CMRUBINWORLDAUTHOR

29th January 2013

The Global Search for Education

“We need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing.”— Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

What is the Fourth Way?

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

The Fourth Way is a powerful new vision to bring about effective educational reform.

Even after one has identified that the old ways of doing things are no longer working, coming up with system-wide comprehensive solutions as to how to develop better schools and school systems is challenging. Professor Andy Hargreaves and Professor Dennis Shirley believe they have found those solutions. They have examined over three decades of research evidence on educational change around the world in some of the leading education systems, and from these global lessons have developed a dynamic new plan for the future of schooling. I was able to catch up with Hargreaves and Shirley to talk about the inspiring ideas laid out in their latest book, The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence (Corwin, September 2012). Andrew Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, and is the elected Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, London. Dennis Shirley is Professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

“Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. Teachers are the drivers of change, not the driven.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

In your own words, what is the Global Fourth Way?

The “First Way” of the 1960s and 1970s created interesting innovations here and there, but it overprotected teachers’ autonomy and kept them isolated from new research, outside scrutiny, and each other.

The “Second Way” that emerged in the 1980s, and that remains pervasive in the U.S. today, enforced consistency through more testing, standardization and accountability, and introduced competition through school choice. Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all system of prescribed curriculum programs and teaching-to-the-test led to professional disillusionment and made it difficult to attract and retain excellent teachers.

The “Third Way” added data-driven decision-making to US teachers’ toolkits, but it has skewed attention towards the performance metrics themselves and away from the people and the learning that the numbers are meant to represent.

It’s time to move beyond the limitations of these first three ways of change where there has been too much freedom, too much force, or too much fascination with data and spreadsheets.

Our new book describes a better “Fourth Way” that draws on our first-hand international research to get us beyond those limitations. This includes pursuing an inspiring and inclusive vision for US education rather than simply racing to the top, being committing to education as a common goodwhere schools work together for the benefit of all children, and promoting the innovation and creativity that leads to modern economic success. To become more successful innovators, we need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing. The Fourth Way is about reforming rather than destroying teacher associations, and it integrates technology with high quality teaching instead of replacing teachers with iPads and online learning at every opportunity.

“In Finland, within very broad government guidelines, teachers create their own curricula together across schools in every community and district. They don’t confine collaboration to their own individual schools and to just implementing other people’s ideas.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

We need high quality teachers and high quality school principals and leadership. What can we learn from your global research about developing school principals and leadership?

Three things are critical. First, in high performing countries, principals are working with highly qualified teachers who come from the top tiers of the graduation range, who have been rigorously prepared in universities and through supervised practice in schools, and who remain in education for all of their careers. The job of principals there is to get the best out of these highly capable teachers, sharpen their collective focus, and keep moving them forward. In the U.S., teachers are less well qualified, less well prepared because they are trained in short programs that occur outside of universities, and they turn over more quickly. This means that principals have to spend excessive amounts of time plugging holes and repairing deficits in the teaching force.

Second, high performing systems know their teachers well long before they even aspire to become principals. District and Government administrators spend a lot of time in schools. They develop, select and certify their leaders over long periods of time, instead of certifying them first, selecting them later and developing them as an afterthought.

Singapore’s performance management process systematically identifies and supports those teachers who have the potential to be future principals.

Finland’s principals are usually selected from and promoted within their own schools where their success is proven, and where their role is to be first among equals in “a society of experts.”

Canadian principals also normally move up within their own district, where, as teachers, they have been known by district staff who get out and about in the schools.

Third, principals spend more time working with their teachers and in classrooms. How can they do this? Because, as Finnish principals told us, they are not spending vast amounts of time constantly reacting to government initiatives or filling out evaluation checklists.

“We disagree with the assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

Teamwork and teacher collaboration at school level are important to successful outcomes. What inspiring examples of collaboration have you seen around the world?

Singapore gives 10% “white space” time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas.

Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. Teachers are the drivers of change, not the driven. One condition of funding is that schools must have explicit plans to share what they are learning with others.
In Ontario, teachers come together to look at charts of how well all students are progressing in every class. All achievement in every class is completely transparent. This isn’t a strategy to shame poorly performing teachers or even a prompt to come up with quick fixes that will get rapid gains in test scores. Instead, teachers look at the faces behind the numbers and develop a strategy for each child. Across all grades, all teachers take collective responsibility for all students’ success.

In Finland, within very broad government guidelines, teachers create their own curriculum together across schools in every community and district. They don’t confine collaboration to their own individual schools and to just implementing other people’s ideas.

“In high performing countries, principals are working with highly qualified teachers who come from the top tiers of the graduation range, who have been rigorously prepared in universities and through supervised practice in schools, and who remain in education for all of their careers.”— Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

What did you learn from studying the California education system (CTA) example?

In 2005, the California Teachers’ Association sued Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for taking more than $5 billion out of the state’s education budget and thereby violating state legislation that provided a minimal funding ratio for the schools. The Governor settled the lawsuit in 2006 and the CTA used the restored funds to create a new “Quality Education Investment Act” (QEIA) that concentrated on working with close to 500 schools serving the state’s most needy students. QEIA schools receive special funding for reduced class sizes, professional development, leadership training, and, in the high schools, more guidance counselors. In every QEIA school, teacher leaders are responsible for the resources and the strategy. Early results indicate that QEIA schools are performing better than non-QEIA schools in similar circumstances. This is especially true for students of color and in poverty.

The CTA example challenges everyone to understand that all teachers’ unions must undergo the kind of internal transformation that has been occurring within the CTA. What teacher unions now need is the same as schools and school systems: greater collective professionalism focused on teaching and learning across the spectrum.

“Singapore gives 10 percent ‘white space’ time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

I was interested in what you say about professional development in Singapore in terms of the systematic approach to teachers’ professional growth. Can you explain how they approach PD?

Teacher assessment is very rigorous in Singapore and is closely tied to teachers’ professional development. After completing their first years of teaching, all teachers are invited to a periodic “tea time” with their principal or a Ministry of Education official to go over their evaluations, discuss their current aspirations, and explore possibilities for continuing learning and professional growth in the years to come. Singaporean teachers move along one of three tracks (master teacher, administrator, curriculum leadership) and switch between them as they reflect on their progress. Singaporean teachers also move back and forth between their teaching roles and positions in the Ministry of Education or the National Institute of Education, where all teachers and principals are trained to develop and contribute to a greater understanding of the profession as a whole.

Clayton Christensen has stated that “online learning is entering the system in a way that could eventually disrupt the classroom.” What are your thoughts on this?

There is much to admire in Christensen’s prediction, which we discuss in detail in our book. But we disagree with his assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning. These include inspiration, impulse control, being part of an inclusive and diverse community, finding different ways to be engaged with your learning, and receiving adult guidance in making judgments and decisions, including those that occur online. Neglect of these dimensions has defeated the champions of television, video and teaching machines throughout history.

