next-ed

I am very proud of the fact that my staff have reached a concensus about how best to care for kids in the learning process.  The debate about the effect teachers have on students’ well be ing is long over.  What is left is the ethical and paradigm shift within teachers.  We have gone a long way down that road at St Mary’s, producing a deeply ethical statement about what we do to enhance well being and learning at the same time.

It looks like this:

Teaching styles and methods
Teachers at St Mary’s use a variety of styles and methods to engage all learners and to meet diverse learning needs.  They plan and tailor their teaching to match the content, student ability, available technology and other situational factors which affect learning.

Learning styles and needs
Teachers at St Mary’s recognise and cater for students who learn in different ways.  They facilitate optimal learning experiences that nurture emotional well-being and personal achievement.

Authentic learning experiences
Teachers at St Mary’s create authentic learning experiences which engage students in the development of significant and life-centred knowledge and skills.  Their lessons promote problem solving, critical thinking and a love of learning.

Reflection in learning
Teachers at St Mary’s build reflection, assessment for learning and evaluation into the learning process.  They explicitly teach the skills of listening, questioning, goal setting and planning.

Assessment
Teachers at St Mary’s measure student learning in a range of meaningful and equitable ways.  They create assessments of high quality which support learning for all students and they provide feedback which is timely and constructive.

A positive learning environment
Teachers at St Mary’s create positive learning environments with a balance of challenge and support, where every student’s right to learn is protected and promoted.  They create stimulating lessons where students feel secure enough to take learning risks.

Expectations
Teachers at St Mary’s expect all students can learn and all students can achieve personal excellence.  They communicate this expectation to their students and encourage and support them to be motivated and optimistic learners.

Relationships
Teachers at St Mary’s model and promote empathetic relationships with students based on mutual trust and respect.  They engage with all students in a way that is purposeful and is directed to all students’ growth and well being.

Now we watch to see it come to life!

Well that is what some teachers at St Mary Star of the Sea College are given every year.

They will head in to the new year with the resources to study, measure, design and implement a plan to improve student engagement and learning outcomes.  Using the principles which underpin the NSW Quality Teacher Framework, these leaders and their teams will create a cycle of action learning as courageous and innovative as their imaginations will allow.

Most importantly, they will listen to what students have to tell them about their learning.

What would your students say if you asked them, say, at the end of a lesson:

• what point in the lesson was the most exciting?
• what did you learn today that was valuable?
• how would I know you succeeded in this topic?
• what would you tell next year’s students about this lesson?

Practitioner enquiry – an ethical approach to student learning.

What should we be asking?

In a recent article in Teacher magazine, Joanne Pace reflects on the learning taking place in her junior environmental science class.  What she discovers is that the students are not engaged in anything deeper than the strict instructions and single learning path she has been offering them.  Things must and do change when she asks “What should we do to make our school more environmentally friendly”? Suddenly, an open ended conversation leads to new learning.

It takes some courage, but Pace begins to plan for her students’ learning based on their emerging understanding.

People who know me know I am passionate about learning how student voice can be used to improve practice.  This ethical practitioner enquiry model holds great power for shaping the learning environment.  How could it work in your classroom?

I had the great pleasure of attending the second annual Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools conference, held at Taronga Zoo on the banks of Sydney Harbour last Friday.  The Coalition is a cooperative association of member schools and institutions from across New South Wales and across sectors of education.  At times it was difficult to concentrate as Cotton Top Tamarin monkeys played on the other side of the glass wall.

The small conference was energetic and the atmosphere was very open and trusting.  People from divergent fields, inlcuding zoo educators and museum curators shared their experiences with primary and secondary schools of vastly different cultures.  Two prevailing themes emerged from our discussions: 

1. That the ubiquity of technology takes it beyond being ‘just another tool’.  Its pervasiveness in the lives of our students, and its seamless integration into social organisation and cultural expression elevates technology to a status which has more in common with a cultural paradigm rather than merely a learning tool.  The implications of this are profound, starting with our moral and ethical obligation, as teachers, to study and understand how learning and knowing can be enhanced and mediated in a culturally powerful way.
2. One of the most authentic and effective ways of keeping learning fresh is to engage in action research as a practitioner.  By asking rich questions and endeavouring to answer them by listening to the voices of those we teach, we can come a long way down the path towards that elusive destination: best practice.

I want to leave you with a a short (4min) video summarising some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime

I spent today working with the advisory group preparing for the DEST teacher Summer Schools for January 2008.  My committee is looking at Literacy and Numeracy, to be presented by a Consortium made up of Wollongong University, Edith Cowan University and ALEA.  It was energising to be with diverse people all passionate about teacher professional learning, and we spent a good portion of the day wrestling with ideas about how to sustain the learning after the summer school is over.

There was a diverse array of scholars gathered for this conversation about literacy and numeracy, including Len Unsworth, one of Australia’s pre-eminent advocates for digital and emerging literacies.  His work in the area of eFiction taps into the reading culture of young people and would be extremely relevant for teachers trying to engage a generation of students who have exposure to such a vast range of texts in such a broad choice of media.

So the summer schools will offer learning based on cutting edge research.  My other hope (the one I will be working on with the Advisory Group) is that the summer schools will also be taught using cutting edge pedagogy.  How can we hope to teach writing for an online audience, if we don’t write online?  How can we teach numeracy as a life skill for a digital age if we don’t engage with digital media?  How can we teach contemporary communication as a literacy, if we are fearful of social networking. 

I was a little embarassed by the silence that followed my suggestion that participants should engage in an online social network before, during and after the summer school.  I might as well have suggested that all participants dress up in silly loud shirts and pose for a group photo.  Ridiculous!

My colleagues will soon be famous. Tune in to this great podcast, where educators respond to the question “How will student learning be improved or enriched with these Web 2.0 tools?” The answers were broad, thoughtful and varied. Enjoy!

Download Our Last Breakfast.

We have come to the end of another Big Byte Breakfast course – 5 weeks of dazzling learning at an alarming speed.  The presentations of the project by the course participants was mind blowing, considering that a few weeks earlier, many did not know their blogs from their wikis and thought RSS was a sports car.  What became immediately apparent was that teachers are expert at spotting potential.  These Web2.0 tools sprang to life in the hands of experienced educators, and many took on a life that their creators may have found surprising.

You can see the complete Show and Tell at our Next-Ed Wikispace here.

One of the favourites of the morning was Professor Stcky-beakers’ Toon-do cartoon of a Science Fair Project Proposal.  Click here to see the cartoon.

Sounds harsh, but if you are a teacher and your opinion goes something like this: “Technology has its place, but all of this MySpace and blog stuff is just a disruption to real learning” then your opinion is anachronistic, irrelevant, or worse, unethical. Your students’ world exists on the other side of a significant gulf of understanding and experience. You, dear teacher, are receding from their view.

Ever since the Expanding Learning Horizons conference in Lorne, VIC this month, I have been thinking about how best to challenge my colleagues about their own learning and about their digital lifestyle beyond the classroom. I am delighted to say that we are moving, and not slowly, towards a narrowing of that chasm. So watch this space as we move with confidence into a next-ed environment.