Dewey want to Seymour Learning? It's not Godin be easy

PART 1

Does this ring a bell?

"The subject-matter of education consists of bodies of information and of skills that have been worked out in the past; therefore, the chief business of the school is to transmit them to the new generation"

This is how John Dewey (Experience and Education, p17) characterised the traditional model of schools.

In my experience, the situation has not progressed very far in the eighty years since Dewey was writing. As a teacher in the 'university-preparation' stage of an international secondary schooI, I have spent most of my time in classrooms upholding this model for which:

"the attitude of pupils must, upon the whole, be one of docility, receptivity and obedience". (p18)

The goals are fixed (we make common cause with students, parents and administrators to attain the highest scores in public examinations). We do not ask whether the examining body's criteria benefit the student, we simply train her to jump through the hoops.

Dewey then contrasted tradition with 'certain common principles' of 'new education' which are:

"cultivation of individuality ... learning through experience ... acquisition of [skills] as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal ... making the most of the opportunities of present life ... acquaintance with a changing world." (p19)

That description of an education will appeal to many people who read it, but since we appear to be powerless to change the goal, the means we employ to achieve it also remain largely the same as before.

PART 2

Project-based learning is inspired by Dewey's philosophy of education as a social activity. The differences between Project/Challenge/Problem based learning methods are not really significant; their similarities are the important issue. Each of them helps students to:

learn about Real-world issues

"students are pulled through the curriculum by a Driving Question or authentic problem that creates a need to know the material" (Introduction to Project Based Learning, Buck Institute of Education)

Reflect on how and what they are learning

"Judge it by what the whole system learns, and that includes the teacher." (Interview with Seymour Papert)

choose how they learn

"Emphasise student independence and inquiry" (John Larmer on Edutopia)

Sustain Focus on a topic

"Challenge Based Learning slows down the experience to allow for full participation, ongoing reflection, and self-discovery." (CBL and personalized learning, digitalpromise.org)

PART 3

But it is easy to say what is wrong with an institution; much more difficult is actually to bring about change for the better. Generations of educators have nodded along with John Dewey but, unlike most areas of society in which change has been rapid, very little progress has been made. I think this is because we are prematurely congratulating ourselves on seeing the problem, not realising that it is only the first small step in a journey with no map.

Dewey knew this:

"The general philosophy of the new education may be sound, and yet the difference in abstract principles will not decide the way in which the moral and intellectual preference involved shall be worked out in practice". (p20)

In other words, can we set some new goals? If we don't (and usually, in schools, we try to skip this most difficult step), then the change we say we want will not occur. We have people like Dewey and Papert to help us, but we must listen and let them teach us to think deeply about the reasons for what we are doing.

PART 4

Something has to give. There are only so many hours in a student's career. If you're going to do a new thing, you have to retire an old thing.

"The trend towards portfolio-based, so-called authentic assessment is very good, but it's very limited unless it goes with throwing out the content of what we're testing." (Seymour Papert)

If you've ever seen a conversation between teaching subject-specialists as they try to identify content to throw out, you'll know how hard this will be. Yet it has to happen.

Furthermore, let's not kid ourselves that projects will be easier to implement. On the contrary:

"we're going to have to work very hard to make the stuff that they're going to learn. It's not going to come about just by teaching the old stuff in a more, "constructivist" way." (Papert)

PART 5

So, like our students, we have to read; we have to work hard.

And we have to think and learn.

"Please ask someone, “what is school for?” and don’t stop asking until we can agree on the answer and start taking action" (Seth Godin in Stop Stealing Dreams)

You can read Dewey's answer in Article 2 here.

This is what my family said (and no-one mentioned exams):

• School replaces human nature with more society-friendly characteristics (in his 20s)


• School is there to prepare you for adult life. And I'm not sure it does that for our lot... (50s)


• I think school is there to teach children to read, so that they can go out and choose their reading, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, freely and independently. (50s)


• School gives children their first opportunity to live in a society away from their home surroundings and to build relationships beyond the family. (70s)

What do you think school is for?

