Category: Learning

Are you transfixed by a proxy for learning?

LearningPublished onUpdated on4 Comments on Are you transfixed by a proxy for learning?

This is an exploration of a few emerging ideas from my work today. During a coaching session I was exploring the idea of the “proxy”.

The word proxy means “agency of one who acts instead of another; letter of power of attorney”. In fact a contraction of procuracie (c. 1300) a word meaning administration or management.

A model I have been using with leadership groups over the last year (blog post on the way) is the idea of alignment. One part of this is the alignment between the Actual Learning Experience and Learning.

This might also be called the alignment (or difference) between Performance and Learning. David Didau refers to some work by Nicholas C. Soderstrom and Robert A. Bjork,

  • We can only infer learning from performance
  • Performance during instruction is a poor indicator of learning
  • Reducing performance might actually increase learning.

Soderstrom & Bjork (2013)

Many different sources refer to some other work by Professor Robert and the slide below from his presentation What Makes Great Teaching?

The “Curriculum is covered” is one that resonates as I hear that language a great deal. A poor proxy for learning.

There is a lot more to explore and for me to learn about some of these ideas but I enjoyed this insightful take on proxies from Seth Godin in his post Avoiding the False Proxy Trap:

Sometimes, we can’t measure what we need, so we invent a proxy, something that’s much easier to measure and stands in as an approximation.

This helped me get a clear sense of how we might create poor representations or flawed proxies for learning. It also made me think more about assessment and the design of assessment in schools.

Godin concludes by saying:

You’ve already guessed the problem. Once you find the simple proxy and decide to make it go up, there are lots of available tactics that have nothing at all to do with improving the very thing you set out to achieve in the first place. When we fall in love with a proxy, we spend our time improving the proxy instead of focusing on our original (more important) goal instead.

Gaming the system is never the goal. The goal is the goal.

A good provocation to think through if he, for example, is referring to learning. It would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

#28daysofwriting

Photo by Bianca Isofache on Unsplash

Learning Networks and Professional Growth

Learning, NetworksPublished onLeave a Comment on Learning Networks and Professional Growth

Professional growth is not only about finding like minded people. Our professional learning networks can be built in this way, adding people from similar backgrounds or roles to our Twitter network. But that might just confirm the bias we already have.

I see great value in the exposure to alternative thinking. We gain access to perspectives that differ from our own and that may be in obvious opposition. Our social learning networks provide easy access to thinking and development from beyond the domain of education. I have deliberately built connections with practitioners in a wide variety of fields not just education.

Yes, your professional learning network should help you tap into the expertise and ideas of fellow educators. But I think the real value emerges as your network matures and you build connections far beyond the walled garden of education.

These connections challenge us to think critically about our work and what we think we know. The dissonance instigated by diversity of thought and alternative viewpoints can be a springboard to empathy.

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Photo by Daniel Hjalmarsson

Prising Open the Housing of the Pedagogical Clock

LearningPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on Prising Open the Housing of the Pedagogical Clock

Go and find a copy of your class or weekly timetable and put it side by side with your school’s pedagogical statement. Your school’s pedagogical statement might be part of a teaching and learning model. Or perhaps it is communicated in a different form. Either way place it alongside the details of your timetable. Now consider these questions:

  • How does your timetable influence the learning experience?
  • How has the design of learning changed to suit the demands of the timetable?
  • How is your school timetable cast from your pedagogical values?
  • Which came first your timetable or your definition of learning at the school?
  • Is your class timetable the real school wide pedagogical statement?

The last one is a provocation I share with lots of leadership teams I work with. It helps us consider the influence of time, and our organisation of it, on the learning experience.

In seeking the ideal conditions for learning, our stewardship of time resources is critical in terms of the daily learner experience. However many of these conditions have not changed in line with our thinking.

These hegemonic constructs[footnote] Thanks to Terry Byers for the “hegemonic” reference below [/footnote] have simply lingered as part of the school experience.

The basic grammar of schooling, like the shape of classrooms, has remained remarkably stable over the decades. Little has changed in the ways that schools divide time and space, classify students and allocate them to classrooms, splinter knowledge into ‘subjects’ and award grades and ‘credits’ as evidence of learning. [footnote]Hofstetter, Rita, and Bernard Schneuwly. “Changes in Mass Schooling:‘school Form’and ‘grammar of Schooling’as Reagents.” European Educational Research Journal 12.2 (2013): 166-175.[/footnote]

Whilst I would contend that more recently there has been a bigger shift in terms of assessment, evidence of learning and learning spaces, there is not enough consistency of change. Most notably the sacrosanctity of the school timetable.

