The Global Search for Education
“The iPad has enabled greater access for both the education consumer and the creator.” — Tony Wagner
Education Technology
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
EdTechTeacher will host the first national iPads in education summit, bringing together educators, researchers, tech directors, principals, school leaders and industry partners to identify best practices for integrating iPads into education. The conference will be held from November 6th to 8th at The Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Schools and districts nationwide continue to invest in mobile technologies. The EdTechTeacher iPad Summit hopes to provide educators in this country and overseas with a forum to discuss how to leverage these devices in order to further empower teachers and students as creators of their own learning. “While there are some technical sessions,” explains the EdTechTeacher team, “the focus is on creating effective pedagogy, enriching curriculum, and leveraging the device in order to support students and teachers as innovators.”
“Knowledge is rapidly becoming a commodity and is increasingly democratized and globalized.”— Tony Wagner
The keynote speaker at the conference is Tony Wagner, Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Wagner, an advocate for the need to better prepare students for 21st-century careers and citizenship, collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create the 60 minute documentary, The Finnish Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System. Tony’s latest book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World (Simon & Schuster), provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. What role can the iPad play in their education? What additional professional development for teachers is needed? What examples of best technology practices can we learn from around the world? Tony agreed to discuss these subjects with me.
“Students will need to learn to work in teams, understand and solve problems using multiple disciplines, persevere, take risks, and learn from mistakes.” — Tony Wagner
How has the iPad made learning in education more innovative, and how can educators use the iPad to achieve significant innovation in teaching and learning?
First, the iPad has made using most computer-based learning applications far more accessible and intuitive. You no longer need to take students to a special room full of computers for that occasional experience; you don’t need to pull a laptop cart around the school. And students don’t need hours of training to learn how to use the device or its applications. Assuming a decent broadband connection, most computer related work - researching, writing, sharing - can happen at any time and for every student, with little or no advance preparation. Secondly, the comparative ease of creating and distributing an iPad app, versus writing a program for a computer, has given rise to a dramatic increase in the number of education-related applications being created and disseminated. In short, the iPad has enabled greater access for both the education consumer and the creator.
“We need assessments of the skills that matter most - like the online test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures problem-solving, reasoning, and writing skills.” — Tony Wagner
Is the missing link in education technology trained teachers?
Having teachers who are comfortable with the technology and who know how to apply it in the classroom is critical, but that problem will be mostly solved by time. As older teachers retire in growing numbers in the coming years, and many young people who are digital natives come into teaching, I think we will see a much more rapid adoption.
But the real question is: what will this technology will be used for? I toured a school district recently that had, with corporate help, put web-connected white boards and student clickers into every classroom at huge expense. But, in classroom after classroom, what I saw was all of this technology being used for drilling and test prep. Instead of having work sheets on their desks, students had clickers that enabled them to “vote” for the right answer on the practice test. More and better teacher preparation won’t solve this problem. We need assessments of the skills that matter most - like the online test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures problem-solving, reasoning, and writing skills - to encourage more powerful teaching and learning, both with and without the new technologies.
“As older teachers retire in growing numbers in the coming years, and many young people who are digital natives come into teaching, I think we will see a much more rapid adoption.” — Tony Wagner
Can you share a couple of examples of good teaching/technology practice that you’ve seen in top education systems around the world, for instance, in Finland?
In Finland, what I saw was much less teacher-centric uses of technologies - I don’t recall seeing a single white board, for example - and much more student-centric technology applications. I saw students using Moodle (the e-learning platform) to share and discuss work. In a marketing class, I saw students discussing how various social networking applications were being used to market products and services. Here in the US, I’ve seen some schools like High Tech High require all students to have digital portfolios that show evidence of progressive mastery of the skills that matter most. I’ve seen virtual dissections in biology classes that teach far more than having to actually cut up a frog. And I’m excited about new software being developed that will enable students to better understand disruptions of complex ecosystems through simulation. Finally, the US Army has developed a wide variety of gaming applications to teach strategy.
“Developing the skills, habits of mind, and dispositions of an innovator, in my view, requires effective coaching - that is what I think all teachers must strive to become.” — Tony Wagner
Online education continues to be an ever larger force in how students learn - how far can it go to changing education as we know it?
