Twilight of Education (Kristen Stewart and Differentiated Learning)

People with a lot of uniqueness will struggle to have their needs met by a system designed for the average person.

Kristen Stewart, who played "Bella" of recent Twilight fame, blames her teachers for failing to meet her educational needs when she didn't fit into the education system. Her acting meant that she couldn't make classes regularly and needed personalised "packages" from her teachers to help her keep up her education.

Three things I want to mention about this.

One - This is differentiated learning, i.e. having a unique program of learning that is tailor made to the individual needs of the student.

Two - The workload of high school teachers is impossible if they are expected to provide individual packages for their 125 to 150 students (under a differentiated learning model)

Three - Teaching students how to teach themselves, and weaning them off of their dependence on the (current) education system as early as possible, seems like a good way to differentiate in a meaningful way. Developing learning power according to Guy Claxton, or building Key Competencies according to the New Zealand Curriculum.

For the full news article, visit: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10758053

Robots

I am not a robot
I will not teach like a robot
A robot can only make more robots
Twisting reality into conformity

Weary of this struggle
Worn down by mindless minions
Why do they fight to preserve an empty mind?
Empty, even to the top
How does mindless hierarchy manage to lead?
How?

Empty pharisee makes another empty pharisee makes another empty pharisee...

Carrots and Sticks, Where do they get you?

I check out the talks on www.ted.com once in a while, and have a browse through for something inspirational if I feel that I need a creative kick.  This is where I first saw the famous talk by Sir Ken Robinson about how schools kill creativity.  I still go back and watch it from time to time.

Earlier this week I came across this talk by Dan Pink (who used to write speeches for Al Gore).  The essence of it is that science has clearly shown that carrots and sticks (rewards and punishments) do not work for improving results and productivity when anything more complex than routine tasks are involved.  If you are a mindless worker doing a mindless job, then perhaps some external motivation might help give you the incentive to work faster.  When it comes to something even slightly complex that involves thinking about a solution, such as in most forms of learning, then rewards and punishment generate too much pressure.  This pressure results in anxiety and performance then decreases according to the level of anxiety.

What does work well for improving productivity and results are internal motivators such as satisfaction at a job well done and a sense of contributing to something meaningful.  I would add to Dan’s list something about basic needs being met, so that your mind is on the job rather than worrying about those needs.

That these internal motivators work is clear and obvious.  Google use this to give their employees 20% of time to do whatever they want and about half of their major innovations arise out of this “free time”.  Wikipedia is another example that Dan Pink uses, contrasting it’s success with Encarta.  Encarta was made using paid employees and wikipedia was made using the incentive to be a part of an incredibly useful project that would benefit many.  It is clear which was more successful, with Wikipedia being considered as more accurate than many text encyclopedias according to some!  The debate about the usefulness and accuracy of information from the Internet is mostly irrelevant because we should be savvy when it comes to interpreting knowledge anyway.  After all, everybody writes with a bias, even me!

So we can see that carrots and sticks get you nowhere.  I’m particularly concerned with their use in education and the immense pressure to perform that students are under.  I think that we would have a much more skilled and resilient bunch of people leaving high school if we just scrapped the external exams, took the pressure off, and let students learn by following their noses with teachers showing them how to develop their learning skills.

Differentiated Learning

Differentiated teaching and learning is a buzz concept in education in NZ at the moment.  There is a lot of pressure on teachers to apply methods of teaching that allow differentiated learning among their students.  Today I’m taking a look at the following: What is differentiated learning?  Why do we need it? How do we do it?  What are the challenges to good differentiated learning?

What is differentiated learning?
Every student before us in the learning environment (which extends beyond the walls of the classroom) will have a different range of abilities and interests.  They will also have a different range of needs according to what needs have been met (or not) in the rest of their lives.  Differentiated teaching practice attempts to take into account this range of needs and abilities so that students can begin learning from where they are “at”.  For example, there is no point in teaching year 13 calculus to someone who has not demonstrated skill in year 10 algebra.  Similarly, there is little point in teaching year 9 food and nutrition to a dietary specialist with 20 years of experience in the field.  Some students will need a soft touch because of sensitive issues in their lives and others will need a good “kick up the bum” to get them motivated.  Maybe not literally, but you get the idea.

Why do we need to do it?
The current system is modelled after mass production ideas so that we can get as many students through the system with as little cost as possible.  That often translates into 30+ students sitting silently and copying notes as a means of absorbing information and supposedly learning.  It is clear that this method of “teaching” is not going to meet the needs of students, and could even be said to be forcing students needs into a small box and then saying that that their needs, as defined by the small box, are being met.  Too many of the differentiated characteristics get lost because they don’t fit into the educational box of the 19th and 20th century classroom.

Putting it simply, students are not learning anything of value in such “traditional” learning environments.  If the individual needs of each and every student is taken into account, it stands to reason that they will learn so much more and they will even have their non-curriculum learning needs met to some degree.

How do we do it?
There are a range of methods that people use to differentiate with some of them bordering on being token efforts that don’t really accomplish much.  When we understand the purpose of differentiation properly, we can tell whether a method will be successful or not.  When we don’t understand we are likely to apply our current methods and then find some way of calling them differentiated.  I’ll illustrate two methods and see if these examples work to differentiate or not.

First, is offering a common task to the entire class and expecting students of differing levels of ability to apply themselves according to their ability.  The task needs to have multiple methods of being completed so that it is both accessible for those with little knowledge and patience, but easily developed to a high level for students with more knowledge and excitement to try things out.  The role of the teacher is to observe students and push them when they are choosing too easy an option to complete the task or to gently direct then toward a simpler alternative when it is clear that their knowledge is not up to their lofty, though probably very creative, designs.