In a recent article from MindShift, Diana Laufenberg, the executive director of Inquiry Schools, explained that, “Our schedule is a function of what we’re trying to create”.  Diana goes on to suggest,

Changing the master schedule, while difficult, is a major signal to everyone connected to the school that pedagogy is shifting. “If we don’t match our minutes to our mission, [teachers are] not going to shift.”

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/10/24/why-a-schools-master-schedule-is-a-powerful-enabler-of-change/

There is a palpable logic to the need to grapple with the time resources ideal for pedagogy change. All too often we want the pedagogy change, we want the experience of learning to shift, but a key resource structure is left untouched.

Alongside highlighting the work of Diana Laufenberg, the article also shared the story of Jerry Smith, the Principal at Luella High School in Atlanta. They are an example of a school grappling with new models of thinking, learning and time.

It soon became clear that one of the biggest obstacles to instructional changes of the sort Smith and his team were trying to engineer was the school schedule itself.

Existing scheduling software isn’t designed to handle the priorities Smith wanted and would “break the pedagogical model” if relied upon to do the scheduling.

I would be the first to recognise the intricacies and complexities of organising hundreds, if not thousands, of learners across a school’s campus. But these software packages have an in built pedagogical bias. They might seem inert, but the lines of code will bring a certain bias to how people might learn and behave.

We shouldn’t offshore our school’s pedagogical identity to a software company.

Smith and Laufenberg point out the difficulty of changing the schedule to suit the needs of the learning experience a school is trying to uphold. When technology intervenes we have the opportunity for greater efficiency from the process of timetabling learning. This releases us to put our energy and time elsewhere. However we have to strike a balance.

When we prise open the housing of the pedagogical clock a little more we see that the use of timetables is a balance between Validity and Reliability. Roger Martin explains that

Reliability seeks to produce consistent, predictable outcomes by utilizing a system that is restricted to the use of objective data. Validity, on the other hand, seeks to produce outcomes that meet the desired objective, even if the system employed can’t produce a consistent, predictable outcome.[footnote]“Validity – Roger Martin.” https://rogerlmartin.com/docs/default-source/Articles/business-design/rotman_winter_05_validity_vs_reliability. Accessed 10 Dec. 2016.[/footnote]

Importantly Martin explains that in order to develop a reliable system, in our case a schedule, we have to drop variables that might lead to different experiences. Perhaps in this instance the variables are the individual preferences of every learner in the community. When and where they want to learn, and for how long.

There are some universal truths about learning that would influence contemporary timetable design. However developing a valid timetable for one learner may be different to another. Multiply that by hundreds and the ostensibly increased effort surpasses the perceived validity.

When we say personalised learning the ideal would be a valid timetable for all learners. In most cases though we attempt to find a balance between reliably moving humans around and offering a valid experience for everyone.

Validity and reliability anchor down opposite ends of a spectrum that defines how systems are conceived and solutions are framed.

At secondary or high school level there is little conclusive research evidence about the extension of lesson length or block scheduling[footnote]DICKSON, Kelly, et al. What is the effect of block scheduling on academic achievement? A systematic review. No. 1802R. Technical report, 2010.[/footnote]. But of course it is not simply about changing the block of time, that alone changes little.

The pedagogical change, the new teaching opportunities that open up are the key drivers here. For example, longer sessions with students so that a greater volume of ongoing feedback can be provided to more students – not just those you can manage in the time.

The Education Endowment Foundation (here is the Australian equivalent) offers a useful summary of the evidence regarding secondary block scheduling. Their questions to consider are worth noting too when exploring timetable development.

  1. Timetabling changes alone are not sufficient to improve learning.
  2. Teachers need to alter the way that they teach, and should plan and organise different kinds of learning activities to obtain benefits.
  3. Have timetabling changes been matched to curriculum goals and teaching and learning objectives (such as longer lessons for science experiments)?
  4. Have you considered how longer lessons may provide opportunities for other promising approaches, such as improving the amount of feedback that students get from the teacher or from each other?

What we might ascertain from these prompts is that time is a key enabler for different kinds of learning. Used carefully the schedule can become the function of the learning experience as Diana Laufenberg previously mentioned.

Let’s change the clocks for a moment and look at this from a slightly different perspective. As soon as I read the MindShift piece I thought about the importance of challenging assumptions about how school time is organised. My reflections also focused on how this chimes with the ideal conditions for creative and critical thinking.

In “Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention”[footnote]Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention.” New York: Harper Collins (1996).[/footnote], Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests,

The only way to stay creative is to organize time, space, and activity to our advantage. It means developing schedules to protect our time and avoid distraction, arranging our immediate surroundings to increase concentration, cutting out meaningless chores that soak up psychic energy, and devoting the energy thus saved to what we really care about.

More than 8 years ago I began a long period of Literacy learning with my Year 5 class. The learning centred on using the PC based adventure game Myst 3 as a narrative and inspiration for our own descriptive writing. Once pairs of students were freely exploring the game and stumbling on ever more inventive puzzles, time certainly stood still or moved at an unusual pace.