Knowledge is rapidly becoming a commodity and is increasingly democratized and globalized. You no longer need to be in a classroom to acquire the knowledge you want or need. But in my view, knowledge is only one of the three pillars needed for life-long learning, work, and citizenship in the 21st century. In addition to knowledge, students also need so-called 21c skills, such as those I’ve described in The Global Achievement Gap. Finally, students need the motivations and dispositions that will enable them to innovate - to solve problems creatively - in whatever they do, which I’ve written about most recently in Creating Innovators. They will need to learn to work in teams, understand and solve problems using multiple disciplines, persevere, take risks, and learn from mistakes. They will need to be intrinsically motivated to acquire new knowledge and skills throughout their lives. Developing the skills, habits of mind, and dispositions of an innovator, in my view, requires effective coaching - that is what I think all teachers must strive to become.
For more information:
Creating Innovators
EdTechTeacher iPad Summit
Tony Wagner and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of EdTechTeacher and Tony Wagner.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“Every child around the world should have the opportunity to have a high quality global education.” - Jeffrey Beard
An International Education
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
The International Baccalaureate (the IB) continues to play an important role in changing the lives of students worldwide. Apart from PISA, it is the only test that measures the performance of students against their global peers.
Dr. Tony Wagner, Innovation Education fellow at Harvard University and author of the new book,Creating Innovators (due out April 17), explains, “I do agree that the IB is a significantly better framework for intellectual rigor than the advanced placement (AP) curriculum for several reasons: the requirement that all students complete a 4500 word research paper, the service learning requirement, and the interdisciplinary theory of knowledge requirement, all of which take learning beyond the confines of the conventional curriculum.”
Jeffrey R. Beard joined the International Baccalaureate in September, 2005. He became Director General in January, 2006. I had the opportunity to discuss with Jeffrey the ways in which the IB program continues to offer students a unique international education.
What kind of educational system will permit a country to have the human skills needed to compete globally?
It’s our belief at the International Baccalaureate that every child around the world should have the opportunity to have a high quality global education. One of the things I am proud of is that we cross national boundaries. Approximately one million students in 141 countries and in a wide variety of schools (private, state, public) have experienced the IB. Many of these countries recognize the need for students to have 21st century skills. These skills include critical thinking, communication and language acquisition; and as highlighted by the National Center for Education in its 2006 report, creativity, innovation, use of ideas, abstraction, self-discipline, and the ability to function as part of a team. These capabilities are embedded in our programs in an international context. They give students the perspectives of other cultures, societies and countries, and teach them how they can engage with their peers. We are now seeing stronger uptake from countries around the world who want to bring the IB education into the forefront.
“Our programs give students the perspectives of other cultures, societies andcountries.” - Jeffrey Beard
What are your views on standardized testing? How does the IB assessment compare?
I believe standardized testing has a place. It should be one piece of the student portfolio versus the whole assessment. Some universities put all their emphasis on the standardized test. I think it’s fine to include those scores in a portfolio of work, but it should only be part of the assessment universities use to make their admissions decisions. The SAT and ACT tests are used to rank students for limited places in an admissions process. The tests are imperfect and imprecise. They express knowledge in limited dimensions using multiple choice questions.
The difference with the IB assessment is that we rely on an international approach that measures students using the same criteria worldwide. At the end of their senior year, IB students sit for about three weeks to take their final exams for their diploma. The exams are then sent to be marked by international examiners which are both IB educators in schools and university professors. Our system is criteria-based rather than norm-based. Seven is our highest score. When our students see their results, they know that those results have been measured against their international peers around the world. I am not aware of any other assessment program available to US students in K through 12 apart from PISA that measures the performance of students against their global peers. We also approach assessment from a whole child point of view. We incorporate community service, leadership and character as part of that assessment through the mandatory completion of CAS (Community, Action, and Service).
What is the importance of teachers in the IB process?
Teachers are the key to the whole program. All the international studies of top educational systems (Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong) have shown us that the teacher is what makes the difference. The successful countries take their approach to teaching very seriously. They elevate the importance of teachers. They screen candidates for suitability before they go to university in contrast to the US system and many other countries. The top countries accept fewer teachers and they are put more resources behind each teacher along the way. They treat teaching as a highly respected profession. Once teacher pre-service training is complete, ongoing professional development of the teacher is also very important. You see more mentoring in the classroom. You see more feedback in the classroom. That doesn’t happen in many other countries, where teachers come out of school and that may be the last formal training they have.