However, technology does have a role to play in today’s schools if it is effectively yet judiciously integrated in the culture of our schools. In Singapore, we have seen teachers use Twitter to collect real-time feedback from their students. In Ontario, assistive technologies help students with learning disabilities to make great strides forwards, especially when new technologies are part of all students’ learning. In these cases innovative technologies and effective teaching are working together, rather than at cross-purposes.

The Second and Third Ways of U.S. education reform are giving us more markets, more mandates, and more machines as answers to all our ills. This is the opposite of what high performers are doing everywhere. America will not achieve high-performance if it replaces teachers with machines or turns teachers into machines. It will only improve its schools when it, too, embraces an inspiring vision for the common good that rests upon the high quality and effective collaboration of its teachers and leaders.

Dennis Shirley, C. M. Rubin, Andy Hargreaves

Photos courtesy of Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley.

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), Honourable Jeff Johnson (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

Tagged: Andy Hargreaves Clayton Christensen Education Reform C. M. Rubin Dennis Shirley Finland Society of Experts Finland School System Education Technology Global Education Research Online Learning PISA Test School Principals Singapore Schools Standardized Testing Teacher Assessments Teacher Collaboration Teacher Development Teachers The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence The Global Search for Education

15th January 2013

The Global Search for Education

“Finnish schools are fear-free places where children don’t need to worry about competition, failure or performance that in many countries are fueled by standardized testing.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Elvi Rista

What Will Finland Do Next?

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

Systematic pursuit of children’s wellbeing and happiness in secure environments takes precedence over measured academic achievements in Finnish schools, according to Pasi Sahlberg, author of the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award winning book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? It was the book many educators turned to last year to find ways to make their own schools better. Sahlberg explained to me that Finland will continue to work on the same mission it has had for over 40 years: to give access to high quality and safe schools for all children regardless of their family backgrounds, domiciles, mother tongues, or abilities. Thinking forward, what can we learn from the newer strategies being pursued by Finland’s education reformers to stay at the top? I asked Pasi to discuss this further in The Global Search for Education.

“Today nearly 45 percent of Finnish 16-year-olds choose to study in vocational upper secondary schools and 50 percent in academic high schools. I am an advocate of flexible learning pathways that provide individuals personalized options to study what they believe will help them to be successful in life.”— Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Liisa Takala

There are significant factors beyond the classroom that ensure Finnish children thrive in school. Can you summarize the support services provided currently and what you think needs to be improved?

Most Finnish children go to optional pre-school at age 6 and compulsory education begins at age of 7. I belong to those who don’t believe that starting school earlier would actually be beneficial to children’s cognitive or social development. Finland has a universal heavily subsidized public childcare service that gives all children a right to daycare and offers them an environment to develop and grow as individuals without any pressure of academic or other performance. Play, music and learning to be with other children are common modes of children’s lives in daycare.

Another important aspect of Finnish schools is systematic pursuit of wellbeing and happiness, especially during the early years of primary school. Finnish schools are fear-free places where children don’t need to worry about competition, failure or performance that in many countries are fueled by standardized testing. Every school in Finland has a Pupil Welfare Team that monitors and processes issues related to behavior, health and progress of children. It consists of the school head, a special education teacher, school nurse or doctor, psychologist and social worker. The main aim of this team is to prevent problems that might jeopardize wellbeing. Primary school teachers put wellbeing and happiness of their pupils before measured academic progress.

Despite this, there is a growing concern among psychologists and pediatricians that the quality of children’s lives outside of school is declining. Some argue that parents increasingly leave upbringing of their children to schools. Teachers continue to urge parents to take more responsibility for their children e.g. giving more time and attention to them at home. What Finland needs first and foremost is better alignment of responsibilities between homes and schools and perhaps a national program that would help mothers and fathers to take better care of the young ones and simply love them more. In this worrying situation it is paramount that Finnish politicians secure sufficient funding for child wellbeing services in all schools.

“What Finland needs first and foremost is better alignment of responsibilities between homes and schools and perhaps a national program that would help mothers and fathers to take better care of the young ones and simply love them more.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture

Is the problem for some OECD countries about catching up with global college graduation rates or is the problem about improving options for learning pathways so graduates are equipped with the skills they need to find jobs in the real world?

I am an advocate of flexible learning pathways that provide individuals personalized options to study what they believe will help them to be successful in life. For example, I think that the U.S. school system would benefit from a dual system in high school where young people who are interested in doing or making things with their hands, for instance, could have high quality vocational programs or schools that would equip them with the skills they need to find jobs or employ themselves. There are many education systems around the world, including Finland, where upper secondary education has distinct tracks for classical academic studies and professional learning. Higher education will become more easily accessible through digital learning very soon, and I believe college graduation rates as a proxy for the advancement of an education system will lose part of their meaning.

“A universal standard for financing schools, so that resources are channeled to schools according to real needs: this is essential in order to enhance equity and quality in American education.” — Pasi Sahlberg Photo courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture

Can you talk about Finland’s forward thinking goals in vocational education?

As I mentioned earlier, Finland is one of several European countries with a competitive option for 16-year-olds to choose technical and vocational studies rather than to continue academic learning in high school that is predominantly a road to liberal arts degrees. Some people argue that vocational schools are second or even third options for young people and therefore motivation and discipline are often issues in these schools. But it doesn’t need to be so. Barely 20 years ago, vocational education was a bad word among parents and many students in Finland. About one third of lower secondary school leavers at that time entered vocational schools, some because the bar to academic high school was too high. Drop out from these schools was a chronic problem. Systematic polishing of the image of vocational education started in the 1990’s in Finland.

First, curriculum in vocational schools was adjusted closer to the standards of academic high school. This brought more general subjects accessible to all students in vocational schools. Second, a significant proportion of vocational studies was shifted to real work places where students are able to learn in practice the knowledge and skills they need in their future jobs. Third, vocational and academic high schools were required to design and provide instruction that enabled students more flexibility and choice. This has led to an increasing number of double diplomas when vocational school students also matriculate from academic high school and thereby earn a license to apply to academic universities. Finally, newly established non-university higher education systems opened doors to vocational school graduates to further learning.

I would also like to emphasize the important role that career guidance plays in Finnish basic school (grades 1 to 9). All students have weekly lesson time with qualified career counselors in upper grades of basic school. Students also spend a two-week period in a workplace to learn about the world of work and test their own perceptions of different occupations. The aim of career guidance is to minimize wrong choices by making available individualized information and help before young people make their decisions for further studies.

Today nearly 45 percent of Finnish 16-year-olds choose to study in vocational upper secondary schools and 50 percent in academic high schools. Competition to some vocational programs has become fierce. Much of the negative stigma that vocational schools had in Finland 20 years ago is gone.

