21st-Century Teaching Strategies

[StudyNotes.ie]

Came across this video recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_pIK7ghGw4

Very interesting take on technology by Singapore's educational system. "By cultivating strong school leadership, committing to ongoing professional development, and exploring innovative models like its technology-infused Future Schools, Singapore has become one of the top-scoring countries on the PISA tests. "

[Conor Galvin]

By banning "Puff the Magic Dragon" from being played on radio or anywhere in public they also saved generations from the secret messages that corrupt the youth.... Right.

Funny thing chinese whispers.

:)

[Bije Barrett]

You are going to have to spell it out for me Conor. What interpretation of Puff the magic dragon did you buy into? And what is your comment on this Video?

Can it be that you are part of the old school way of thinking? Just because Ireland cannot embrace new ways of learning does not mean that what is happening abroad amounts to falsehoods. Are you flying in the face of evidence from abroad.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-students-top/1055558.html

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Best Regards,

Bije Barrett

[Conor Galvin]

My point is really a simple one. Social engineering on that scale is not possible here. Thank goodness. And if you think I'm old school and not for turning or whatever you don't really know me very well... :) That kind of
Evidence is not a neutral force. Especially when you consider its origins and policy utility. Wide-eyed, OECD zealots champion what others do and seek to 'fix'everything through emulation. Won't work. Never has. Never will.
Conor

[Bije Barrett]

In light of the new reforms facing second level education in this country, we would do well to emulate the Korean story both for our students and the Irish economy. We cant have a half cocked approach. If our lack of increase in performance in the PISA tests is what is driving new curricular change, we need to analyse best practice abroad.

'Korea spends more on education in proportion to the size of its economy than most other countries. In 2008, it invested 7.6% of its gross domestic product in education -- the second highest ratio among OECD countries after Iceland, and well above the OECD average of 5.9%. - See more at: http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/oecd/korea.html#sthash.UgXrbclS.dpuf'

http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/oecd/korea.html

http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/21cc/

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[John Hegarty]

I believe there is much to be gained by studying what other education system/countries/cultures do in the field of education. However I think seeking to transplant certain aspects of another system without considering the whole environment in which that system operates will not yield similar results. 

Korea may score well in PISA but the price they pay for this is a bit too high for me - 

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25187993 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-15331921

jh

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[Bije Barrett]

I don't suggest that we turn students into machines to drive an economy.

My focus was more on the government commitment in Korea to reform in terms of capital investment and looking at and analysing

 the teaching methodologies they adopt to allow students perform as ;

'a confident person who has a strong sense of right and wrong, is adaptable and resilient, knows himself, is discerning in judgment, thinks independently and critically, and communicates effectively.

• a self-directed learner who questions, reflects, perseveres and takes responsibility for his own learning.
• an active contributor who is able to work effectively in teams, is innovative, exercises initiative, takes calculated risks and strives for excellence.
• a concerned citizen who is rooted in --------------, has a strong sense of civic responsibility, is informed about ---------- and the world, and takes an active part in bettering the lives of others around him.'

In our system at present there is not enough curricular content developed or systems in place to allow students to be more autonomous and self directed. The school environs is designed to function were the student just fits in, instead of being designed in a way, were the student can be autonomous.

Even in our environment the suicide rate is too high, another thing not address with a strategy.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ireland-has-exceptionally-high-rates-of-suicide-1.1732791

[Bije Barrett]

We don't give students enough opportunities to practice what we preach.

I have seen over the years many students who thinks independently and critically being punished for that.

[Sean Foley]

I have great reservations about the notion of self directed learning. Only a very small number of second level students have the enthusiasm and ability to do it. Most students need very clear direction and lots of help to get through their courses.
Sean

[CJ Fanning]

I've been to loads of conferences, seminars, summits etc on what is roughly classed 'Enquiry Based Learning' - it is clear that it can deliver great results but obviously not in isolation - the whole curriculum and classroom management approach has to evolve in tandem with it. 