The IB approach to professional development is a pedagogy that’s based on a constructivist understanding of how students learn. It’s a theory of cognition, widely used and accepted, which asserts that knowledge is not passively learned but actively built. It recognizes the importance of engaging and challenging learners in order to improve their understanding and comprehension. To become an IB school, all teachers must complete our category one training, which is built around these principles. Later on, the experienced IB teacher may attend a category two workshop, which provides more in-depth training in areas like internal assessment and research. Finally, the master IB teacher may go on to attend one of over 100 category three workshops which are aimed at refining a teacher’s skill in his chosen field. I am not aware of any other program that offers a continuum of professional development that allows teachers to develop skills and then enhance those skills over a period of years. Our online curriculum center also allows these same IB teachers to network globally, where they can share with other teachers what they are doing and find out what is working and what is not. So it’s all very synergistic and you can see the effectiveness in terms of student performance.
“I am not aware of any other program that offers a continuum of professional development that allows teachers to develop skills and then enhance those skills over a period ofyears.” - Jeffrey Beard
How does the IB teach international mindedness? Isn’t international mindedness something you need to experience first hand?
How we do that is one of our challenges, but one we have been able to overcome. In the US, we are in about 1300 schools. So, a school in the Midwest may have a more homogeneous student population and therefore it’s a bit more challenging to introduce the concept of international mindedness. We do it in a number of different ways. Through technology, we ensure that students are exposed to what is happening around the world and can network with IB students in different countries. We require students to take a second language. Teachers are required through their curriculum planning to bring in the dimensions of other cultures into their teachings. We offer courses like world religions, global politics, and the world studies extended essay. We also ensure that students themselves take on projects that are broader than their local community. IB schools are connected globally and so students are always able to interact with IB students in other cultures through our IB virtual community. In sum, international mindedness is deeply embedded in the curriculum, the online program, and the community service component of our programs. So while it is not the same as first-hand experience, there is so much built into the curriculum that even in a homogeneous location, we are able to embed these concepts.
Have you found that more schools have embraced the IB because students can be assessed on an international level?
Initially, a lot of US schools implement the IB as a way of school reform. Struggling schools have seen teachers get better and students get better with the IB. As students get more into the program and do the assessments, there is a growing awareness that their grades can be compared to other students around the world. It’s an opportunity to grow beyond themselves. Students are already networked around the world through the internet. They’re seeing a melting pot of different nationalities, languages and cultures around the world, so the IB fits quite well into their paradigm.
What is the new diploma program from the IB, the IB Career-Related Certificate (the IBCC)?
The IBCC incorporates the educational principles of the IB into a unique offering that addresses the needs of students who wish to engage in career-related education. The IBCC encourages these students to benefit from elements of an IB education, through a selection of two or more Diploma Program courses in addition to a unique IBCC core, comprised of an approaches-to-learning (ATL) course, a reflective project, language development, and community and service. This new qualification is designed to provide a “value added” educational offering to schools that already offer the IB Diploma Program and are also delivering career-related courses to their students.
We are quite excited by the IBCC, which will be launched this year in September (2012). It is our foray into vocational and career-related work experience programs. It is for students who do not necessarily intend to go on to a four year university. They may instead desire technical training for a professional role and go directly into the workforce.
I attended an IB presentation with some of the graduating students from one of our pilot schools recently. It was attended by some local businessmen who told me: “We will hire anybody coming out of that school. We will give you funding. These kids are great!” We think the IBCC is going to be successful because it combines the skills that are offered in an IB program such as critical thinking, community service and international mindedness, along with a career-related education.
Jeffrey Beard and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of the International Baccalaureate Organization
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?”. She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“The way to improve the quality of teaching is through teamwork in the schools, and then surround it with better teacher pre-service, better attraction of the profession, and better professional development.” – Michael Fullan
Change Leader
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
Michael Fullan has been working to identify the right drivers for whole system education reform. His paper, “Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform,” has stimulated considerable interest from educators around the world (including the US) to understand the policies and strategies that can help get education into successful system reform, i.e. real solutions to closing the achievement gap and improving learning so that students learn better than they did before.
