Sliced Bread

Thanks to Tomaz for alerting me to this SMH article some time ago now. 

Charles Jennings has one of the world’s more interesting jobs. He is global head of learning for Reuters, the 150-year-old London-based news agency and information service. His job is to ensure that all of the company’s 16,000 employees keep abreast of the technologies and systems that ensure Reuters remains one of the world’s foremost sources of information”.

This 70:20:10 rule is applicable to any organisation involved in ongoing and large scale staff training. It’s also a rule I’d like to see applied more widely to our own DET NSW teacher professional learning (TPL) especially in terms of formal recognition and/or accreditation of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). 

Over the past 22 years of my teaching career, I have attended DET TPL because,

• a) I want to
• b) I like learning new things to improve what I do
• c) I’ve had to,

a) and b) should be the ONLY reasons any professional attends PD or TPL but c) is unfortunately alive and well and still overly dominent.

The word junket springs readily to mind in association with some of these conferences, release days, and other non teaching duties called TPL ot professional development.

Some people, albeit a tiny minority, often figjamers, expensive keynoters or failed classroomers, even serve up yesterday’s cold mashed up left overs as “accredited courses.” Please don’t insult us. These are the ’one size presentation fits all’ and no allowances or considerations are made for specific audience contexts or needs and then they sell, sell, sell their wares at the conclusion.

Professional Development I have attended since 1985 has variously been dubbed School Development Days, Inservices, Teacher Professional Learning, Curriculum Directorate Development Days, Syllabus Review Committees, HSC Judging/Marking, On the Job Training, Train the Trainer, workplace secondment, higher duties or my favourite Ad Nauseum etal. (no the last one is NOT real, but it could be)

No matter what they’re called, teachers should resonably expect their own employers to provide quality PD opportunities with implicit choice. Most of the above list has been, but the clangers within were memorable for all the wrong reasons.

If we go one step further and assume responsibilty for seeking out our own professional learning via PLN’s, couldn’t it at least be recognised by our employers? This last 6 months has been the best QTL, TPL, deblinkering of my entire career. Why? Because of choice, genuine sharing and a new sense of learning without knowing all the answers. Having others in a global network offering support amplifies what good traditional faculties already do.

Often with mandated PD, there is no choice and staff are subjected to lecture style delivery with limited staff engagement and poor learning outcomes. Even the Quality Professional Development that elicits ’feel good warm fuzzies’ and fleetingly reinvigorates, teachers soon return to same old same old mould (sic) and in a day or a term, the excitement subsides and we carry on as before. This model of PD must change otherwise Jenning’s ‘conspiracy of convenience’ is perpetuated.

I didn’t actually feel overly engaged with the learning or outcomes but by golly jingo I could tick a big hoop jumping mandatory box and say “look DET, I’m upskilling and complying.” Sad really.

That’s why this article resonates so strongly with me. I hope it strikes a cord with you as well, please take the time to read the full article.

“No one measures the outcomes properly and there is little or no business impact. Nothing has really happened, but everyone’s happy.”

Mr Jennings says too many people assume that newly acquired knowledge and skills will automatically translate into performance improvement, which will then flow through into business benefit.

“Too many learning professionals and managers are obsessed with transferring information into employees’ heads, even though they know that the amount of information is growing very quickly and that the nature of that information is changing. They also know that people’s work is constantly changing.

“These changes mean that knowledge workers actually need less knowledge to do their jobs than they did a generation ago. Formal training is less effective as the amount of information increases and its shelf life becomes shorter.”

He calls this the 70:20:10 rule.

“About 70 per cent of organisational learning takes place on the job, through solving problems and through special assignments and other day-to-day activities. (my edit that sounds very PBL to me)

Another 20 per cent occurs through drawing on the knowledge of others in the workplace, from informal learning, from coaching and mentoring, and from support and direction from managers and colleagues. Only 10 per cent occurs through formal learning, whether classroom, workshop or, more recently, e-learning.

But most organisations invest at least 80 per cent of their training budgets in formal learning, where little of the learning takes place. And formal learning is also generally less effective than informal learning.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS