The Global Search for Education
“What is fundamentally different today is that education systems now need to equip all teachers, and not just some, for effective learning.” — Andreas Schleicher
In Search of Professionals Around the World
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
“It is very clear that high performing systems generally have a high performing teacher population.” — Andreas Schleicher
Professional Capital, Andrew Hargreaves’ and Michael Fullan’s recently released book, proposes an action plan for teachers, administrators, schools, districts, and state and federal leaders as to how to create a 21st century generation of professional teachers.
Countries around the world are undertaking reforms to better prepare teachers to teach in 21st century classrooms. Today in part four of our series, The Global Search for Education - In Search of Professionals, I have asked Andreas Schleicher, given his extensive global educational perspective, to weigh in on what the US and other nations can learn from some of the high performing education systems that are doing this.
Andreas Schleicher is Deputy Director for Education and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD’s Secretary-General. He also provides strategic oversight over OECD’s work on the development and utilization of skills and their social and economic outcomes. This includes the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), and the development and analysis of benchmarks on the performance of education systems (INES).
What steps or changes do you believe we should make in the US in order to further advance the quality of teachers and the teaching profession going forward?
Part of the answer lies in the changes in the demands placed on teachers. In every country, there have always been great teachers, and many of us are here today because we had great teachers. But what is fundamentally different today is that education systems now need to equip all teachers, and not just some, for effective learning. In the past, when you only needed a small slice of well-educated workers, it was sufficient, and perhaps efficient, for governments to invest a large sum into a small elite to lead the country. But the social and economic cost of low educational performance has risen very substantially and the best performing education systems now get all young people to leave school with strong foundation skills, which is what you see in the PISA results. When you could still assume that what you learn in school will last for a lifetime, teaching content and routine cognitive skills was at the center of education. Today, where you can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitized or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, education systems need to enable people to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers can’t take over easily. That requires a very different caliber of teachers. When teaching was about explaining prefabricated content, you could tolerate low teacher quality. And when teacher quality was low, governments tended to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they wanted it done, using prescriptive methods of administrative control and accountability. What you see in the most advanced systems now is that they have made teaching a profession of high-level knowledge workers, and that, not higher salaries, is what makes teaching so attractive in countries as different as Finland, Japan or Singapore. But people who see themselves as candidates for the professions are not attracted by schools organized like an assembly line, with teachers working as interchangeable widgets. You therefore see a very different work organization in high performing systems, with the status, professional autonomy, and the high-quality education that go with professional work, with effective systems of teacher evaluation and with differentiated career paths for teachers. That is perhaps the biggest challenge for the US.
“Singapore’s new TE21 Model seeks to enhance key elements of teacher education.” — Andreas Schleicher
In general what common characteristics have you observed in the high performing systems relative to their teaching profession?
High performing systems have common characteristics:
- Their teachers are well-versed in the subjects they teach and adept at using different methods and, if necessary, changing their approaches to optimize learning.
- They have a rich repertoire of teaching strategies, the ability to combine approaches, and the knowledge of how and when to use certain methods and strategies.
- Their teachers have a deep understanding of how learning happens, in general, and often also of their individual students’ motivations, emotions and lives outside the classroom, in particular.
- Their teachers work in highly collaborative ways, with other teachers and professionals or para-professionals within the same organization, or with others in other organizations, in networks of professional communities and in different partnership arrangements, including, for some, mentoring teachers.
- In some countries teachers acquire strong technology skills and skills to use technology as effective teaching tools, both to optimize the use of digital resources in their teaching and to use information-management systems to track student learning.
- Their teachers have the capacity to help design, lead, manage and plan learning environments in collaboration with others.
- Last but not least, their teachers reflect on their practices in order to learn from their experience.
Consider three advanced education systems: Finland, Singapore and Japan. What do you see as the strengths of the Finnish system?
Teacher education in Finland has several distinguishing qualities:
- It is research based. Teacher candidates are not only expected to become familiar with the knowledge base in education and human development, but they are required to write a research-based dissertation as the final requirement for the masters degree. The rationale for requiring a research-based dissertation is that teachers are expected to engage in disciplined inquiry in the classroom throughout their teaching career.
- It has a strong focus on developing pedagogical content knowledge. Traditional teacher preparation programs too often treat good pedagogy as generic, assuming that good questioning skills, for example, are equally applicable to all subjects. Because teacher education in Finland is a shared responsibility between the teacher education faculty and the academic subject faculty, there is substantial attention to subject-specific pedagogy for prospective primary as well as upper-grade teachers.
- There is ample training for all Finnish teachers in diagnosing students with learning difficulties and in adapting their instruction to the varying learning needs and styles of their students.
- It has a very strong clinical component. Teachers’ preparation includes both extensive course work on how to teach - with a strong emphasis on using research based on state-of-the-art practice - and at least a full year of clinical experience in a school associated with the university. These model schools are intended to develop and model innovative practices, as well as to foster research on learning and teaching.
“What’s interesting in Japan is their approach to build on the knowledge of the profession.”— Andreas Schleicher
What are your thoughts on the Singapore system?
Singapore is easy to understand because the system is well documented and highly institutionalized. Singapore’s National Institute for Education as a university-based teacher education institution provides the theoretical foundation to produce “thinking teachers” but has strong partnerships with key stakeholders and the schools to ensure strong clinical practice and realities of professionalism in teacher development. Singapore’s new TE21 Model seeks to enhance key elements of teacher education, including the underpinning philosophy, curriculum, desired outcomes for our teachers, and academic pathways. These are considered essential prerequisites in meeting the challenges of the 21st century classroom. Their model focuses on three value paradigms: Learner-centered, Teacher Identity and Service to the Profession and Community. Learner-centered values puts the learner at the centre of teachers’ work by being aware of learner development and diversity, believing that all youths can learn, caring for the learner, striving for scholarship in content teaching, knowing how people learn best, and learning to design the best learning environment possible. Teacher identity values refer to having high standards and strong drive to learn in view of the rapid changes in the education milieu, to be responsive to student needs. The values of service to the profession and community focuses on teachers’ commitment to their profession through active collaborations and striving to become better practitioners to benefit the teaching community. The model also underscores the requisite knowledge and skills that teachers must possess in light of the latest global trends, and to improve student outcomes.
Finally what are your thoughts on the Japanese System?
What’s interesting in Japan is their approach to build on the knowledge of the profession, through regular lesson studies in which all teachers take part. The Japanese tradition of lesson study in which groups of teachers review their lessons and how to improve them, in part through analysis of student errors, provides one of the most effective mechanisms for teachers’ self-reflection as well as being a tool for continuous improvement. Observers of Japanese elementary school classrooms have long noted the consistency and thoroughness with which a math concept is taught and the way in which the teacher leads a discussion of mathematical ideas, both correct and incorrect, so that students gain a firm grasp on the concept. This school-by-school lesson study often culminates in large public research lessons. For example, when a new subject is added to the national curriculum, groups of teachers and researchers review research and curriculum materials and refine their ideas in pilot classrooms over a year before holding a public research lesson, which can be viewed electronically by hundreds of teachers, researchers and policymakers. The tradition of lesson study in Japan also means that Japanese teachers are not alone. They work together in a disciplined way to improve the quality of the lessons they teach. That means that teachers whose practice lags behind that of the leaders can see what good practice is. Because their colleagues know who the poor performers are and discuss them, the poor performers have both the incentive and the means to improve their performance. Since the structure of the East Asian teaching workforce includes opportunities to become a master teacher and move up a ladder of increasing prestige and responsibility, it also pays the good teacher to become even better.
Andreas Schleicher and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of the OECD.
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), Professor Clay Christensen (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), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), 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 (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider (Germany), 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), 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
“The Singapore education system relies on a high quality teaching profession to achieve its aim for the nation.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng
In Search of Professionals - Singapore
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
Part 3 of “In Search of Professionals”
In their new book, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School, Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan remind us that the future of learning depends on the future of teaching. Speaking out against education policies that result in a teaching force that is inexperienced, underpaid and exhausted, Hargreaves and Fullan set out a new agenda to transform the future of teaching and public education.
Singapore is recognized globally as a high performing education system with professional practices that could be adopted by other education systems seeking to improve the capabilities of their principals, teachers and overall leadership. Singapore students fared very well in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Out of 65 countries that took part in these tests, Singapore students ranked fifth in reading, second in mathematics and fourth in science. Singapore also had the second highest proportion (12.3%) of students who are top-level performers in all three domains.
How does Singapore view the importance of a world-class teaching profession? How has its government responded? What progress has been made to date? What are Singapore’s next steps to advance the teaching profession in the 21st century?
Today in Part 3 of “The Global Search for Education: In Search of Professionals - Singapore,” we are honored to share the insights of Dr. Pak Tee Ng - Associate Dean, Leadership Learning, Office of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning, and Head and Associate Professor, Policy and Leadership Studies Academic Group, at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Republic of Singapore.
“We emphasize values very strongly because they are the beacons by which educators can navigate the seas of change.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng
What are your views on the importance of teaching quality and the importance of a world-class teaching profession to a successful education system for your nation?
The Singapore education system relies on a high quality teaching profession to achieve its aim for the nation. While it is important for the government to formulate good education polices, the success of these polices relies on the implementation by the teaching professionals in the schools. Policies are important for they point the direction and provide the support for change. But the substance of change is dependent on the teachers and school leaders in our schools. One of my main roles is to develop school leaders in Singapore. I often say to the school leaders, “students do not experience policies. They experience teachers.” Therefore, our school leaders need to nurture teachers. Singapore takes teaching quality and the development of a professional cadre of teachers very seriously.
What decisions and actions did your government take with respect to building teaching quality and the teaching profession, and when?
In Singapore, teachers are hired by the Ministry of Education and deployed to schools after their teacher preparation programme at the National Institute of Education (NIE). Some 80% of Singapore’s 31,000 teachers today are graduates, a significant increase from 55% slightly more than a decade ago. The government intends to move towards all-graduate teacher recruitment by 2015 and seeks to recruit only from the top one-third of every cohort of students. Our teaching force is set to expand to 33,000 by 2015 and the government has put in place supporting structures to encourage teachers to acquire post-graduate degrees. We hope to enhance our teaching force, both in terms of numbers and quality.
NIE’s teacher preparation premises itself strongly on a set of values (V), skills (S) and knowledge (K), encapsulated in a model called the V3SK framework. This framework represents the underpinning philosophy of teacher development in NIE for the Singapore teacher. In particular, our set of values is premised on 3 paradigms: learner-centeredness, teacher identity, and service to the profession and the community. We emphasize values very strongly because they are the beacons by which educators can navigate the seas of change without losing their soul or direction.
The government has also put in place many professional development opportunities for the teachers, including a Structured Mentoring Programme for beginning teachers, the Professional Development Continual Model for in-service teachers to pursue higher degrees in a flexible way, in-service programmes for various disciplines, and fully sponsored career milestone programmes for school leadership development (e.g. Leaders in Education Programme (LEP) for school principal-ship development and the Management and Leadership in Schools (MLS) programme for school middle leadership development).
“Beyond stringent recruitment, enhanced career paths and better pay packages, it is the passion, commitment and professional ethos of our teachers that will enhance the quality of our education system.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng
How do you assess your progress to date?
The Singapore education system has gone through different phases. We have made significant progress over the years. Some 30 years ago, teachers taught according to standard textbooks provided by the ministry. Today, teachers are expected to tailor education to suit their students and find breakthroughs in education practices, including curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Teachers now have enhanced career paths and remuneration, and teaching is a respectable profession in the country.
But, we still have a lot of room for improvement. What worked in the past may not work for the future. Therefore, at this stage of our national development, our challenge is to develop our teachers so that they are able to review for themselves the “why, what and how” of teaching. We are trying to shift the focus of our education from quantity to quality. Beyond stringent recruitment, enhanced career paths and better pay packages, it is the passion, commitment and professional ethos of our teachers that will enhance the quality of our education system. So, our teachers need to continuously hone their teaching craft and deepen their content mastery. We are currently encouraging our teachers to participate actively in professional learning communities, engage in reflective practice, and undertake action research. This is still work in progress and is a long continuous journey.
What tangible benefits have you seen?
Many policy makers, school leaders and academics have visited Singapore and they told me that they were doing so because Singapore had very good PISA and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) results and they wanted to study the reasons for these results. I suppose results can be considered tangible benefits associated with a quality teaching force. However, in some ways more importantly, a quality teaching force, trusted by the people, is a critical asset to the nation. Schools are generally seen as a safe environment for students to study and develop themselves. Indeed, Singapore is too small to afford failing schools or schools where safety and security are big question marks. Therefore, schools provide a stable platform for values inculcation and national education. Because parents in general trust schools and the teachers, we have a basis on which different stakeholders can work together to improve educational outcomes for the students. Because different stakeholders have different viewpoints and expectations, working together is never a simple or clinical process, even though it is critical for the good of the students. Hence, it is important to have a credible teaching profession that has the trust of the nation!
“A quality teaching force, trusted by the people, is a critical asset to the nation.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng
What additional steps or changes do you believe should be made or are you making in order to further advance the quality of teachers and the teaching profession going forward?
Singapore has a strong and robust education system, generally speaking. It is a system recognized by many for its high level of student achievements. However, we have to prepare our students for the future, not the past or the present. This may require fundamental educational reforms. We need teachers who can drive such change from within, rather than rely on central directions. Fundamental education reform requires schools to move beyond pre-specified performance indicators. Otherwise, we may end up reinforcing the current system, which is adequate for now, but inadequate for the future. We need teachers and school leaders who can think about the future and scan the horizon for change, and yet keep connected to the present and work faithfully on the ground. To do that, we need to emphasize critical reflection for the teachers and school leaders, and empower them to challenge existing thinking and practices in their own schools. Looking for a fixed recipe of reform implementation in all schools will not work. Allowing more degrees of freedom at the local level will bring out the best in a mutually dependent and dynamic relationship between the ministry that sets the central direction and the educators who work on the ground. Instead of relying on top down directions, schools draw upon the expertise of the professional teaching community to search for solutions to issues that are close to their hearts. As practitioners explore ideas, implement them and make adjustments as they go along, the quality of the teaching profession is enhanced through the cycles of empowered practice and critical reflection. Change is also more organic within the schools. Our education system has begun to move in this direction, but this is a long process and we are doing it in a patient, calibrated manner. This process may actually increase the tension within the system because the system is no longer so neat and orderly. But, as long as we have dedicated and reflective teachers, we will be able to bring positive change out of the tension.
Dr. Pak Tee Ng and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Dr. Pak Tee Ng.
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), Professor Clay Christensen (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), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), 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), 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
“We say education of our youth is the most important thing that we do in terms of the future.”— Randi Weingarten Photo courtesy of Armando Arorizo
In Search of Professionals - Part 2
By C. M. Rubin with
The teaching profession stands at a crossroads. The United States has an opportunity to reform the entire profession and make teaching not only one of America’s most important professions but also one of America’s most respected professions. But first we need to borrow some great ideas from successful educational systems around the world that have already achieved this.
Inspired by Michael Fullan’s and Andrew Hargreaves’ new book, Professional Capital, “The Global Search for Education: In Search of Professionals - Part 1” began to look at what the next generation of American teachers could look like. Today we continue that conversation with someone who understands better than anyone why professional excellence is one of the most vital investments we can make in our children’s future. That person is Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers.
“Countries that outperform us understand that teachers are physicians of the mind.”— Randi Weingarten Photo courtesy of John Muldoon
What are the steps we need to take in order to adopt the Hargreaves and Fullan “teach like a pro” action plan?
We have to think about all the issues as collective work not individual work. That is a very different mentality for the United States.
We have to respect teachers. When someone is not doing a good job there is a way to respect him or her but also let him or her know something needs to be done about the problem.
The bigger problem in the United States is the daunting conditions that many teachers work in. Half of our teachers leave in the first 3 to 5 years on the job. Hargreaves and Fullan observe that to get the return on our investment even now you must have teachers stay in the job for at least 8 years. That’s an enormous waste of resources and brainpower that goes out the door. Combating the teacher attrition number is probably the most important issue to address. We must also address what we can do about training teachers before they come into the profession. That must be followed up with more development and support when teachers are on the job. We need a different mentality, i.e. teachers are not simply born, teachers need to be nurtured. We say education of our youth is the most important thing that we do in terms of the future. We cannot in the same breath say it’s okay to just pop somebody in a classroom and say, “Go do it. We will assess you at the end of the year based on the test scores of your kids.”
What is your view of standardized testing in the US with regard to students and to teachers?