Michael Fullan is Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and is Special Adviser on Education to Dalton McGuinty, the Premier of Ontario. Fullan served as dean of the faculty of education at the University of Toronto from 1988 to 2003. He is currently working as adviser and consultant on several major education reform initiatives around the world. His work is based on how large-scale reform can be successfully accomplished. He has written several best sellers on leadership and change. His latest book is Change Leader: Learning to Do What Matters Most.
What kind of education system will permit a country to have the people skills needed to compete globally?
We did a qualitative study called “The Slow Road to Higher Order Skills” to take a look at what we call the 21st century skills. The skills that are normally listed, like creativity, communication, collaboration, problem solving, reasoning and digital literacy, are not well operationalized. Even though there has been a big project from Cisco/Intel/Microsoft to do that, the progress has been very slow. In Ontario, we want to start deeply with literacy and numeracy. We do not want to be narrow in our focus but we also do not want to get into the vagaries of the 21st century skills that people talk about but do not operationalize. In short, no one seems to know what “there” looks like when it comes to higher order skills, and correspondingly, no one knows how to get there.
What are your views on standardized testing?
The worst thing a system can do is load up on standards and assessments in a way that overwhelms schools. This is wrong driver number one. Instead, we have to focus on instruction and learning (personalized to each student) as the centerpiece, and then link to standards and assessments. The driver here has to be assessment-instruction up close with the student and the teacher. In my paper, “Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform,” I identified how some systems are mishandling accountability.
[Editor’s note: To briefly summarize Fullan’s paper, the four wrong drivers are the focus on accountability (versus intrinsic motivation and capacity building), individual quality (versus group quality), technology (versus instruction), fragmented (versus systemic) solutions.]
Testing is important in what I am going to call the accountability strategy, but the push on standardized testing can become too narrow and it becomes a mindset that says we have to load up on assessment and also identify with world class standards (such as PISA) in terms of assessment. Almost all of the skills that I consider the high order skills are measurable if you want to measure them. Politicians make assessments based on testing that is narrower than it should be. The PISA test is a great example of how we can break out of that mold. On top of this, we have been working on the “black box” of implementation for which you not only need better assessments, but you also need innovative instruction in relation to those assessments. Once again, the core is assessment-instruction personalized to each learner.
We seem to have become assessment obsessed in the US since our poor results in the last PISA Test.
The greater urgency the US places on competing internationally, the more that becomes an obsession in the wrong direction. The US school systems have been losing ground since 1980 with growing gaps between high and low performers, and poor rankings internationally. The US needs to take PISA benchmarks seriously, they need to get behind the numbers and realize that the top performers got there by building the collective capacity of teachers in the country – all the teachers.
“With Sir Ken Robinson, we want to map out the curriculum that includes the arts as well as literacy and math.” – Michael Fullan
What can be done to better address the emotional well-being of some kids today given the rise in competition and the pressure to achieve?
We have too many tests, so one way to reduce stress is to have fewer tests. I agree we have to reduce the stress on kids. Enabling them to have more success would be a great stress reducer. So, I would rather ask first what goals we are striving for. Let’s build those goals into the learning experience. And those goals have to include the well-being of our kids.
I think of the problem as a three legged stool. Let’s call the three legs: standards, assessment, and instruction. I want to go beyond the word curriculum and focus also on instruction. We’ve got standards. Even though they’ve not improved enough, there is a foot in the door around higher level skills, which should include well being. Our solution is to strengthen the two way street between instruction and assessment. Assessment should be a strategy teachers use to personalize the curriculum for kids and to improve instruction. Dylan Wiliam has published a book called Embedded Formative Assessment (Solution Tree), and it’s all about teachers and students engaged in the two way street between instruction and assessment of how they are doing. The answer for me is to zero in on instruction and assessment. In addition, we are beginning to work with Sir Ken Robinson to ensure curriculum is broadened to include the arts. Students’ well-being will be greatly served by tapping into the intrinsic motivation of a range of kids. (Editor’s Note: see Global Search for Education, C. M. Rubin’s interviews with Sir Ken Robinson and with Dylan Wiliam.)
