The Future of Education

[Mark Treadwell]

Can education respond to the dramatically changing world we now inhabit? More importantly can we change fast enough so that school does not become irrelevant; assuming that is not too late? This is the challenge before all educators and administrators as we all grapple with what the purpose of what school is in a 21st century world.

The multimedia world of the Internet initially augmented and now is beginning to overwhelm the dominant role of written language in learning and in the process it has rearranged the very foundation on which have built "education" for the last millennia. With information and communication tools able to span the globe at almost no cost, we can now create and interpret sound, text, animations, movies and integrated multimedia simply and easily. Increasingly the major technology platform for doing this is the cellphone, something that is banned in most schools! Are we really preparing learners for the 21st century? What would take to the change the curriculum, change our teaching and learning pedagogy/andragogy and the very notion of what school is? What is the purpose of school in the 21st century? This is the primary notion which I hope to explore over the next few days with you in Hong Kong. This paradigm shift is not something to the feared but something to get excited about as for the first time ever we can teach for understanding; and in the process teach/coach learners to be creative and innovative and still sleep at night and have a social life!

Mark Treadwell www.schoolv2.net www.i-learnt.com www.teachers-work.com

[Paul McMahon]

Hi Jay,

Thanks for kicking us back off again with a very reflective post. I am really keen to get some great discussion taking place here ahead of the conference.

Let me start by addressing your first point. When you state:
"I'm concerned that there is always a huge focus on current technology when we talk about 21st Century learning, when the really challenging issue is how to deal with future technology and the world it will create."
I would strongly suggest that your school should not be focusing on technology at all if it does not have a clear understanding of the learning that they want to see as an outcome for the students in their care. If you read this post I made on my blog this morning, you will see that I think that a lot of the schools that are going 1:1 in Hong Kong are quite misguided in what they are doing if their outcome is to increase student scores on IGCSE or IB Diploma. Both of these assessments emphasize memorization of content and recall of facts on paper-based examinations. As Mark mentions above, these are the sort of things that universities push onto schools so that they do not have to get into the complex business of who they should admit to oversubscribed courses based on demonstration of "real learning". Can you imagine a university selection panel arguing over digital artifacts in an inspired candidate's digital portfolio? Very unlikely indeed! Find me one university application form with room to put hyperlinks! Can you believe that this is 2009 and they still don't have a space for this on Uni applications?
I have made some other comments on that post that address what I think students should be doing if we expect parents to purchase laptops for them so I will not repeat those here. One thing I will say, however, is that if we don't have a clear picture of what we want to see kids do with these powerful machines of communication, collaboration and creativity then we are destined to do as Seymour Papert prophesied now 2 decades ago. "we are simply looking to fit a jet engine to a stagecoach".
Funny, but I read of a regional international school trying to limit the power of the jet engines that they have introduced to their stagecoach just today.
As for the "innate" comment, I challenge you to give one of your "gadget kids" a mobile phone that he or she has not seen before. I recommend something like a Motorola Q9h with Widows Mobile 6 on it. Tell her to use it to post a short video to YouTube and download a song of 3 minutes duration or more. Then give the phone to a member of the Senior Management Team and ask them to do the same thing. I am putting money on the gadget kid as working it out in maybe half the time. Your gadget kid has skills that are not shared by the member of the SMT and maybe rightly so as your stagecoach maybe about cramming content and passing IGCSE or IB Dlploma and the SMT member knows how to maximise the gadget kid's skills in this area. Thing is, what if the SMT member's crystal ball was a little foggy and the world of tomorrow is more about learning and relearning the use of gadgets to connect to the internet? Maybe your gadget kid has a skill that is also worth passing on to other gadget challenged kids at your school? (There are many kids who don't have these skills and are never taught them and I think this is very wrong!)