The problem solving and narrative element of the game, alongside our own creative writing tasks provided a clear purpose for the students. I was able to ensure we had longer sessions, free from distractions and interruptions to work in and with the game.

I also allowed the work to be extended over a few weeks. This allowed the overall arc of learning to progress at an ideal pace for critical and creative thinking.

I vividly recall the buzz as students shared what they had learned or discovered in the game with each other. Fully immersed.

Emerging from the Myst: Being inspired and making a start

In one of my favourite books Conceptual Blockbusting[footnote] Adams, James L., Conceptual Blockbusting, W.W.Norton & Company.13, (1976)[/footnote], James Adams outlines a range of emotional blocks to the creative process. Behaviours and habits that can stultify our efforts, and it would seem many are directly related to the organisation of time.

  1. A fear to make mistakes, to fail, to risk.
  2. Preference for judging ideas rather than generating them.
  3. No tolerance for ambiguity or chaos.
  4. A lack of challenge – not engaging enough.
  5. Excessive zeal – too much speed, pace and haste.
  6. An inability to relax and to incubate ideas.

Just take a moment to read those through again, consider at each turn the influence of time on why these often occur.

The overall endeavour we face is how much change we can handle. Regarding timetables in schools, how do we challenge the edges of what is deemed acceptable? How do we ensure stability whilst designing a high value personal learning experience?

Crucially as school leaders we need to question the dominance of certain ideas or norms and how they have exerted influence, over decades, on the accepted design of learning. The organisation of time might just be one of the most important barriers to pedagogical change.

Let play perish and innovation will follow

Innovation, PlayPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Let play perish and innovation will follow

David Whitebread and Marisol Basilio, in their essay “Play, culture and creativity”, explain that play is ubiquitous in humans and that every child in every culture plays.

A key adaptive advantage of the long period of human biological immaturity is the opportunity for play.

When writing about curiosity and discovery in the past I have read about these concepts through Alison Gopnik’s work.

She is a child-development psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Gopnik explains that humans have a longer childhood, a slower path to puberty in which we can exercise our urge to explore.

This occurs while we’re still dependent on our parents and have an unmatched period of protected “play” in which to learn exploration’s rewards.

Yet while other animals play mainly by practicing basic skills such as fighting and hunting, human children play by creating hypothetical scenarios with artificial rules that test hypotheses. Can I build a tower of blocks as tall as I am? What’ll happen if we make the bike ramp go even higher? How will this schoolhouse game change if I’m the teacher and my big brother is the student?Such play effectively makes children explorers of landscapes filled with competing possibilities.

Whitebread and Basilio explain that this longer childhood provides a critical foundation for thinking, establishing:

the basis for the ‘flexibility of thought’ (Bruner, 1972) which underpins the astonishing problem-solving abilities and creativity of humans.

What do you know about the links between curious children and how playful they are? How do you see children engaging in more purposeful exploration? What value does playfulness have in problem solving?

The impact of playfulness

I was interested to read of the wider implications of developing the creative problem solving capacities in children and young adults. Beyond simply the obvious value, creative problem solving skills have importance for both the individual and the wider society.

Children and young adults who are creative problem solvers have been shown to have better coping skills to deal with everyday problems and crises, and this skill is increasingly important in the ever-more complex and rapidly changing modern world.

Typically we focus on the intrinsic value of creativity, or the importance of young adults exercising that skillset in the workforce. We want those entering work to understand their own creative skills and be well equipped to apply them purposefully.

However we rarely look at the increased coping skills and resilience of creative problem solvers, as highlighted here by Whitebread and Basilio. That link between creativity and resilience is a new insight for me.

Playfulness and creativity have a strong relationship. The essay presents a range of studies that reveal the connection.

These go back as far as the 1960s, with the early studies of Wallach & Kogan showing that creative children were more playful than less creative ones (Wallach & Kogan, 1965). Subsequent studies have shown that playfulness predicts scores on divergent thinking tasks (Howard-Jones, Taylor & Sutton, 2002; Lieberman, 1977).

The ‘divergent thinking tasks’ are often used as devices to measure creativity. Divergent and convergent thinking modes are essential throughout an extended creative/innovative process.

I think there is an ebb and flow between these different modes or thinking states. An awareness of these and how we remain cognitively flexible enough to switch from one to the other, without diminishing efficacy, is a typical characteristic of those with effective creative problem solving skills.

As part of a previous article, I asked why we marginalise the conditions for children to be creative. I recognise that part of this is the reduction in opportunities for play in primary schools. Even in pre-school.