“I would like to see more educating children [around the world] to feel empathy and as Sir Ken Robinson says, finding their talents through music, arts and physical education in tandem with traditional academic curriculum.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture

“Online learning stands a much better chance to improve over time and eventually become good enough to offer a competitive value proposition even for mainstream students. That’s when the classroom system will really change. Parents will start demanding it.” - Clayton Christensen. What is your response to Clayton’s argument?

I think Clayton is a visionary and his view to how technology will change schools will probably be pretty close to his prediction. But there are different scenarios for how this will play out.

One scenario is that schools will race after technology and align core instructional operations to rely on digital and other technological solutions. This will certainly change classrooms and what goes on in them. Learning would still primarily take place in schools supported by homework as it is now.

A second scenario views schools merely as places for facilitation of study and checking of achievement. Learning could be from any place. Personalized digital learning would be the most common mode of study.

A third scenario would be to elevate schools as places for social learning and developmental skills. Cooperative learning, problem solving and cultivating the habits of mind would be at the heart of school life.

I am already seeing signs of the third scenario around the world. There are parents who have started to demand it because they think that their children spend too much time with technology and that schools should help them to learn to be with other people. I would like to see more schools educating children to feel empathy and as Sir Ken Robinson says, finding their talents through music, arts and physical education in tandem with traditional academic curriculum.

“The Finnish school system cannot be transferred anywhere else in the world. Many of the successful aspects of Finland’s education system are rooted deep in our culture and values.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture

Jack Buckley, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said he“has always been a little puzzled by the high level of attention trained on Finland. Finland captured the world’s attention for a variety of reasons but there are other places to look for case studies.” How do you see this?

In my book, I raise two points of warning. First, I am not saying that Finland has the best education system in the world and that others should imitate what we have done. This global fame has actually been quite embarrassing for us Finns. Finnish educators are not thrilled about PISA, TIMSS, or any other international comparisons. We would rather hope Finland is seen as a country where four out of five taxpayers trust our public school system, and where three out of four citizens think that our publicly funded education system is our most significant accomplishment since independence in 1917. We celebrate these achievements rather than high rankings in global education league tables.

Second, I make it very clear that the Finnish school system cannot be transferred anywhere else in the world. Many of the successful aspects of Finland’s education system are rooted deep in our culture and values, which are different from those in the U.S. For example, high levels of trust in people and institutions, pursuit of equality and fairness in society and life, and willingness to pay taxes for common good are some of the Finnish conditions that don’t exist everywhere. What we can do, as Jack Buckley and others suggest, is take a global look and learn from one another.

There are some concrete lessons that American educators and policy-makers could learn from Finland. Since standardization has become one of the principles in American education policy, I would suggest that rather than over-standardize teaching and learning in schools by prescribed curricula and frequent high-stakes testing, three other aspects of education should be standardized instead.

First, a universal standard for financing schools, so that resources are channelled to schools according to real needs. This is essential in order to enhance equity and quality in American education.

Second, a universal standard for time allocation in schools, allowing pupils to have a proper recess between classes and a balanced curriculum among academic learning, the arts and physical education.

Third, a universal standard for teacher preparation that follows standards in other top professions. Initiating a bar exam for teachers is a step towards higher professional standards in teaching.

Pasi Sahlberg and C. M. Rubin

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Tagged: Arts Education Clayton Christensen College Graduation Rates Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland Finland School System Education Reform Jack Buckley Online Learning Pasi Sahlberg Sir Ken Robinson PISA Test Personalized Digital Learning Standardized Testing Student Wellbeing Teachers The Global Search for Education University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award Vocational School Systems

7th January 2013

The Global Search for Education

“The English Baccalaureate has the merits of strengthening the general academic education of lower achieving students and removing useless, mostly quasi-vocational subjects.” — Michael Young

UK on Testing

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

“It is time for the race to the bottom to end. We believe it is time to tackle grade inflation and dumbing down.” — Michael Gove

In the fall of 2012, the British Education Secretary, Michael Gove, outlined proposals for new qualifications in core academic subjects called English Baccalaureate Certificates. Mr. Gove stated that these new reforms would prepare British students for the 21st century and allow them to compete with the best performing education systems around the world.

Are the new performance measures proposed by Michael Gove a solution to “teaching to a test,” improving standards and the overall quality of learning for all students in the UK education system? I asked Michael Young, Emeritus Professor of Education with the School of Lifelong Education & International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London, to share his perspectives.

In 2004, Michael Young was commissioned to write a report on the implications of National Qualifications Frameworks for developing countries (ILO 2005). He has been an adviser to countries in Europe, Africa and Asia on their policies on qualifications. His book, Bringing Knowledge Back In (2010), won second prize as UK Education Book of the Year.

“The performance tables, which rank schools with implications for resources and student intakes, shape all school decisions, so few of the educational benefits of the E Bacc will be realized as long as they are in place.” — Michael Young

What do you believe are the best and weakest arguments for having the English Baccalaureate Certificates replace the GCSE’s? What would be your best arguments for keeping the GCSE exams?

The main reason why none of the main political parties will risk supporting the widely held view that GCSEs (the 16+ examination) should be abolished is that they are used as the basis of performance tables which enable government to assert a degree of control over schools at a time when they are weakening the existing controls of local government over schools.

GCSEs are a relic of two earlier initiatives. GCE O levels were established in 1951 to cater for at most 20-30 percent of each cohort (each class of students). At that time, the majority of pupils left school at 15 (with no certificates) for unskilled factory and office work. This youth labour market disappeared in the 1970s, so these kids were staying on in school with no certificate to aim for. A new certificate, the Certificate for Secondary Education (CSE), was created for the low achievers. GCE’s and CSE’s were then merged in the 1980s to create the existing GCSE’s, with five grades (A - E); A, B, C being equivalent to the old O levels and D, E, F, and G replacing the CSE’s. The latter became largely worthless for either employment or progression to higher levels and the focus of schools was on grade C or above.

At the same time, assessment for exams was changed from being norm referenced to criterion referenced, with no limits on the numbers being awarded any grade. The proportion of A - C’s increased every year and this led to a demand for an A* grade to differentiate the A’s. The government feared that if they scrapped GCSE’s (most other European countries do not have a 16+ examination), England would drop in the international performance tables (e.g. PISA), and that this might cost them votes. Also, there is no tradition for trusting teachers to maintain standards without tests and tables. The problem is that students are increasingly ‘trained for the tests’ and, according to employers and university teachers, know less and less.