The competencies Bije mentions are pretty much the same as included in all the latest Irish educational policy documents. Best practice and latest pedagogic theory supports these measures also. 

Rome wasn't built in a day  - it will take time for students conditioned to passive learning to change. But consider this - most students are interested and motivated in something - just maybe not in current classwork. The key function of EBL is to aim to harness that personal interest as a starting point and then build curriculum aims onto it. 

I taught art for years. One year there was an almost silent girl in the class. In all classes! Then I found out she was the Leinster Junior Show Jumping Champion (she was giving me advice ;-) ). So, not lazy and demotivated! Just disconnected from an imposed curriculum.  Imagine what she could do in a self directed EBL classroom with digital resources! 

So, Bije, you are on the mark

It just takes time. But arguably, in my opinion, too much time. Other parts of the world are going ahead with it.  If Ireland doesn't keep up, where will that leave Irish students when they try to make a life for themselves??

Ok. I'll be quiet again now :-)

Ciao

Camilla Fanning

Director

EU4Schools

Dublin

(An independent Irish start-up; free EBL curriculum resource)

Sent from my iPhone

[Bije Barrett]

I don't have all the answers. Hence the need for cross countries analysis of systems. I recognise what you are saying Sean. I had the same reservation about inquiry based learning in science.   

But with the aid of technology, good instructional design materials, on a tracking system, one that provides assessments and instructional content that adapts to learners' needs or desires, all under the watchful eye of a teacher, might be a start. We can then be more flexible  with the learning environment.

[Sean Foley]

Sorry if I sound negative Camilla but your sentence about finding the personal interests and building curriculum aims around them is the kind of notion that makes me despair for our future. I think it is so unrealistic that it has no chance of actually working in a real classroom with the range of students we all find sitting in front of us.
A solid knowledge base, enlivened with interesting and relevant IT support, is the essential base from which exciting learning can occur.
Sean

[Bije Barrett]

 I couldn't agree more with Camilla that most students are interested and motivated in something. Most students can be inspired by a teacher or their peers to engage in acquiring knowledge. 

'educo' means 'I lead out'- the word education means to elicit, by artful and purposeful stimulation, from the student,  in a knowledge context. But sexing up a chunk of knowledge is not the same as animating and engaging students. So, in the field of knowledge, the students as it were, play both individually and as networking team members, refereed by the teacher.

For too long the constrains of a time table, the constraints of option choice,the limitations of teacher availability and know how, the limitations of the curricular spectrum of subjects on offer, the need for institutional control, have left a lot of students uninspired and not engaged in learning. Many sit through classes they have no interest in because there is no other option- imbibing knowledge from the teacher as obedient and recipient vessels.

If the learning outcomes of education  is to produce skilled, adaptable flexible learners in any field of knowledge than  the approach we take in our reform should and has to engage technology. The government simply has to invest in this.

It cannot simply be a rehash of the old syllabus with inquiry learning thrown on top. New and engaging subjects need to be made available to students.

The knowledge monopolist, aka once upon a time,  the teacher (primitive version), magiced or enforced the knowledge on the student.

Nowadays, the learning director, aka as the teacher (evolved version), questions learners, prompts their discussion and enquiry, guides learners to be conscious of their curiosity and matches the consequent enquiring zeal with sources of knowledge, offers them instant knowledge or facilitates their access to and use of relevant knowledge. The teacher as facilitator of the process influences and leads the learners, influenced in this  process by curriculum aims and content, required learning outcomes and flavoured by the teachers personality and experience in the process. A rich process generates  rich and relevant knowledge.

We are no longer curators of the museum of knowledge, we are facilitators of learning.

You are probably saying how.

Through an adaptive learning platform provided by the etb's with content created by a collaboration of teachers, instructional designers and the economic sectors.