Learning 2 integrate technology

Imagine going to an educational conference where, although technology is central, in many sessions it is not even mentioned because everyone is too busy talking about teaching and learning.

Imagine every presenter being a current educator (or student!), in touch with the concerns of their audience.

Imagine that there is no celebrity keynote speaker, nor any outsider delivering plenary talks; just those aforementioned practitioners.

Imagine a style of session in which the presenters have the freedom to give you, say, half an hour to just try stuff out or chat or read or whatever is right for you.

For a lot of teachers, that is the PD they wish they were getting.

I'm in Poland and the Learning2 Europe conference at the American School of Warsaw has just finished.

On Thursday, I signed up for Maker Your Own Learning. Right from the start, Mark and Sarah told us they wouldn't be giving much direct instruction. As a result I was a bit stuck. So I found a template to make a simple circuit on a piece of paper. I didn't know why I was doing it. But it worked, and now I could see some possibilities. The beauty is that I'd had to figure them out for myself. The final version can be seen in Sarah's tweet below. My polychromatically luminous badge is not exactly an innovative form of 21st century communications technology, but I am proud because four days later, despite much handling, it still works perfectly.

#learning2 making a stoplight badge! pic.twitter.com/RJtBMrpjZe

— Sarah Woods (@placeomanytrees) April 6, 2017

For the rest, I had a very CoETaIL time. The other sessions over the weekend I attended were with graduates Nicki Hambleton, Sonya TerBorg and Diana Beabout. Each time, technology was never far away, but it was integrated, in the words of Mary Beth Hertz, seamlessly.

"Students use technology to learn content and show their understanding of content, not just their expertise with a tool." (Hertz)

That, of course, is what technology integration should always be. I have been wondering how often my lessons look like that. I teach two widely differing classes: Grade 11 ToK (an externally assessed IB Diploma course) and Grade 6 Get Set (an introduction to the 1-to-1 classroom). My colleague Becky and I also run #islconnects (a series of workshops for teachers).

During Unit 1 of this course, I wrote a blogpost (WAY OF THE SAMR EYE) comparing the common models for evaluating tech integration.

SAMR (not my favourite);

TPACK (which I've used the least);

and PATER (which is least well-known but, being a cycle, the most effective to use, in my view).

 

Here are some learning activities involving technology which I have recently taught. I shall consider them with a TPACK eye.

Ancient Civilisation Facebook profile (bit.ly/islfacebooktemplate)

We use a facebook profile to highlight some facts about a historical figure. Aside from the factual content (which our Social Studies colleagues handled), we wanted the students to gain experience with technology: online search and citation; shared Google Drawings (the template); and simple photo-editing (the profile picture). Pedagogically, it was a challenge to manage the students juggling several tools at once while maintaining focus on the learning of history. Ideally, the students would have more choice of tool and their research questions, but we concluded that the restriction would serve our goals.

Knowledge Question Film Festival (bit.ly/tokkqff)

In a one hour lesson, we watch a playlist of clips, one chosen by each student to exemplify, as content, the sort of knowledge question ToK is interested in. The students reflected on the questions in an online back-channel. The discussion was too distracting: a victim of my desire to incorporate technology at all costs. Next time, the students will reflect alone and compare notes later. Pedagogically, a paper-based See Think Wonder would have been more appropriate.

The Power and the Point - of documents in the cloud (bit.ly/powerandpoint)

This activity has been through a number of iterations, each time giving the attendees more time to use technology to try things out. It remains a content-heavy session which is delivered largely from the front. Pedagogically, I would like to keep contact with the teachers while they implement what they have learned in their upcoming lessons.

After a foray into the upper echelons of administration, I returned to the classroom around ten years ago and was excited by the obvious possibilities inherent in educational technology. Like many other colleagues, I have consciously tried to find as many different ways as possible to integrate technology. We sometimes make mistakes and go too far. Usually, the first people to notice this failure are our students.

New ways of teaching and learning will need new ways of developing professionally in supportive and flexible models with transparent and flat organisations. I hope many teachers consider attending a Learning2 in the near future, in November in Shanghai...

...or in March 2018, I hope we can welcome you to Luxembourg is Learning2.