The English Baccalaureate (the E Bacc) is a performance measure not an examination. Until it was introduced, performance tables were based on 5 subjects, but only three were compulsory (English, maths and general science). The E Bacc merely extends the number of compulsory subjects to include two sciences, a foreign language and a humanities subject. This has had two consequences: First, schools are dropping many non E Bacc subjects with much opposition from sports and arts communities. Second, schools with, say 30 percent of pupils achieving 5 A-Cs on the GCSE subjects, only achieved 5 percent (or less) on the E Bacc, primarily because they had dropped foreign language when it stopped being compulsory.

The English Baccalaureate has the merits of strengthening the general academic education of lower achieving students and removing useless, mostly quasi-vocational subjects. The government claims that the E Bacc subjects take up 70 percent of the school timetable, leaving adequate time for arts and sports. However, the performance tables, which rank schools with implications for resources and student intakes, shape all school decisions, so few of the educational benefits of the E Bacc will be realized as long as they are in place.

The English Baccalaureate is an ill thought out, off the cuff scheme. A better approach would be something along the French Baccalaureate lines, i.e. a three pathway (general/technological/vocational) Baccalaureate with 20+ percent of the curriculum in common, which students can take at different ages and for which there is no external examination at 16.

“A better approach would be something along the French Baccalaureate lines, i.e. a three pathway (general/technological/vocational) Baccalaureate with 20+ percent of the curriculum in common, which students can take at different ages and for which there is no external examination at 16.”

— Michael Young

What about taking an approach similar to the International Baccalaureate that measures student’s performance against global peers?

I am a great admirer of the IB, but as an 18+ exam it cannot include more than about 30-40 percent of each cohort without a more applied pathway. I would have a single external examination taken at different ages and abolish performance tables. The key issue is to develop a system in which assessment does not drive curriculum. I am not against the English Baccalaureate in principle. What worries me is its inevitable link to performance tables.

Students learn best when they are being taught to learn as opposed to being taught just to pass a test. Agree?

I agree as long as ‘teaching to learn’ is through specialist subjects. You can only teach or learn something. Teaching to learn and learning to learn are the products of good subject teaching.

As I said earlier, we have standardized tests for social control reasons. However, if you don’t have standardized tests, the social control issues remain. Finland is a good example. They always score high on PISA rankings but they have no external tests and no inspections. How do they do it?

First, Finns put a high value on education for all - originally out of fear of ‘big brother’ - the Soviet Union.

Second, teaching is a high status profession in Finland. Education faculties in Finland have the highest number of applications for each place.

Third, the richest, most powerful, and most successful parents use the state schools, i.e. less than 1 percent of children go to private schools. They have a stake in the quality of schools. In England, 7 percent of schools are private (fee paying). The political pressure is not to improve state schools but to control them. The rich have no stake in the state schools!

Fourth, a society has to control schools either by a consensus valuing education for all, or through tests and inspections. If you abolish the latter without establishing the former, you face chaos.

“In England, 7 percent of schools are private (fee paying). The political pressure is not to improve state schools but to control them. The rich have no stake in the state schools!” — Michael Young

What role should the British government play in education?

Up until the 1980’s and Margaret Thatcher, public education was managed as a relatively inefficient system by a troika of central government, local government, and teacher unions. Thatcher broke all of that up as she thought local government and unions (the providers) had too much power, and parents and employers (consumers) not enough. So she used government to replace ‘provider control’ by a ‘market.’

Why not allow local governments to determine their cities’ or towns’ own educational standards?

It is the rational but not politically realistic option. It’s a view largely shared by the Labour party since Blair.

“A society has to control schools either by a consensus valuing education for all, or through tests and inspections. If you abolish the latter without establishing the former, you face chaos.” — Michael Young

Surveys indicate that parents want to see the arts included in the new Baccalaureate. What are your best arguments for keeping the arts in this new assessment?

As I said before with regard to other subjects, if they keep the performance tables and bring arts into the E Bacc, it will destroy the arts, as schools will be under pressure to teach to the test! A better but unlikely solution would be to abolish the performance tables and broaden the E Bacc.

Since not every child will pass these new exams, what else can be done to prepare children for the real world and make them more competitive in the job market?

In the last decade, lower achieving students have been encouraged to obtain certificates which have no value outside the tables themselves, as they provide no progress to higher level study and employers do not rate them for jobs. The fact that the students get certificates masks the reality that they are not learning anything. At least the E Bacc’s base curriculum will highlight rather than mask low achievement. The problem is that many schools lack specialist subject teachers in the E Bacc subjects, so unless something is done about teacher supply, nothing will improve.

Michael Young and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of the Institute of Education, University of London.

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Tagged: Academic Performance Tables Bringing Knowledge Back In British Education Secretary E Bacc Education Reform C. M. Rubin English baccalaureate Finland Schools GCSE Exams Michael Gove Michael Young International Baccalaureate PISA Test The Global Search for Education Teaching Standardized Testing Teaching to a Test UK Education System UK School Testing UK State Schools

21st December 2012

The Global Search for Education

“Providing college tuition-free without getting the money back through taxes for the better educated means that the poor end up subsidizing the education of the rich.” — Andreas Schleicher

On US Education Problems

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

According to Andreas Schleicher of OECD, the United States is unique among countries in that the generation of workers entering the US workforce does not have higher college attainment levels than the generation about to leave the workforce. He further believes a key strategy to addressing this problem is improving equitable access to education across the board and that good examples of how to achieve this can be found in other education systems such as Finland, Canada, Japan or Korea. None of this sounds particularly new, but I wondered if Andreas were making the big picture education decisions, how would he address some of our key issues? We recently had the opportunity to discuss this further.

Andreas Schleicher is Special Advisor on Education Policy to OECD’s Secretary-General, and is Deputy Director for Education. 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).

“Spending in the US is regressive in that schools in disadvantaged areas end up with less resources than schools in socially advantaged areas (in virtually all other industrialized countries it is the other way round).” — Andreas Schleicher

Should government provide tuition free education from pre-school through college?

There is no free education; someone has to pay. If governments provide free education from pre-school through college, they need to back that up with a steeply progressive tax system so that the better qualified people end up paying the bill eventually. The Nordic countries in Europe show that this can work, and work well. The other good option is to ask students to pay tuition and to back that up with a universal student support system that provides an income-contingent loan system complemented with a scheme of means-tested grants. In that way you minimize risks for students, avoid that they end up with huge debt that they cannot pay back, and you provide special assistance to those students who would otherwise be prevented from attending university. The UK shows how this can work. Providing college tuition-free without getting the money back through taxes for the better-educated means that the poor end up subsidizing the education of the rich.

Are you in favor of privatizing public schools?

Results from PISA show no performance advantage of private schools, once you account for social background. However, cross-country analysis of PISA suggests that the prevalence of schools’ autonomy to define and elaborate their curricula and assessments relates positively to the performance of school systems, even after accounting for national income. School systems that provide schools with greater discretion in deciding student assessment policies, the courses offered, the course content and the textbooks used are also school systems that perform at higher levels. So perhaps the question for countries is not how many private or charter schools they have, but how they enable every public school to assume charter-type responsibility.