Your list of thinking skills accessed by the URL above is quite scary!
I would point you to something like Marzano's Classroom Instruction that Works Wiki http://web2thatworks.com/ which points you to the use of tools for learning that support years of research into what works in classrooms. There are many other sites like this to allow schools to plan to incorporate technology to ensure that students learn more effectively and, more importantly, love the learning that they do and find it relevant to the 21st Century world that they occupy.
As a starting point, get your staff to buy into some statements about what it is that they really see as the purpose of education. If the answer resoundingly comes back as "teaching lots of facts so that kids get access to the world's top universities", then my advice to you is DO NOT encourage them to develop new skills of their own in current technology, such as teaching with one-to-one laptops, IWBs or web2.0. You will only disappoint and disillusion them.
If it comes back as something more like "to allow students to see themselves as powerful voices in the world" then you have a fantastic, rich platform to start building a 21st century school from.

Good Luck!
Paul

[Jay Parker]

Thanks Paul - really useful advice, although I think the issue in my department is that there is no overwhelming answer to questions about the purpose of education. Compounding the problem is the issue of the multiple and contradictory criteria (often implicit rather than explicit) on which we are being judged. We are charged to develop our pedagogy and then evaluated on our GCSE results...

[Mark Treadwell]

kia ora (greetings) Jay

The issue you raise is an interesting one which we consider critical. In the past we have developed a curriculum that is based on an end point of knowing "stuff" and we need to now move that forward to an end point of understanding concepts which can then be applied to numerous contexts. "Innate" understanding comes from understanding concepts to numerous contexts and then being able to appy that concept to new and emerging, "unknown" contexts. So yes innate learning can be developed. The even more crucial point _here is that Understanding is a precursor to being able to build an create innovative and creative applications of that understanding through the use of "imagination". We have just completed the development of "Whatever Next: The Global Concept Curriculum" an introduction to which I will attach to this commentary.

Recent brain theory developments have completely remodelled our understanding of how this happens. We are currently developing the forth text in the "Whatever" series " Whatever: Where We Thinking? Which investigates the recent groundbreaking research around how we think.

The power of developing a conceptual understanding is huge and in New Zealand our current curriculum framework allows schools to take the concept based curriculum scaffold we have developed and apply it to the teaching and learning that takes place in schools. This encourages educators to be far more efficient and disciplined in the teaching and not waste time filling I learners hence full of lots of useless information which is very context orientated and hence not able to be adapted to new contexts. This is certainly the way forward for any future thinking around curriculum development.

Mark Treadwell

[Jay Parker]

kia ora Mark - thanks for getting back to me. It seems like me confusion stemmed from a misinterpretation of innate.

I have a couple of questions stemming from your post. Firstly, are the recent brain theory developments you refer to relating to neuroplasticity? I'd be fascinated to see some research considering the implications of this on education.

Secondly, regarding a point from the sample section from 'Whatever Next', you mention that inquiry learning 'is all done within a healthy tension between pedagogy (direct instruction) and andragogy (the coaching approach)'.

I am part of a group of teachers who are trying to develop an inquiry which allows students to pursue their own interests as a way of developing skills and understanding that can then be transferred to a variety of contexts. Our focus at the moment is very much on mentoring and coaching in order to develop students capability to reflect and evaluate their own progress, needs and circumstances. The project is in its infancy at the moment, but in discussions, we have begun to question the need for pedagogy (as you define it) face to face at all, wondering whether demonstration through recorded video or online seminar could be an effective substitute, allowing teachers to focus in face-to-face interactions on mentoring and coaching.

What do you think of the idea and additionally, is there anywhere I could find more reading about the tension between pedagogy and andragogy?

Thanks, again.

