Sliced Bread

The Government of Utopia has set teachers a reflective challenge for 2009. Are you up for it?

• How do you currently assess your 21st century transformative learning?
• Should you be allowed to?
• Do you possess an impartial perspective to do so?
• Is what you do better learning? How? Show me the evidence.

Prove to those who ask, by applying web2.0/interactive/read/write/semantic tools in your lessons, that you can measure the improvements in learning outcomes.

Talk is cheap, conferences extolling web2.0 virtues expensive with often disconnected, agenda laden, key noters developing a dangerous novice base.

But I still want to see why I tell the best colleagues at my place why they need this? Do they? Prove it.

Where is the test, the assessment tool, the control class, the hard evidence that proves the argument that all this edrev being dumped in our laps is of improved learning worth?

Maybe the leaders doing the dumping just want an expeditious fix (or a convenient kicking post?) if the expected “transformative change” does not magically result. They are entitled to know why if it fails and more importantly why when it succeeds.

For my evidence I don’t want

• “warm fuzzy, teacher/student feel good statements”,
• nor nebulous “engagement, 21st century web2.0″ motherhood tosh 
• Don’t dare dish up improved retention statistics, or reduced suspension rates or less counsellor referrals
• let alone “oh the kids just like coming to my classes better”

Pleeease, no. It won’t cut the mustard if real change is to follow for the mainstream majority.

Not unless your rigourous, repeatable, reliable assessment evidence is directly attributable to a specific innovation and the assessment tool was built to do so from the get go. 

Why do I ask?

I don’t yet believe you if you say ICT, and more specifically web2.0, caused “transformative learning change”, thats why. Others are asking this too;

Teachers, administrators and policymakers have every right to demand evidence and to expect that calls for change be based on well-founded and supported arguments.

Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin.

I have great faith in expert teachers continuing to teach expertly using traditional methods for a while to come, a long time in fact. Good on them, even if it is not right; they comply and follow what they are told is “best learning”.

Of course what we teach is broken, but convincing a status quo ancient industry of high stakes testers is a future study learning societies are addressing now.  What BOS do is great, but it’s still wrong and not life long learning for the 21st century. It’s a pigeon holing exercise for tertiary entrance and summative stamping/comparing/ranking schools, it’s NOT about learning for 70 more years post schooling.

Concurrently, and more importantly to me, the sticklers, the gate keepers, the laggards, the untrained or unprepared also need to deblinker and just imagine there is a better way of learning. 

Are more kids just compliantly learning the best syllabi boxes from a broken 200 year old system?

Test, stamp, issue an education pass to the rest of your life and then the participants quickly forget that massively critical result for evermore. The HSC is just a stressful ticket, designed more for the bastions of data to justify their own existence, not the participants inflicted. Yeah like 412/500 still comes up a lot in my life, no, never has, never should, Why? It means nothing.

Are parents going to passively accept this for another generation? When I stop playing devil’s advocate, of course we can get more bang for our learning buck. We must.

Engagement in the reflective thought process we ask of our students, developing critical enquiry, to experiment, try new methods, not have all the answers immediately, devolve real control and ultimate responsibility to learners is essential if the expected changes are to materialise anytime before I retire. The mindset of many must change. Do not even mention technology, for that is not the real debate needed. The continuation of antiquated learning practices will be folly as millions of networked global learners emerge each year. This is the gap that may be difficult to redress. The only certainty stagnation will deliver is an education quagmire that’ll suck you under. Baby steps, having a go and letting go of the control syndrome will all help, but this innovation still needs to be rigourously assessed before the major gatekeepers give up their current, and pointless, testing regimes anytime soon.

However I still want empirical evidence from a properly conducted assessment before I get too excited for my valued colleagues and tell them to “get with it”. If DET supplies the assessments that we really need, of course teachers will change. They are actually very compliant when they see the learning purpose, or some just do as they are told. Either way, if assessments were to change, the emerging 21st Century learning debate would be a whole lot easier for all to accept.

Proof that innovators are not simply rose colouring the results, ‘you want it to be true therefore you’ll make it true’, skewed to a personal bias or chanting the mantra of panacean technology. Marc Prensky come on down, a key noter here, I hope his 2001 native/immigrant furphy is wisely updated by now.

If you already are an advanced, engaged, user of web2.0, a 21st century teacher I want to share your assessment evidence at my place. It will be listened to.

Prove to us how the following “21st century skills” (yuk jargon) have been significantly enhanced in your classroom and measured.

Same proviso, nothing nebulous, links to proven evidence please.

An easy task?, difficult for others? impossible for some? Therein lies a pressing issue that needs addressing in the broader edrev we need to be debating, assessment reform. 

Imagine this, sometime in the soon future I hope. We have;

• ubiquitous 1:1 tool boxes and high speed wireless connections
• the human learning skills, attitudinal wherewithal and expertise
• an agreed 21st century skill set 

but what’s next? That may well prove to be the easy reform.

How do you assess this “new” learning to ensure learning is rigourous with high expectations and improved outcomes?

If teachers keep teaching well with a broken “it”, while the above 7 skills are not meaningfully assessed, then technology should not be lauded as the cure all some see, or hope, it is. That is giving a box of wires way too much creedance.

We have a problem, and a need for a far braver education revolution. Not many seem ready to address the industry schools have slavishly and understandibly followed, summative high stakes testing.

Alternate voices are questioning this and feeding results to governments.

They are listening,  Krudd & Nrees. We hope.

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