The second, students are tested to ascertain their level of ability and are then streamed into classes with students of similar ability.  The teacher will then teach at a particular level and expect that all students can keep up because they teach from the level that those students achieved their results.

Both examples appear to differentiate, but I believe that the first is a very powerful way to do so while the second is bordering on “token differentiation” because it differentiates based purely on a single snapshot in time and does not take into account the day to day factors that may ultimately have a larger impact on student learning.  Even within a streamed classroom there will be such a range of abilities and learning styles that it is not truly differentiated.  It is understandable, but not justifiable, that teachers would gravitate towards the streaming model because it is easier and potentially less stressful.  

What are the challenges to differentiated learning?
Following is a list of some of the challenges to differentiated teaching and learning and a brief description where applicable.  This should give an idea of just how difficult the task will be for teachers and schools to implement this widely:

1. It takes a lot of energy to keep track of individual students progress in a task.
2. There is no simple method of recording progress.  There is no simple percentage of work completed correctly under differentiation.
3. It is immensely difficult to report back to parents how their children are doing.  How can someone trained in a very particular and technical skill (teaching) explain the progress in a way that is meaningful to parents untrained in these skills.  Percentages or levels of results are easy to see but when there is no clear standard, any comments are meaningless.  I would say that most parents will have a good idea of their child’s progress if they regularly talk with them and observe them at home, but this is not necessarily something that translates into something you can communicate to a potential employer.
4. It is almost impossible to design a course when you don’t know the abilities of the students you will have in the year(s) to come.  This means that a lot of planning must be done “on the fly” or rushed during brief moments of non-contact time.
5. Teachers have to be highly capable and experienced in a very wide range of skills, knowledge, and character traits.  They will have to demonstrate that they are good learners.
6. A wide range of resources must be available or readily accessible for student’s to try out their ideas as they come up.  It’s no good getting equipment in a week down the track because the students may have lost interest by then, or moved on to the next thing.
7. Many people who grew up under the industrial, mass production, system will not be able to relate to differentiated learning without a lot of mental effort.  This is a huge barrier, along with the tendency to use those cop-out and token methods.  Informing students, parents, potential employers, and other members of the community about the nature of differentiated learning, and the power of it to improve overall levels of ability, is a huge challenge.  The people who it is meant to serve must believe in it or there will be no support for teachers trying to teach in this way.
8. Methods of differentiated learning will take time to develop.  Teachers need the space to think about this and work out how to incorporate it into their practice.  Teachers don’t currently have the time to do this.
9. Small class sizes are essential to teachers differentiating in their practice, but that would mean classes of about 15 maximum, and this would require twice the amount of teachers than we currently have in secondary schools.

Finally
We can see that differentiated learning will really meet the wide range of needs of our learners.  Unfortunately, there are many challenges to overcome in making it work, and it is quite unfair to expect teachers to change overnight without a lot of support and time to adapt thinking and practice.  I am convinced that it is worth trying to change the system, so I will do my bit according to the abilities and time I have available.  Life is differentiated, so learning must also be differentiated in order to successfully prepare learners for life.

What’s the Point of School (Part Three) - Stress and Escapism

Guy Claxton highlights the problem of stress and escapism in our students.  In a nutshell, the pressure to achieve academically, without being given the support and resources to actually reach those expectations, is causing a great deal of stress in our students.  They turn instead to other sources to bring about the feeling of success and happiness that they crave.

Some negative sources of these substitutes could be: excessive television, excessive internet, drugs and alcohol, bad relationships and sex, bullying, other antisocial behaviour.  Some positive sources of these substitutes could be sporting pursuits, subjects at school that are perceived as less academic because of their creative aspects, good relationships, joining campaign groups.

The young people who have some guidance tend towards the positive substitutes and those with little guidance tend towards the negative.

What is really needed is a total overhaul of the education and assessment system.  Instead of refurbishing something that has rotten foundations, we need to start from scratch, breaking down the old system piece by piece so that we can see the details of the full picture of destruction that we’ve carefully avoided looking at for so long.

In an ideal learning situation, the person in the teaching role identifies where the person in the learning role is in their understanding.  The teacher will then begin to build from there, gently pushing the learner to challenge them self by encouraging them to step just outside their comfort zone.  With the support to overcome challenges like this, gradually increasing in intensity over months and years, the learner will develop confidence in their ability to deal with difficult situations.  With support from someone who is good at teaching them self, the learner will develop a tool box of strategies for promoting their own learning and overcoming of challenges by them self.  This sort of learning is not limited to the academic field, but also to the learning of technical skills (in a sporting context for instance).

The limits to such learning is only time.  For some people, they may take a lot longer to learn the same lessons as the average person, but this does not matter because such a style of learning leads to greatly accelerated learning if it is persistently practiced over many years.  You can see where the current system, which forces learning of individuals into a time frame that will at best suit 50 percent of students, is not going to be workable for too many people.  To it’s credit, the NZ education system has a standards based system in which students are not meant to sit an assessment until they have reached the required standard to pass.  Teachers are meant to know when their students are ready to sit the assessment and allow them to sit internal assessments, or enter into external exams at the end of the year, with the knowledge that they will definitely pass.  In practise, teachers are still under pressure to teach a set body of knowledge in a set period of time, and they are somehow expected to focus on key learning competencies while meeting the learning needs of 25 to 30 students with unique learning needs.  Along with the requirements for University entrance guiding things, and the many other pressures of life and education, it is impossible to expect teachers to be able to do this.  The same system which puts pressure on students, but fails to give them the resources to succeed, also puts pressure on teachers with similar limitations.

This has turned into a longer post than I would like, so I’ll finish there for now.  The key thing to remember, when you find yourself in a learning or teaching situation, is that you can’t rush good learning and you can’t expect people to learn rocket science if they haven’t mastered the basics.