“Perhaps the question for countries is not how many private or charter schools they have, but how they enable every public school to assume charter-type responsibility.” — Andreas Schleicher

Since every child is probably not meant to pursue a liberal arts education, what would you do to make our children more competitive in the skilled trade jobs market?

Our data show that when employers are involved in designing curricula and delivering education programs at the post-secondary level, students seem to have a smoother transition from education into the labor market. Compared to purely government-designed curricula taught in school-based systems, learning in the workplace offers several advantages: it allows trainees to develop “hard” skills on modern equipment, and “soft” skills, such as teamwork, communication and negotiation, through real-world experience. Hands-on workplace training can also help to motivate disengaged youth to stay in or re-engage with the education system. Workplace training also facilitates recruitment by allowing employers and potential employees to get to know each other, while trainees contribute to the output of the training firm. Workplace learning opportunities are also a direct expression of employers’ needs, as employers will be ready to offer opportunities in areas where there is a skills shortage.

“Our data show that when employers are involved in designing curricula and delivering education programs at the post-secondary level, students seem to have a smoother transition from education into the labor market.” — Andreas Schleicher

Do you think that the United States needs to do more in the area of early childhood education, and if so, what?

One the one hand, the US falls well behind most countries in the industrialized world when it comes to early childhood education, and this is clearly a key lever to raise quality and equity in learning outcomes. At the same time, the US does really well when you look at student performance in primary education, so-so when it comes to performance in middle school, and not very well when it comes to performance in high school. This suggests that students actually get quite a strong start, but the school system adds less year after year than what children in other countries learn. That is something you don’t address with better early childhood education but with a better school system.

What do you think is the best way to fund our public schools?

The US spends plenty of money on public schools, but our data show three things. First of all, a disproportionally high share of that spending does not make it into the classroom. Secondly, spending is regressive in that schools in disadvantaged areas end up with less resources than schools in socially advantaged areas (in virtually all other industrialized countries it is the other way around). This does not allow the US to attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, which would make public spending most effective. Third, high performing countries tend to prioritize the quality of teachers and the size of classes. The trend in the US over the last decade has gone the other way around.

Andreas Schleicher and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of OECD

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Tagged: Andreas Schleicher Charter Schools College Attainment Levels C. M. Rubin Early Childhood Education Disadvantaged Schools Education Equality Education Reform Finland Education PISA Test School Autonomy The Global Search for Education Tuition-free Education Workplace Education Standardized Testing Teachers School Privatization

23rd October 2012

The Global Search for Education

“A nation’s moral economy invests in education for everyone’s good wherever it can, and makes prudent economies that do not harm the quality of teaching and learning whenever it must.” — Andy Hargreaves

The Education Debate 2012 — Andy Hargreaves

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

In this presidential election, I believe it is critical to vote for the candidate who has the most impactful 21st century vision for education because addressing our issues now is essential for the U.S. to maintain its prosperity and global leadership in the next decades. Matters such as economic strength, innovation, employability, reducing poverty, progress toward racial and gender equality, reducing crime, and building global citizenship are all related to the effectiveness of our education system. Education should not be the privilege of a select few, but the basic civil right of every American child. We must act conclusively to narrow our domestic achievement gap and to narrow our international achievement gap so that our students will be able to compete globally in the next decade. We must invest now in the necessary changes to our education system in order to meet the challenges America will face tomorrow.

Today in The Education Debate 2012, I continue my conversations with distinguished U. S. education leaders about the major issues facing this country by talking with Andy Hargreaves. Hargreaves’ book, The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence (Corwin Press 2012), co-authored with Dennis Shirley, reveals the key qualities behind the high performance of some of the world’s top educational systems: Singapore, Finland and Canada. His most recent book,Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (Teacher’s College Press 2012), co-authored with international reform expert Michael Fullan, sets out a clear vision as to how to achieve high return from all teachers and teaching. Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College. He studies and advises on high performance in schools and educational systems around the world.

If you were Education Secretary of the United States, what would be your position on the key education issues of our times?

I would follow the principles of best business practice, and work with my team to benchmark the United States against the highest performing systems in the world such as Finland, Canada and Singapore. With open eyes, and no excuses, this would prompt us to determine what we can learn from other high performers that could benefit our own people.

“To increase the human capital of our students, we must invest in the professional capital of our teachers.” — Andy Hargreaves

What should the role of federal government be in K- 12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform and in what major areas should it be spent?

This nation needs a positive and inspiring educational vision. All of America’s educational system, not just its world-class universities, must be among the best in the world. On the influential international PISA tests of student achievement at age 15, however, the U.S. falls somewhere between 17th and 31st out of 65 countries, depending on the subject being tested. On United Nations measures of child well-being, the U.S. ranks next to last.

All high performing countries make strong investments in their public systems. Their private systems are small or negligible. Charter schools are not a serious option. A nation’s moral economy invests in education for everyone’s good wherever it can, and makes prudent economies that do not harm the quality of teaching and learning whenever it must.

How can this be achieved in America? First, the U.S. can move core funding of public schools away from property taxes, and the inequities they create between districts, towards other forms of taxation. Second, the U.S. can invest in improving the quality of teaching and learning everywhere so that all teachers are able to deal with a wide range of abilities and special educational needs in their own classes with support where necessary. Third, the U.S. can institute a more prudent and cost-effective system of educational testing on the lines described below.

The job of an effective federal system is to inspire the profession and the public, to steer and support schools in a desired direction, to build better partnerships with and interactions among teacher unions, state departments and school districts, and to monitor and make transparent how the system is progressing. It is not to micromanage everything from Washington. Canada has no federal ministry of education. Finland’s National Board of Education consists of less than 20 officials. The district is where all the work gets done. School districts are not only the cornerstones of high performing systems; they are also a foundation of American public democracy. This is not the time to put our school districts up for auction. Now is the time to galvanize them into action.

“The U.S. educational system has been colonizing the sinking sands of centralization and standardization that other high performing systems have been leaving behind.” — Andy Hargreaves

What would be your position on improving the teaching profession, including recruitment, teacher training, compensation, and assignment to low income schools?

To increase the human capital of our students, we must invest in the professional capital of our teachers. Top performing countries draw their teachers from the top third of the graduation range, they train them in rigorous university preparation programs where they undertake deep research into their practice, and they have to undergo extensive practice-based experience in schools. We must align teacher preparation practice with that of the highest performing countries. America’s teachers need to be the best. Finns believe that teaching is as difficult as medicine or law, and it is therefore just as hard to enter. Singaporeans say teaching is as challenging as engineering, so they pay teachers a starting salary that is comparable to engineers. America must communicate the same messages about teaching and also back them up.