[Sean Foley]

Bije, your enthusiasm is great but please read this chapter.

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic951140.files/whyMinGuidInstructionDoesNotWork-kirschnerSwellerKlark2006.pdf

It explains exactly my reservations about enquiry based learning until a large body of basic knowledge has been acquired. 

Sean

[Bije Barrett]

I have engaged with this on the science forum.

I have attached a paper about adaptive technology.

In relation to pure inquiry base learning, leaving students to be inductive from the get go, I would not be in favour of just like you, from my 30 years experience at the cold face. It just would not suit the majority of learners as I experienced  with my classes, while providing data for a teacher who was doing a master on inquiry based learning. Not to mention course work B.

It is interesting to note that in this paper to test students application to learning, they took two approaches. 'One approach was to develop a straightforward learning environment that directly provides information to the learner; the other requires the learner to derive concepts and rules on his or her own. The disparity between positions becomes more complicated because the issue is not just which is the better learning environment, but rather, which is the better environment for what type or types of persons. An interaction was hypothesized—that learners evidencing greater exploratory behavior would learn better if they had been assigned to the inductive environment, and less exploratory learners would benefit from the more structured application environment. Results supported this hypothesis.'

So when we create content for the new syllabus it should allow for the two types of learners.

 Another interesting statement  in the paper is

'The key idea to keep in mind is that the true power of educational technology comes not from replicating things that can be done in other ways, but when it is used to do things that couldn’t be done without it. Thornburg, as cited in National Association of State Boards of Education Study Group [NASBE], 2001.

 Examples of e-learning on the Internet today are, too often, little more than lecture notes and some associated links posted in HTML format. However, as noted in the previous quote, the true power of e-learning comes from the exploitation of the wide range of capabilities that technologies afford. One of the most obvious is to provide assessments and instructional content that adapt to learners’ needs or desires.'

 So I believe that adaptive learning technology can assist teachers greatly, when it comes down providing engaging content to stimulate all kinds of learners, with all manner of subjects and on top, provide objective assessment of our own students .

Here is an example of how inquiry based learning can be provided by simulated lab environments in science. But I agree that to be able to move forward and to use knowledge, to work flexibly with unfamiliar information and find solutions to problems, it is necessary to have integrated prerequisite knowledge in long term memory but this can be built into the instructional design.

http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/

[Laurence Cuffe]

Sent from QCloud

On May 27, 2014, at 07:52 PM, Bije Barrett <bijeb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nowadays, the learning director, aka as the teacher (evolved version), questions learners, prompts their discussion and enquiry, guides learners to be conscious of their curiosity and matches the consequent enquiring zeal with sources of knowledge, offers them instant knowledge or facilitates their access to and use of relevant knowledge. The teacher as facilitator of the process influences and leads the learners, influenced in this  process by curriculum aims and content, required learning outcomes and flavoured by the teachers personality and experience in the process. A rich process generates  rich and relevant knowledge.

We are no longer curators of the museum of knowledge, we are facilitators of learning.

 

This is pure Montessori.  In fact they call the adult in the classroom "A directress"

You are probably saying how.

Through an adaptive learning platform provided by the etb's with content created by a collaboration of teachers, instructional designers and the economic sectors.

 

This does not follow.  In fact technology led learning, while it has great potential, in practice often leads to results which are more constrained, more focused on SLO's and measurable results.  Technology is too often used to replace flexibility and imagination by consistency. This is its greatest challenge,

My 2c.

Laurence Cuffe. Technology evangelist!

[Seaghan Moriarty]

 

The correct answer, is clearly 42.

 

I try to think of various learning theories as tools and approaches I can bring to bear on teaching – not pre-pick the “best” one. So for me, it depends on many many factors, the subject, the context, the learner etc.

 

Papert himself said “the goal is to teach in such a way as to produce the most learning for the least teaching” J

 

Kindest Regards,

Seaghan Moriarty.