In comparing my experience from England I have noticed that classrooms in Australia don’t have as much resourcing around pretend play. Dress up and role play resources, everyday objects, sand, water and messy trays were always so plentiful in the early years classrooms I led and worked with.

It worries me to see early learning experiences morphing into readiness for future grades or preparedness for higher year groups.

If playfulness has such a strong impact on developing creativity, why are opportunities for play in school diminishing? How might we protect play environments in the classrooms in our schools? How might we help broaden the understand of this area of research?

Pressured play

One of the key challenges for early childhood practitioners, raised by Whitebread and Basilio, is the pressure of covering a prescribed curriculum.

They go on to suggest that this exists in all urbanised cultural regions and is especially evident in the Far East.

A review of attitudinal studies on play and creativity in Hong Kong and mainland Chinese societies revealed that,

a cultural emphasis on narrowly conceived academic achievement was deleterious to developing playful, creative school environments (Fung & Cheng, 2012).

Not only is the word “deleterious” a wonderful new addition to my lexicon, but I also think that this statement holds true for education systems. What do you think?

The latter part of the essay explores the impact of parents and teachers on the development of the child and early achievement. An important element of this is that “specific practices by parents and teachers consistently over-ride broader cultural influences.”

The authors conclude by focusing on the importance of the school experience and the impact of parenting.

while there are clear challenges for human culture on our increasingly crowded planet, we must believe we can overcome these, and playful, creative approaches to parenting and schooling are clearly likely to be very helpful in this endeavour.

Takeaways

Here are a few key ideas, insights and provocations that stood out to me.

  • The challenge set out by the writers to ensure that what we can control of the experience in school, nurseries or where learning happens, is a creative and playful one.
  • The influence of creative teachers as a leveller of achievement for students from different social classes and backgrounds.
  • Children with creative problem solving capacities are more resilient.
  • Creative children were more playful when they were younger. Would an increase in opportunities for different types of play help develop more creativity? How might we sustain access to play in our primary classrooms?

If we want innovation we need creativity, if we want creativity we need playfulness.

Download the essay here: “Play, culture and creativity” by David Whitebread & Marisol Basilio.

This is the second in my thinking series exploring the Cultures of Creativity essays published by the LEGO Foundation, and their relevance to schools and learning organisations.

Next in my series is “Building cultures of creativity in the age of the Knowledge Machine” by Michael Wesch.

Name Your Perspective

Discussion, Leadership, Learning, ThinkingPublished on1 Comment on Name Your Perspective

If you have spent any time with me in small group development sessions you will likely have heard me talking deliberately about perspective. I am always keen to make explicit what can often be an implied understanding or concept. Trying to name up front and from the outset assumptions we might be making is a handy habit to get into. The same is true about the perspective we might be taking towards a discussion or dialogue.

I think one of the challenges we face is in our ability to zoom in and out in terms of our thinking and when in collaboration or discussion with others.

When I say “zoom in” I mean taking heed of the “Micro” perspective, the daily grind the specific, concrete things that might be happening in the classroom. Paying attention to the “Individual” would also be common with a “Micro” perspective. With this lens we are paying less attention to the larger more abstract goals at play and focusing on the concrete decisions and actions in the classroom. When we zoom in we might be asking “How” or “What” questions.

“Zoom out” to a wide angle lens and we bring into view the “Organisation” level goals and aspirations. They might be much less concrete to allow many people to get on-board, so our perspective is more abstract. We are thinking less about ourselves and the concrete stuff that might get in the way of whole school progress. When we zoom out we ask “Why” questions to get to the drivers of our actions and decisions. We have to be more comfortable dealing in a more abstract currency.

I typically signal the perspective I am taking to help set the expectations about a particular part of a discussion. I think it helps me make explicit my choice of perspective and also allows a group to quickly appreciate the expectations that come with that perspective. Micro = details, Macro = drivers.

“Let’s zoom out for a second and consider the reason why this programme needs to change in this way.”

“If we think about a wider lens for a moment we can see that this decision fits with what we are choosing to do across the school.”

“OK now let’s zoom back into what this means in terms of the day to day. How could we explore this everyday?”

“What about the learners experience of this? Let’s jump back into the classroom for a second and consider how this concept would be evidenced in the classroom.”

In most discussions we might move fluidly between the concrete and the abstract. So perhaps start with why but keep returning to it. By doing so we continue to rationalise our actions or ideas and ensure they are connected to a bigger picture.

Perhaps the challenge is not just zooming out to think in an abstract way or zooming in to consider the concrete actions, but more precisely how effectively, fluidly and quickly we can move between those perspectives. Another layer to this is of course how synchronised our perspective is with others we are with.

By explicitly naming a perspective in dialogue we are forming good mental cues to ourselves and external cues for others to gain a better understanding. I think we can all benefit from solid thinking habits that tether our concrete ideas to the drivers and the broader rationale.

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