As Education Secretary, I would ask Teach for America to take on its biggest challenge yet: to lead a national effort in partnership with teachers’ professional associations to improve teacher retention. Fifty percent of public school teachers currently leave teaching within 5 years. In urban schools, they exit within 3. Most of our teachers need to stay in the job until they hit their peak - well beyond 5 years. The best way to do this is by increasing the quality of leadership, support and professional interaction in schools, and by reducing the micromanagement that undermines teachers’ capacity to exercise their judgments as true professionals.

A big part of transforming the teaching profession involves teacher unions. In Canada’s highest performing province — Alberta — over 50 percent of the revenues of the Alberta Teacher’s Association are allocated to professional development. This contrasts with a figure of under 5 percent in most U.S. teachers’ associations. When the California Teachers’ Association took the responsibility to turn around hundreds of the state’s lower performing schools, the result of becoming more obviously engaged with the core work of teaching and learning was a surge in activism among younger members. Our quest should not be to remove or replace teacher unions, but to reform and renew them.

What would be your position on school choice, including charter schools and their expansion, private schools, vouchers, and investment in inadequately staffed and facilitated low income schools?

Parents have a right to choice in education. Charter schools are warranted where they offer something that the public system does not provide locally, where the local public system is inadequate, or where the existing system shows little inclination to innovate and would benefit from an outside push. However, in general, charter schools do not outperform other public schools, they often rob local schools of teacher and student capacity, and most charter schools turn out to be more traditional than the public schools they replaced.

If all our schools were good, as they are in Finland, most parents would choose their local district school. We can do better at turning around low performing schools. High performing systems improve their schools not by having intervention teams descend in from a great height, but by building collective responsibility where strong schools assist weaker neighbors, where resources are disbursed from the district or the state department to schools to make this assistance possible, and where these collaborative efforts run across district boundaries. Charter schools can and should be part of this culture of collective responsibility. Indeed, it can be written into their charters.

“The U.S. can move core funding of public schools away from property taxes, and the inequities they create between districts, towards other forms of taxation.” — Andy Hargreaves

What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability?

Most U.S. reforms do the opposite of high performing competitors. These countries understand there is no substitute for strong, high quality teachers who work together to develop good teaching and who exercise shared responsibility for all students in their schools. As the U.S. increases standardized testing from Grade 3 up to Grade 8, Canadians only test Grades 3 and 6 at most, Singapore has just one high-stakes test in Grade 6, and Finland tests samples of students rather than taking a census of all of them. U.S. testing must become more prudent if we are to see improvements in the quality of teaching that avoid teaching to the test, concentrating on students near the cut scores, narrowing the curriculum, eliminating the arts, and rotating teachers and principals in and out of already unstable schools in a constant panic to lift the scores.

Accountability is the remainder that is left once responsibility has been subtracted. But we have put accountability first and created high threat environments that have distorted teaching and learning in a drive to lift up the scores. This can change if we test samples rather than take a census, if we test fewer grades less often, and if teachers become collectively responsible for all students’ success. In the push to narrow achievement gaps, we have inadvertently widened the learning gaps between standardized teaching in highly pressured urban schools and more innovative learning experiences in the affluent suburbs. I would set about narrowing this learning gap.

What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning?

China is promoting more school-designed curriculum and innovation. Finland supports all young people to study creative arts until the end of high school. Singapore emphasizes character education because in Singapore, the first priority is to your nation, the second is to your community, and the third is to yourself. Like Singapore’s national education initiative, we need to Teach Less and Learn More: to leave more curriculum time for high quality professionals to exercise the professional flexibility that engages students’ diverse interests and needs in depth. Unfortunately, the U.S. educational system has been colonizing the sinking sands of centralization and standardization that other high performing systems have been leaving behind. If we want more innovative thinking among our students, our teachers must have the opportunity to practice innovative teaching themselves.

Technology is part of the transformation in teaching, but there is no consistent evidence to suggest that online learning options that bypass the teacher are the answer. Like overhead projectors or chalk, digital technologies in the hands of good teachers can be a great asset. In the hands of poor teachers or no teachers, these technologies are just another expensive gimmick.

Andy Hargreaves and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Boston College and Andy Hargreaves.

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

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Tagged: Andy Hargreaves California Teachers' Association Charter Schools Education Reform Finland Schools Global Education Leadership PISA Test School Choice Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Singapore Schools Standardized Testing Teach for America Teachers The Global Search for Education

7th August 2012

The Global Search for Education

“I think our key strategy to engage students in learning is to have good teachers, those who understand their students, tailor teaching strategies according to their students’ profile, and make lessons interesting.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng

More From Singapore

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

Singapore is recognized globally as a high-performing education system. 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 percent) of students who are top performers in all three domains,” according to a press release from Singapore’s Ministry of Education.

How do teachers motivate students in the Singapore school system? How do they level the playing field between rich and poor students? How do they handle behavioral problems? Are they obsessed with testing?

These are some of the questions I received from readers after the last Q and A we did on the Singapore education system in May. This week we are honored to once again share the views of Dr. Pak Tee Ng on these questions. Dr. Pak Tee Ng is 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.

What methods of motivation does the Singapore school system use to keep kids engaged in learning?

Student motivation in learning is a challenge in many education systems, including Singapore’s. We do not have a standardized way or a best practice of addressing this challenge. But I often ask educators to reflect: “How do we expect inspired learners if we do not have inspired teachers?” I think our key strategy to engage students in learning is to have good teachers, those who understand their students, tailor teaching strategies according to their students’ profile, and make lessons interesting. I also think we need to challenge our mindsets regarding students’ motivation to learn. Young children start off with a natural curiosity and willingness to learn. But many seem to have lost their motivation after some years of schooling, despite teachers’ motivational efforts. Why? Perhaps, we have gotten the wrong end of the stick. The challenge is not to find methods of developing their learning motivation. The challenge is not to extinguish it! Educators should continuously cultivate and tap children’s innate interest in learning. A different philosophy suggests different strategies!

“There was recently an increasing awareness of the importance of pre-school education in a child’s development and therefore an effort on the part of the government to improve the quality of pre-schools in Singapore.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng

How does your education system nurture the theme of innovation? Can you share some examples from schools in Singapore that are already doing this?

In 2004, the Education Ministry launched an initiative called “Innovation and Enterprise” (I&E) to focus educators’ attention on the theme of innovation. However, we do not focus on innovation for the sake of innovation. Instead, it is a reminder to educators to allow our students to try new things and to use their enterprising spirit to undertake projects that can be beneficial to others. It is to encourage students to be intellectually curious about matters beyond textbooks or examinations, have the courage to live with ambiguity and to take calculated risks, and be passionate, persistent and resilient. Moreover, I&E is a platform for values inculcation, as part of its aim is to help students develop a sense of teamwork and contribution to the community, grounded in a set of timeless values such as integrity, social responsibility and respect for others. In other words, we are developing character traits that will be helpful to our next generation, whether they become scientists, businessmen or public officers.