[Mark Treadwell]

The concept of neuroplasticity is gradually being replaced by a concept than encouraging people to reflect on known as holographic processing. If you take a hologram (a three dimensional picture) and cut it into four pieces each piece contains the entire picture and in fact you can keep cutting down to molecular level and the same is true. The brain is similar. At John Hopkins University hospital they carry out an operation where they remove the entire hemisphere and other than the loss of sight in the eye opposite to the hemisphere removed and some weakening in the muscle response of the arm opposite to the hemisphere removed there is no downside of this procedure whatever. Patients do not suddenly become let's creative or less disciplined and thoughtful just because they have lost an entire brain hemisphere. The same sorts of results have been found from removing the corpus colosum and which joins the two hemispheres. I am currently doing an update to the thinking section from the first text "Whatever School Version 2.0" or two presentations I am doing for the international thinking conference in Kuala Lumpur in June of this year. Each of the texts will be available for download from the web site www.schoolv2.net

In regards to inquiry learning this is also dealt with in the first of the two texts and then expanded in the second entitled "Whatever Next: The Global Curriculum" which is also available from the web site www.schoolv2.net we have been experimenting here in New Zealand with students using online learning environments to record their personal reflections around their progress in this subject areas as well as the competencies. The five competencies students reflect on are thinking, managing self, working in teams, participating and contributing and using symbols languages and text. These competencies underpin the successful application of the inquiry process. We have been incredibly impressed so far with the students' ability to carry out these reflections once they have developed a language and an understanding around the intentions of the learning in these areas. The tension between andragogy and pedagogy is also unpacked in both of these online texts.

All the best with your work there.

[Jay Parker]

Thanks Mark - on my way to your website now.

[Paul McMahon]

Hi Jay,
I am greatly encouraged to read that a group here is working on developing such an inquiry.
I will let you know when the workshop proposals are out and I would love it if your team could "unpack" some of this for teachers in October's conference.

[Jay Parker]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your interest. I'm not sure what we might be able to talk about in October, as our work is at an embryonic stage, but I'll keep you posted on how it progresses.

[Paul McMahon]

Jay,

I think these projects are always embryonic and will continue to be long after we have left our marks on the educational landscape. The discussion of the setting up and getting the others onboard is the most exciting IMHO.

I was once responsible for a 1:1 initiative at an Aussie school. It took me 2 years to research other programs and a further 2 years of pilots and intensive staff workshops and sharing sessions where we brought practitioners from far and wide to share with us before we went with it. We then brought in a team of researchers to evaluate as we continue to reflect on and refine all that we did. 4 years into the program I could honestly say that we were beginning to emerge from the embryonic stage. I still have input to the program and I reckon that it is beginning to take on some shape but still very much forming in spite of it producing the best results the school has seen in its history.
It really makes me laugh when I hear of schools that want to share how they have "successfully done 1:1" or "successfully integrated ICT across the curriculum". We should all admit we are on journeys or else admit that we are arrogant fools.
From your writing it sounds to me that you belong in the former camp.

[Jay Parker]

Hi Paul,

You're right about the perpetual beta nature of what we're doing, and it's not just with technology!

Following up on my promise to keep you posted on the project I'm working on, it looks like the focus will increasingly be on mentoring, but using KS5 student mentors working with KS2/3 students using technology to facilitate mentoring and collaboration across the foundation (ESF).

We're hoping to combine this with just in time skills teaching, hopefully also delivered through a web-based platform but again, that idea is very much in the early stages.

The project will be centered around online learning journals completed by all involved. Hopefully should be interesting - we're certainly excited to see how it pans out.

We're planning to run the first pilot at the beginning of the Autumn term, so it's possible that we might have something concrete to talk about by September if you're still interested.

[Paul McMahon]

The mentoring concept sounds great Jay and is really on the money for empowering students. It must be an idea whose time has come. There are a group of international schools who are organising groups across 3 schools to support some projects by younger kids mentored by some older ones. I am not sure if the ages and stages are the same as yours. These 3 schools have had an online platform developed for the collaboration and support.
At the very least, having you all together as a sort of 90 minute symposium on setting up this sort of thing and supporting it with online and offline tools would be a very popular session.
I probably need to get you a workshop proposal form to complete at some stage soon.
Cheers
Paul