What is the nature of the respect for teachers in countries that are doing well in education?
When you look at Finland, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong, all of which have high quality teachers, you will see that it’s not just that they have good teachers, but also because they have improved the whole profession. It’s a combination of incentivizing teachers and improving working conditions. Teacher’s salaries have been going up in the US, so it’s not just about teachers’ salaries. It is more about the respect for teachers, the quality of their preparation, the working conditions, and enabling teachers to work together. It’s a big task for the US because the US is starting so far behind.
What the US is counting on is the wrong driver on teacher appraisal. We think the way to improve the quality of teaching is through teamwork in the schools, and then surround it with better teacher pre-service, better attraction of the profession, and better professional development. Those surround things are enablers rather than causes, and the core cause is to improve the profession itself. You have to improve the entire teaching profession, not just reward the top 20% and punish the bottom 20%. You have to improve the daily work of all teachers, which is what we are doing in Ontario.
Does Canada’s definition of educational excellence take into account the quality of life of individuals and of a society’s artistic and cultural achievements?
No, not yet. I have been an advisor to the Premier of Ontario since 2003. We are in our 8th year now and we have spent a lot of time getting the house in order, so to speak. I would say that what we have done is get to the point where our next phase is to go for the whole well-being of the child. We have the stage set to do that. Five years ago, OECD UNESCO did a report on child well-being in rich countries. This study assessed the well-being of students in about 20 countries. It showed Canada well down. A policy objective has to be the well-being of students. We are looking forward to working with Sir Ken Robinson from the UK who, as you know, has advocated for the arts in education for over a decade. We need to integrate some of Ken’s thinking into our ongoing goals. Specifically, what we are now working on is to integrate technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge to accelerate personalized learning. We need learning that is deeply engaging for students, precise (i.e. it has to be specific and concrete), high yield (big return for the effort) and higher order. With Sir Ken Robinson, we want to map out the curriculum that includes the arts as well as literacy and math.
Professor Michael Fullan and C. M. Rubin
(Photos courtesy of the Dwight School and Michael Fullan)
In The Global Search for Education, join C. M. Rubin and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon, Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education
C.M. Rubin has more than two decades of professional experience in development, marketing, and art direction for a diverse range of media businesses. She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice In Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
Young Australians present to their classmates
Australia On The Move
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
In Vicki Abeles’ movie, Race to Nowhere, we met U. S. kids who were so overscheduled they had no time to be kids. The film suggested we were preoccupied with testing and performance, undermining what our kids should be doing in the classroom, let alone in their down time. So what is happening down under?
I’ve been to Australia six times for business and personal reasons (my ancestors, who were academics, once owned Geelong College in Victoria). The only thing that’s consistent about each trip? When I have to go home, I cry and then console myself with the promise, I shall return!
Professor Barry McGaw returned in 2005, leaving his position as Director for Education at OECD, responsible for the PISA test — the test U. S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan downloads when someone mentions The Global Achievement Gap. Did you know Arne Duncan played professional basketball for Australia’s National Basketball League and in the process met his wife Karen, an Australian high school teacher?
Australia is on the move! Professor Barry McGaw, Chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), has a brand new national curriculum to explain to me, among other things.
Barry, when I mention your work, educators bring up student assessment. Why?
What I am going to say is in the context of Australia and in an effort to produce a national curriculum. We are, like the United States, a federation, but one in which the responsibility for education is at the state and not the local level. There are six states and two territories with separate curricula, so the task of developing a national approach is much simpler than it would be in the United States. There have been several attempts since the late 1980s to move to a national curriculum but this time we have made significant progress. In December 2010, the Council of Education Ministers endorsed an Australian Curriculum for Kindergarten through Year 10 in English, Mathematics, Science, and History.
The national curriculum includes knowledge, understanding and skills, and sets our students’ learning entitlements. The ‘content descriptions’ set down the entitlements but we have provided ‘content elaborations’ as well for those teachers who would welcome additional guidance about how the content might be dealt with. The elaborations also serve to meet the expectations of those states and territories that traditionally specify their curricula in more detail than others.