Each year, the Education Ministry organizes the MOE ExCEL Fest (ExCEL stands for Excellence through Continuous Enterprise & Learning), which is a platform to celebrate and share innovative practices in schools. During the two-day event, various schools show their students’ innovations to other schools and the public. Examples of student innovation for the 2012 festival ranged from mathematics games that were designed by pupils of Chua Chu Kang Primary School to complement the teaching and learning efforts by their teachers, to a prototype for an “Ultra Flu Relief Mask” comprising a disposable surgical mask with an inbuilt semi-permeable membrane that secretes a medication such as Vicks, by two students of Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School.

How do teachers and leaders in your school system handle behavioral issues?

Most behavioral issues (especially persistent ones) are symptoms that have deeper root causes. Teachers and leaders in our schools handle students with behavioral problems by first trying to understand the deeper problems that these students face. They usually take a problem-solving and counseling approach to work out long-term solutions that can help these students grow in maturity.

In Singapore, the philosophy toward student discipline is that discipline is an educational process to develop students’ values and moral faculties. The aim of discipline is not to punish but to develop self-discipline in them. But this does not mean that students can escape punishment for wrongdoing. However, educators recognize that meting out a punishment is not equal to solving the problem.

Singapore schools are allowed to cane students if necessary. This applies to boys only. However, there are strict guidelines to determine the appropriateness of such punishment and clearly defined procedures for meting out the punishment. It is one of the last courses of action rather than the first line of remedy. The caning may be administered only by the Principal or Vice-Principal, or by a specially designated and trained discipline teacher. Other teachers do not cane students. The parents of the errant student are informed of his misbehavior and punishment.

Prevention is better than cure. Our schools now teach students Social Emotional Learning, comprising 5 core competencies of self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and responsible decision-making, so that they may acquire the skills, knowledge and dispositions to be mature and productive individuals who can manage themselves and relate well with others.

“If a school or school system continues to assess students in a way that is not relevant to the industries, that school or school system will become redundant.” — Dr. Pak Tee Ng

What are your thoughts on what many call an obsession with testing? If there were less testing, wouldn’t teachers and educators be able to focus on a more holistic education?

The key word here is “obsession.” Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with a test. With appropriate feedback and follow through, students can learn from a test. However, what many educators are concerned with now is an obsession by various stakeholders (including educators themselves) with testing and the test results. Such tests are not really motivated by learning but come with high stakes and consequences, real or perceived, related to one’s future paths. The challenge is therefore to gradually increase the number of alternative pathways for students and widen the definition of success. Testing can then indeed become a tool for learning, and not a driver for obsessive behaviors by stakeholders of education. This of course is easier said than done. I think holistic education does not refer to an education without test. I think holistic education aims to help each person find identity, meaning, and purpose in life. Suitable levels and amount of testing, focused on learning, can play a positive role in it.

How in your view should 21st-century students be assessed in a competitive world?

It is quite fashionable nowadays to say that 21st century students should learn and be assessed in 21st-century skills. However, beyond this broad statement, there does not seem to be an authoritative answer to what this assessment should look like in practice, taking into consideration contextual differences and the difficulties in accurately assessing certain types of learning. But I think a model of 21st-century assessment will emerge in due course, not because of what we think it should be from a theoretical perspective, but because of changes driven by the increasing proximity between schools and industries.

I feel that in the future, education will be brought closer to working life and the industries. The closer interaction between schools and industries will bring about a change in the way that students are assessed. If a school or school system continues to assess students in a way that is not relevant to the industries, that school or school system will become redundant. On the other hand, if a school or school system assesses students in a way that is closely aligned to industrial needs, the qualifications given out by the school or school system will be sought after by various stakeholders. Students who can demonstrate competence in such assessments will definitely find themselves needed by the world after they leave school. Therefore I think 21st century assessment is not a static picture but an evolving one, as schools and industries come more closely together.

“What has been done in Singapore to make education more equitable is to allow students access to educational pathways based on their merit and to give financial aid to poor but deserving students.”— Dr. Pak Tee Ng

How does your education system level the playing field between children from rich and poor families?

Children from rich families have more resources at their command compared with those from poor families, and the field is never completely level. However, what has been done in Singapore to make education more equitable is to allow students access to educational pathways based on their merit (not on financial abilities), and to give financial aid or subsidies to poor but deserving students, so that they are not denied access to education because of financial difficulties.

For example, the Ministry of Education provides a Financial Assistance Scheme to needy Singapore citizen students so that all Singaporeans, regardless of their financial background, can benefit from education. Under this scheme, needy students receive full waiver of school fees and miscellaneous fees, and receive free textbooks and school uniforms. The government also provides a School Advisory Committees’ Fund to allow more targeted aid to students who need even more assistance. Interestingly, there was recently an increasing awareness of the importance of pre-school education in a child’s development and therefore an effort on the part of the government to improve the quality of pre-schools in Singapore. A government committee was immediately set up to examine the issue of removing barriers which prevented children from low-income families from attending pre-school.

Realistically, I think we will never be able to level the playing field completely. But, there are mechanisms to make it possible for a child from a poor family to overcome financial barriers to pursue education according to his or her potential. Singapore is too small to afford wastage in human resources.

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. 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), 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

Tagged: Dr. Pak Tee Ng 21st Century Education C. M. Rubin Education Reform Holistic Education PISA Test K-12 Achievement Gap Singapore Education Ministry Rich and Poor Education Gap The Global Search for Education Teachers Standardized Testing Singapore Schools Singapore National Institute of Education

6th June 2012

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.
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Tagged: Andreas Schleicher C. M. Rubin Andrew Hargreaves 21st Century education Education Reform Finland Schools Global Education In Search of Professionals High Performing Education Systems Japan Schools Michael Fullan OECD The Global Search for Education TE21 Teaching Profession Teachers Standardized Testing Singapore National Institute for Education Singapore Schools PISA Test Professional Capital

2nd June 2012

The Global Search for Education

“Early language skills have to be developed. This is something that the German government is trying to intensify at the moment.” — Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider

A View From Germany

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

Fighting the war on poverty with high quality early childhood education programs is an issue discussed and supported by numerous contributors to The Global Search For Education series. Researchers, educators and policy makers have argued that vital learning can and should begin before age 5. When schooling starts for poor children at kindergarten or first grade they have already missed out on vital opportunities to develop skills needed to help them thrive academically, socially, physically and emotionally in their early years of learning.

Today in The Global Search for Education, it is our honor to share the views of Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider on pre-school learning and additional matters related to the German and other education systems.