[Bije Barrett]

Technology is too often used to replace flexibility and imagination by consistency.

 I disagree with you Laurence.

Take the following technological tools: animation software, video, google, webinars, forums, social media, the list is endless all allowing learners to be creative flexible and imaginative.

I am simply talking about a platform that bring all of these tools to the learner in the right context. 

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[Liam Friel]

That is a very interesting paper.

--------

Liam Friel

mob: +353-86-8546660

twitter: @liamfriel | skype: liam.friel | linkedin: http://ie.linkedin.com/in/liamfriel

[Bije Barrett]

I found it to be too.

[Bije Barrett]

The 3  dimensions to delivering individualised content to learners and allow them engage with knowledge in more exciting and flexible ways needs.......

1) An authorising tool,

2) An LMS, with all that the best LMS's have to offer in terms of communication and tracking.

3) Adaptive learning technology to provide assessments and instructional content that adapt to learners’ needs or desires.'

All three have to be intuitively designed  to talk to each other by the same company.

As Seaghan has pointed out to me

'in an ideal world, you would design the exact specification and design everything from the ground-up – so you would have complete control over every aspect of the system.

[Liam Friel]

That's an interesting paper too.

To my view their argument is significantly weakened though by going into some detail to describe a particular adaptive learning experiment (in a very restricted domain of circuit theory, i.e. a very simple concept to grasp in simple form) but then singularly failing to provide any data which could be analysed from their experiment. Figure 1 is an entirely information free zone.

The rest of the paper is interesting and indeed would be a pretty nice thing to have. It would be spectacularly hard to actually *do* though ... 

[Peter Lydon]

Interesting debate.

You might find this interesting from John Hattie – a meta-analysis of over 800 studies involving thousands of students around the world on what works best.

There are two parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sng4p3Vsu7Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pD1DFTNQf4

While there are problems with the analysis, the findings are common sense, methinks.

Peter

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[Bije Barrett]

I really liked what he had to say. Particularly...

Evidence does count in order to assess whether any teacher or system is working.

Give instructions and setting clear guidelines as to what is a successful outcome and then allow students to do it.

Allow peers to inspire and encourage new experiences.

Let the success and exhilaration of the success drive the student  to want to achieve more. 

Listen  rather than talk so much.

Remember that a small amount done often achieves more, not a whole lot continuously.

Peer review of teaching methodologies matter.

Feedback

Create an environment of trust.

Technology can help with all of this. 

I know I posted these links before to the group but in the context of this debate I would like to do it again.

http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-research-annotated-bibliography#bebell

http://www.educationdive.com/news/adaptive-learning-the-best-approaches-weve-seen-so-far/187875/

https://www.adaptemy.com/products

Also this link posted by Camilla earlier in the week

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2013/12/30/the-eight-characteristics-of-effective-school-leaders/

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[Jake Byrne]

Hi Jake from Bridge21 here (so perhaps a biased response).

I have read this paper in the past and the conversation that has come from it:

1. Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A Response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006)
   
2. Why Minimally Guided Teaching Techniques Do Not Work: A Reply to Commentaries
   

Although Kirschner Sweller and Klark have some interesting things to say about working memory and the implications of that to learning, the lumping together of a wide range of approaches such as Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching with a particular focus on minimal guidance is looking at the worst possible implementation and saying that's how it's all done. Scaffolding and planning a Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based is essential and isn't trivial. It's about finding the right balance between helping the learner construct their understanding and providing the resources and environment that help them to do this. There is also the case as to what Kirschner Sweller and Klark mean by learning, is it simply the ability to recall information and high scores in standardised tests? If so, it's missing out on a wide range of other transferable skills, that speak to the current reforms, but more importantly skills that are needed to help develop lifelong learning.

I agree with Kirschner Sweller and Klark that more research is needed but in the meantime you can find some of Bridge21's publications here:

http://www.bridge21.ie/resources/

Jake Byrne