I think we are too fixated on standardized tests. Testing has its role. It’s important as a metric stick to help kids understand what they know and are able to do. It is important for teachers and others because it informs on instruction. It can be used as a tool to illustrate where there are strengths and where there are weaknesses. What’s happened in the United States, unlike almost any other country in the world, is that we are out of alignment, meaning that the tests have more consequences for teachers than they do for students. We need to rebalance it. Part of the problem is that testing goes back to the fundamental deprofessionalization of our profession. There will always be the search for the quick fix, the silver bullet, the sense that you can have one intervention that totally changes education for the positive. That does not happen. The quick fix used to be a teacher proof curriculum. Now the quick fix is if we just use test scores as the be all and end all for everything, we’ll know whether or not we are on the right track. Countries that outperform us understand that teachers are physicians of the mind. We should be working on creating a climate that is conducive to teaching and learning.
“The achievement gap between rich and poor is greater than the achievement gap between black and white.” — Randi Weingarten Photo courtesy of John Muldoon
What changes in the teaching profession need to be made in order to address the achievement gap with the 20% of children in the US that are from poor families?
The achievement gap between rich and poor is greater than the achievement gap between black and white. There is a 40% achievement gap between rich and poor. What we are seeing more and more is that the socio-economic obstacles are very daunting and yet we have an absolute obligation to try to address them. We cannot ignore them. There are several things that have to happen:
Training Training Training.
Support Support Support — once teachers-in-training become teachers.
The countries that outperform us understand that people really have to be prepared to teach in the current environment versus the way teachers were prepared to teach 20 or 30 years ago.
We need to be very prepared to teach 21st century skills, which is not about simply knowing things. It’s also about knowing how to apply knowledge, how to critically think, how to problem solve and how to work with others. Those things are as important. Some of that is training. Some of that is working together and some of that is discovered on the job itself.
What can we do now about getting star teachers into poor schools?
I think you can do several things and I speak from my own personal experience when I was teaching in the Chancellor’s district in New York City. We had a multi-faceted strategy to turn around poor performing schools into performing schools. We did many things at the same time.
We really focused on the capability of the teaching force. We only accepted certified teachers and we made sure they were supported. We built in extra time to train teachers on an ongoing basis and created a curriculum that everybody bought into and trained on. For these particular schools, the curriculum we used in both literacy and math was used schoolwide. Professional development was aligned with curriculum. We also built in additional time for kids so that if they were falling behind, they got immediate tutoring in the areas in which this was happening. We had more parental outreach. Teachers had a choice to stay in these particular schools, and in exchange for their additional time, for making the choice to stay, and for using the approved curriculum, they got paid an additional 15%. We didn’t have a problem with attrition and we saw in a couple of years that all students in the elementary school had been turned around. We created schools where parents wanted to send their kids and teachers wanted to teach. We had leadership that was collaborative and supportive. We had the tools and conditions to get the job done. If you have all these things, whatever the neighborhood and whatever the environment, experienced teachers will stay.
“One of the biggest challenges teachers face is personalizing and differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all the students in their classrooms.” — Randi Weingarten Photo courtesy of the American Federation of Teachers
As we move forward into the 21st century, technology continues to play a larger role in teachers’ and students’ lives. What are the positive and negatives of technology with regard to improving student learning and assisting teacher training?
One of the biggest challenges teachers face is personalizing and differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all the students in their classrooms. Digital resources and technological tools have tremendous promise to assist in that. Plus, technology offers ways to provide extra supports for struggling students, for extending learning beyond textbooks, and for providing access to engaging content. It can be tremendously empowering of both teachers and students. But we have to remember that really integrating technology into the curriculum requires more, not less of teachers. So we really have to make sure that they have the time, professional development, equipment, and technical support they need to take advantage of that potential for their students. And we can’t forget that while the digital divide is narrowing, it’s still very real. Reliable internet access and bandwidth are still very real issues in too many of our urban and rural communities. So, whether you are talking about student learning or teacher training, it’s not the tool — the technology — it’s how you use it. And it matters whether you have the conditions and support to use it well.
Randi Weingarten and C. M. Rubin
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), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), 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), 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.
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
The Way Out of Poverty
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
“We have to learn from our past because we must not forget and because we must be better.”
So speaks the powerful voice of 84 year old Kenyan, Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge, describing his unrelenting determination to get an education in a deeply moving new film by director Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl) called The First Grader(release date: May 13, 2011).The film, a triumph of education, is based on the true life story of Maruge, a poor, illiterate African man, striving to overcome his past but seeing his way forward very clearly when he is given the chance to have a free primary school education. Shot entirely on location in Kenya, the film stars Oliver Litondo in his first acting role as Maruge, and Actress Naomie Harris as the dedicated head teacher, Jane Obinchu, who supports Maruge’s quest for knowledge. During pre-production interviews with Maruge, Justin Chadwick explains to me: “The importance of knowledge, the chance to learn, was everything to him. Maruge told me, “The power is in the pen. This is our way out of poverty.” Up to the day Maruge died, he asked for a teacher to come to his hospice so that he could continue his all important process of learning. He valued education that much. It was a humbling experience,” adds Chadwick.