Dr. Wolfgang Schneider is currently Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology, University of Wurzburg, Germany. His research interests include the development of memory and metacognition, giftedness and expertise, the development of reading and spelling, as well as the prevention of reading and math difficulties. He was Vice President and President of the German Psychological Society (2000-2004), and also Vice President of the University of Würzburg (2004-2009). He is author and co-editor of about 40 books, including Memory Development between Two and Twenty, which he co-authored with Michael Pressley. He is currently President of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD).

“We found that children at risk really can catch up if they have training in the early years.”— Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider

There are a number of prominent views in the US that pre-school education makes a significant difference in the success of children in primary school. What are the essential elements of this education and what is the impact on child development? Do you believe it can have a significant impact on the achievement gap between affluent and poor children?

Early language skills have to be developed. This is something that the German government is trying to intensify at the moment. We have made some progress regarding the phonological training programs in our country. We also have evidence that training children in phonological awareness helps them to develop the first stages of reading and spelling in school. We have evidence regarding early math training programs too and there are a few rather effective approaches there.

So there has been evidence that early pre-school programs make a difference, particularly for kids at risk. We did a couple of studies with children at risk and compared their improvement with normally developed children. We found that children at risk really can catch up if they have training in the early years. And when they are able to move up to the same level as normal kindergarten kids, they seem to be able to develop well in school.

What is the nature of the kindergarten training programs that you designed and what impact has it had on the mental development of children? Are the programs equally as effective with affluent and poor?

We designed a popular training program with two components. One focuses on phonological awareness in both the broad and narrow sense. Phonological awareness in the broad sense would be something like rhyme identification or syllable segmentation. Phonological awareness in the narrow sense means identification of phonemes in syllables. We found it was possible to get German speaking kindergarten children to identify phonemes in syllables and words, and those kids who satisfied that criteria were able to acquire reading and spelling skills earlier than usual. We combined the phonological awareness training with letter-sound coordination training. And so for some frequently used letters, we taught children how they link to phonemes. This helped the children pick up the letter phonemes training in school. We had control groups in our studies that did not receive phonological training but participated in the usual kindergarten program. Thus we were able to compare kids who were trained and kids who did not participate. We discovered that the trained kids had an advantage by the end of kindergarten and kept that advantage during their first years in school. It’s very important that there was a long lasting effect here. Particularly with kids who had poor initial skills.

Right now we are developing an early educational program for kindergarten children for all 16 states in Germany. We will finish our proposal at the end of 2012.

Do you think that the PISA test is an effective measure of the full range of mental aptitudes of students?

I don’t think it’s an effective measure of the full range of mental aptitudes. It does give you a good impression of 15-year-old students’ reading skills, math skills and their ability to cope in the science area, but we don’t get any evidence about their intellectual abilities. In 2000 we included a measure of non-verbal intelligence in a German extension of the PISA study which compared performance among the 16 German states and which was based on a large sample of about 50,000 students. When we assessed the impact of intelligence on performance in math, reading and science, we figured out that non-verbal intelligence was a strong predictor in most of these tests.

“I believe the arts are underestimated in our system. Whenever teachers have to cut hours in a curriculum, the arts get cut first. We have to change that.” — Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider

Do you think that in some countries, teaching to the PISA test is now occurring?

I think that this probably does happen and I think that is a problem. However, I also believe that the way the PISA organization process works makes it difficult. In Germany for example, schools are selected at random. And there is almost no chance for a school to escape once it has been selected. I suppose there could be a couple of schools in the sample that have practiced for the test but we don’t think that would apply to the entire sample.

Do you think that some countries have educational curricula that provide better preparation for the test than others? Does it surprise you that “grinder” countries like South Korea and less structured countries such as Finland both do very well on the test?

As to the impact of different educational systems on the results of the PISA test, it seems very difficult to come up with clear-cut conclusions. You have a diverse group of countries included in the PISA sample with different educational systems, so you have to be very careful when you compare. However, the achievement patterns observed for the various PISA samples that we’ve seen from 2000 to 2009 seem to be rather consistent for most of the countries participating. The countries at the top for reading and math, such as Finland and the Asian countries, are famous for their superior curricula in these domains and their competent training programs. So their excellent performance does not seem to be surprising.

The Finnish educational system really focuses on all children, including the weak children, in classrooms. As a consequence, the achievement variance in Finnish children is much smaller than the variance in children in most other countries. So Finland is successful with bringing all their children up to a high level, which many other countries do not achieve.

When you look at the instructional procedures in a country like South Korea, you see that there is a lot of drilling and practice and very heavy workloads on the students. This is something we do not have in Germany. So I think the quantity of instruction in South Korea makes a big difference here. In former times, Benjamin Bloom in the US already noticed that the quantity of instruction and the time given to reach a criterion is usually a good indicator of student outcomes.

What are the key strengths and weaknesses of the German educational system as you see it?

In Germany we have different curricula in 16 different states. A couple of states, including Bavaria and Saxony, seem to do very well and may even compare with the Finnish achievement scores. The teachers follow the curriculum pretty strictly, which seems to make an impact. We have systematic findings that show while some of our states perform very well others perform poorly. Each state has its own policy. The policies differ a lot, and the states are not able to agree on a common curriculum. Our federal ministry of education has tried to change that but it is difficult as our law states that education must be linked to the state policy.

What is the mix of arts in the usual curriculum in Germany? How do you the see role of the arts in primary and secondary education?

I believe the arts are underestimated in our system. Whenever teachers have to cut hours in a curriculum, the arts get cut first. We have to change that. I believe the arts are important. I think we should start an arts education at the beginning of elementary school, which is not the case now. The major argument against the arts is always that kids shouldn’t do too much in the early years of their education where the emphasis must be on reading, writing and math. Thirty years ago this was not the case as music education started earlier. Now that has changed and it is not a good development.

Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider.

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Tagged: Arts Education Benefits Early Childhood Education C. M. Rubin Early Language Development Education Reform Germany School Systems Phonological Awareness PISA Test The Global Search for Education School Children at Risk Standardized Testing Dr. Wolfgang Schneider Rich-Poor Achievement Gap Pre-school Learning

21st May 2012

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.
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Tagged: Andy Hargreaves C. M. Rubin Global Education Michael Fullan Education Reform Pak Tee Ng PISA Test Professional Capital Singapore National Institute of Education Professional Teacher Development Teacher Pay Teacher Recruitment Singapore Education System The Global Search for Education Timms

25th January 2012

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

Tagged: 21st century skills Career Related Education C. M. Rubin Jeffrey Beard Creating Innovators Education Reform Global Education Harvard Professor of Innovation Education Tony Wagner IB Assessment IB Director General Jeffrey R. Beard IB Diploma IBCC diploma National Center for Education 2006 report PISA Test Standardized Testing The Importance of Teachers Technology and Education Teacher Professional Development Teacher Selection National Center for Education 2006 report International Baccalaureate Teacher Mentoring

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