We're getting there...

I am hearing some wonderful things about what’s coming in GLOW, not least a move away from the closed-door proprietary nonsense towards open standards – Andrew Brown knows that “secure” doesn’t mean “inpenetrable”. Good luck to him in evolving GLOW to its fullest potential.

Woo-saaaaaaahhhh….

The 2009 Scottish Survey of Achievement in Reading and Writing is published this week and I am sure it will be picked apart and used as evidence that:

• Education is failing
• Teachers are liars
• Surveys ask the wrong questions
• Kids aren’t as clever as we were
• Computers are wrecking children’s literacy

or whatever else your particular vested interest or prejudices require. My particular view is that there is evidence (and this survey alone isn’t it) that societal changes are driving societal change and this is perceived as, inter alia, an increase in illiteracy. I am sure someone will be beaten with a metaphorical stick as a result of these numbers, and for sure some ill-informed politician will make party political capital out of it.

Within the report, to the credit of the people who prepared it, is data on the difference between what their survey found on the day and what the teachers who work with the children all year said about the pupils’ abilities. For example:

This, with the reported levels found by the survey, could be interpreted to show that teachers are misrepresenting their pupils’ abilities. Certainly, secondary teachers have long viewed primary teachers’ reports with a good deal of suspicion if not downright disbelief. Is it really the case? I wanted to research this as part of a putative doctorate but was advised to steer well clear.

What I fear is that too much credence is given to the interpretation made by education leaders about what this data means. Having, like many a Principal Teacher, been the unwilling participant in the annual ceremony of “flagellatis statistica” conducted by school leaders, I can vouch for the faith that is placed in such data. The current report cites the levels of confidence as at about 95%, but as anyone who has done real, robust, scientific statistical research will tell you, these are not gambling odds. We share, after all, 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Therefore, these statistics are not quite as true a reflection of the state of Scottish Education as you, dear reader, are a chimpanzee.

My view is simply this: that society is changing and we should expect it to. We reap what we sow. To mix metaphors, we are reaping a curate’s egg: parts of it are excellent. I am fortunate enough to teach such parts.

I’d like to make an open, unqualified and unconditional apology to him for that remark and the hurt it must have caused him.

There’s no excuse: just an opportunity to reflect on the curse of being born with a fast brain and an ever-so-slightly faster gob.

Early days yet...

My own contribution rides on the back of Drew Buddie’s review of how far the use of ICT in education has come in the last ten years and is meant to be a bit of a foil to any exuberance we might feel about being so far ahead of ourselves. My simple and short point is simply this: I am not convinced that the young minds we are preparing are best served by what I see as an endemic dumbing down of the curriculum. This isn’t a Scottish problem, it’s all over the place and has been brought about by an avalanche of change – in political thinking and correctness, in public funding of state provision, in weak social (read “non”) science research, in promotion of managers of expediency to positions where leadership are required, not least the head teachers of state schools, and the very curriculum itself, diluted to the point of homeopathic uselessness by feeble regression to an exponentially weakening mean level of ability.

The words of the new curriculum are laudable: I hear paraphrases in the modern idiom of the seven liberal arts and sciences and slogans such as “science at the heart of Curriculum for Excellence”, but until a fundamental return is made to decent standards of behaviour, literacy, parenting, leadership and public service provision, no progress will be had without those of us called mavericks being heard.

Don Ledingham falls into the same old traps of the deluded project manager in his blog post on reducing bureaucracy in education when he cites the cost of a 30-minute meeting of SMT/PT’s as something approaching £18,000 – £20,000 per year. The cost is, of course, £0.00. The financial costs of the enterprise are the same, with or without the meetings. The posts are filled, the salary bill is fixed. Whatever you want those people to do, they will endeavour to do – whether it is on your time or theirs. No, the cost of spending time is what is not achieved with the remaining time. If you want a fully-integrated, cross-curricular, child-centred, four-capacity-compliant, literate, numerate, articulate, coherent curriculum, then the time to build it must be given to the builders.

The principles are simple but missing from education: from blindness to the effect of initiative layering to the extremes of narcissism, education is driven by expedient and personal self-interest far more than it is driven by the principles of providing good value for public money, future-proofing our economy and preparing people for social, economic and political environments which haven’t been dreamed of yet.

Rule #1

• Fixed: look clever
• Growth: learn, learn, learn

Rule #2

• Fixed: It should come naturally – hard work makes me feel stupid
• Growth: Work hard – effort is key. The harder you work, the better you get. Geniuses are distinguished from their peers by hard work, working hard at their strengths and weaknesses

Rule #3

• Fixed: Hide mistakes – have no recovery recipe for failure
• Growth: capitalize on mistakes, confront deficiencies

Professor Dweck went on to identify that mindsets come from our language and importantly, praise can encourage the Fixed mindset. She carefully distinguishes between praise of intelligence (which encourages the fixed mindset: “what a clever girl!”) and praise of effort or process. Helpfully, we were given practical advice on what to praise:

• Effort, struggle, persistence despite setbacks
• Strategies, choices
• Choosing difficult tasks
• Learning, improving

Because of the plasticity of the brain, the mindset can be changed with the right work and the effect this has on motivation is significant: one place where this is exemplified is at www.brainology.us, where a mindset development programme for students offers a “manual for the brain” to help overcome problems in school. It’s not a free programme, but the (free) demo certainly seems engaging and promising.

Teachers have a duty (imho) to have expert knowledge on aspects of learning rooted in this kind of research and this brings me to the second memorable thing at the SLF09: I was lucky enough to have my name picked to speak for seven minutes at the Teachmeet event at the BBC. I’m not going to talk about the teachmeet phenomenon – there’s plenty on that, but taking that as read, I was very happy indeed to be able to offer a description of a critical thinking task I have been using with some of my Higher and Advanced Higher Physics students. This was something I came up with whilst on holiday this summer, reading some Feynman and Taleb’s “Black Swan”. I developed a problem for pupils which required them to initially fail – the problem is not solvable numerically – and then persevere, reflect, think out of the box, struggle and – this is what I hoped for – resolve with a new perspective on their own knowledge and how they came by it.

I admit to the obscurity of this task in the context of the daily mayhem of the average secondary school but excellence is not for all (despite what it says on school stationery): excellence is elusive and precious – and anything precious is hard won. The prize is nothing less than emancipation (look at the banner on this site) – setting minds free of the bonds in which they have been enslaved by social context and the dull linear education that most encounter. Let one pupil (one out of about thirty) leave you with an insight into what I was seeking:

I learned that to truly understand something (especially something like this that requires hard thinking) you have to not only work at it, but to sit back and think about it. Then, if you’ve got it, finish the task then at the end reflect over it. If you still get it – then you know you’ve done good at it. Then you get that good feeling.

“That good feeling” is addictive. It is the joy of winning the intellectual battle. This student has set her mind free. The task was posted here.

The keynote is being given by Fiona Hyslop, our esteemed Secretary of State for Education – more on that in the comments.

I’m off to a good start, having had a quick look at the exhibitor displays, met with some of the influential people in education today and had a very positive conversation with one of the senior managers in my own LA, Fife, about the positive things happening in the arena of new technology.

I’ll comment updates as the day and opportunity affords.