We should all be humbled by Maruge’s example. Learning has a transformative power that some of us in the highly developed nations of this world often take for granted. Like Chadwick and The First Grader cast and crew, I spent many of my formative years in underdeveloped countries, and more recently went back to work with children in classrooms in Africa. I know children who live in extreme poverty, who will wake up early in the morning, do an hour’s work for their family, and then walk 5 or 6 miles to get to a classroom where a teacher can give them knowledge; a classroom where important resources such as books are both extremely scarce and highly cherished, and where any obstacle seems insignificant when you have the hunger to learn.
Education matters today more than ever to countries which are at the bottom of the educational hierarchy as well as to those who have highly developed educational systems. And just as Maruge believed that his personal quest to read and write was in a broader context his country’s way out of poverty, American educators and policy makers are trying to figure out how we as a highly developed nation can improve our education systems so that America can stay at the top in a rapidly changing world. I decided to pan the camera a little further back and take a look at that rapidly changing world and at what other countries are doing in terms of their quests for educational excellence. What I discovered is troubling.
President Obama has stated that education matters today more than ever if America is to win the future. However, the competition from those racing to the top is intensifying. For those who follow test scores, many countries are already doing much better than the United States in Reading, Math, and Science in significant international assessment tests such as PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Over the past few months, with the intention of raising the awareness of policy makers, the media, and the public of the global facts, I have interviewed some of the most prominent thought leaders in education around the world to explore the big picture educational questions that all nations face. These include what kind of educational system will enable a country to have the human skills to compete globally in the 21st century? Will that educational system be able to develop the diverse intellectual and artistic capabilities of students as well as take into account all the important factors that impact a society’s quality of life? Will that system enable its citizens to achieve personal fulfillment as well as to further the accomplishment of a society’s goals? We look for the answers to these questions, for the solutions other nations have decided to embrace, and for the results they are having, in a series of weekly articles called The Global Search for Education.
The views and information shared among different nations is illuminating, but it also reveals that while others are putting educational results on an ascending path, we in the US continue to flounder. Please join me and my distinguished guests, globally renowned for their educational leadership, including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Leon Botstein (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), Professor Minxuan Zhang (China), among others, as they share ideas and seek to find solutions in TheGlobal Search for Education, a series of interviews that will be published beginning next week.
One of the lessons that Maruge teaches us in the early part of The First Graderis that at any age it is possible to make a change and realize our dreams. But first, the people who want to make that change must be like Maruge and the young classmates in his first grade classroom. They must have the spirit, the thirst, the hunger, the desire, and the will to learn.
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.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
THE GLOBAL SEARCH FOR EDUCATION
by C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
C. M. Rubin at Shanghai Children’s Library
COMING SOON:
President Obama has stated that education matters today more than ever if America is to win the future. Education matters to countries who are at the bottom of the educational hierarchy as well as to those who have highly developed educational systems. Highly respected international tests, such as PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment), are showing that the US education system has fallen behind the systems of many other nations. American educators and policy makers want to figure out how we, as a highly developed nation, can improve our education systems so that Americans can stay at the top in a rapidly changing world. The competition from those racing to the top is intensifying.
Over the past few months, I have had the honor to interview some of the most prominent thought leaders in education around the world and to explore the big picture educational questions that all nations face. These include what kind of education system will enable a country to have the human skills to compete globally in the 21st century? Will that education system be able to develop the diverse intellectual and artistic capabilities of students as well as take into account all the important factors that impact a society’s quality of life? Will that system enable its citizens to achieve personal fulfillment as well as further the accomplishment of a society’s goals? Participants look for the answers to these questions, for the solutions other nations have decided to embrace.
Please join me and my distinguished guests, globally renowned for their educational leadership, including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Leon Botstein (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), Professor Minxuan Zhang (China), among others, as they share ideas and seek to find solutions in The Global Search for Education, a series of interviews that will be published beginning next week.
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