When it comes to specifying achievement standards by grade level for learning areas, it is difficult to do it unambiguously. We do it but illustrate them with annotated samples of real students’ work collected in response to real tasks set by teachers. The assessments and annotations are provided by panels of teachers and the samples chosen illustrate various levels of achievement. The states and territories have been using this approach for a number of years, as are people in other countries as well. We think that this is the best way to help teachers use specifications of achievement standards consistently.
What kind of education system provides the human skills to compete globally in the 21st century?
In the Australian curriculum, we are taking a different approach to incorporation of what some call 21st century skills. First, we have not abandoned the traditional disciplines. We recognize that there are thousands of years of intellectual development behind the current ways of thinking about and representing knowledge. The disciplines that have been created are rich in their capacity to help people understand the world. So we have a curriculum that is discipline based but that is one of only three dimensions.
We include the so-called 21st Century skills as a second dimension. We do not call them that, however, since most of the skills typically nominated are ones that were clearly relevant in earlier centuries. We call them ‘general capabilities’. We started with eight but now use seven: literacy, numeracy, ICT competence, critical and creative thinking, ethical behavior, personal and social competence, and intercultural understanding.
Young Australians explain their history
On a third dimension we have identified three current priorities that we believe need special attention. They are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia’s links with Asia, and Sustainability. These are in addition to and not instead of things already secure in the curriculum such as Australia’s historical connections with the United Kingdom and their expression in Australia’s political and legal systems.
When our curriculum writers are developing the discipline based curricula, they are obliged to pay attention to where the general capabilities and the current cross-curriculum priorities could be addressed. The curriculum is presented electronically (see www.australiancurriculum.edu.au) and that enables users to view the curriculum content from the perspective of any one of the three dimensions: disciplines, general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities. The electronic display lets us have it all ways. We can embrace general capabilities that are particularly important in the 21st Century without abandoning well established discipline based ways of knowing. We can also provide protection to current issues, such as those captured in our cross-curriculum priorities, that we believe should be an important part of the world view offered to young Australians.
Technology knowledge in today’s world could almost be a special extension to curriculum. Would you agree?
Yes, but not as a separate subject in the early years. It has to be developed alongside everything else as reflected in our general capability, ICT competence. By the time you get to Grades 8 to 10, schools will offer a range of technology studies.
Can schools teach ethics?
Schools are institutions in which values and ethics have to be addressed. It’s tricky territory because it’s easy for people to mischaracterize teachers as pursuing particular political agendas if they do address them. Our ‘general capabilities’ include ‘ethical behavior’, ‘personal and social competence’, and ‘inter cultural understanding’ quite deliberately to address the issue you raise.
More students applying to higher education. More pressure?
We have the same problem. We have parents as well as students feeling this pressure. We have had a huge shift of students from government to private schools. Our research shows that the performance of those private schools is not necessarily better than public schools but parents feel the pressure to buy what they feel might give their children an advantage.
We see the pressure building earlier too. We have national assessments of students in Grades 3, 5 , 7 and 9 in the basic skills in literacy and numeracy. Parents receive reports on their own children but we now publish school results on the My School website (www.myschool.edu.au). On that site, we provide direct comparisons amongst schools with students from similar socio-educational backgrounds. That avoids unfair comparisons with schools in much more advantaged circumstances but it does put pressure on schools and students.
Enough emphasis on the arts in curriculum?
There is always a risk when some things, such as literacy and numeracy, are given such special prominence that other things might be downgraded. There is a case for special attention to literacy and numeracy because they are basis to so much other learning, but we need to protect other areas from too much focus on them. The protection for the others lies in clear, publicly available information on the curriculum to be implemented in all schools. Furthermore, we require teachers to report to parents students’ achievements in all areas of the curriculum.
World Wisdom — The Goals of Australia’s New Curriculum
Support students to become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, active and informed citizens by promoting equity and excellence in education. Equip students with the essential skills, knowledge and capabilities to thrive and compete in a globalised world and information rich workplaces of the current century. Curriculum will be accessible to all regardless of their social or economic background or the school they attend.
Barry McGaw, Chair ACARA, and C. M. Rubin
In The Global Search for Education, join C.M. Rubin and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C.M. Rubin has more than two decades of professional experience in development, marketing, and art direction for a diverse range of media businesses. She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice In Wonderland.
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