06:49 PM