The following article was published in Karen Boyes “Teachers Matter” magazine; Issue 8 February 2010
Schools as the last bastion of compulsion have been catapulted to the front of the change queue and are now seen as leading agents of change. Central to those changes are the liberating, much acclaimed New Zealand Curriculum (NZC).
The NZC has the potential to engage 21st Century learners by shifting the emphasis from a focus on assessment practices that measure left brain thinking and unleashing the creativity that lies within us all.
But are we leading the changes that are necessary or simply reacting to political imperatives?
All of us in education are consumed by change whilst continually dealing with the inevitable fall out, both positive and negative, of that change; there is no silver bullet, no one size fits all solution. The tension here is that in our egalitarian society we want all to be treated equally.
It is essential that those who will affect the desired changes, that is schools and their communities, continue to work to enlighten those who would narrow the curriculum with their left brain dominated perspectives.
First, what is distinctive about our times is not change itself but the nature of change. Second, the technological revolution is only just beginning.
It is essential that we educate the whole child and work to unlock the creativity that lies within. Sir Ken Robinson defines creativity as a process of having original ideas that have value. He believes that there are major problems with many developed education systems because the culture of standardised testing is counter productive to that which we are trying to achieve. Too often now we are systematically alienating people from their own talents and, therefore, from the process of education. Is this the reason why so many young people are opting out of education at a time when we are desperate to keep them in? Perhaps the systemic things that we value are not as valuable to our young people. I have heard it said that for many young people the real learning takes place outside of school.
Systemically we measure what we value; perhaps we need to reflect on our value base and the constant literacy and numeracy messages that we are giving out to our schools and communities and shift the focus to the development of the whole child.
Ken Robinson in his book Out of our Minds – Learning to be Creative develops three key arguments for those who have a serious interest in developing the whole child. He challenges us to reflect on the sustained development of creativity, innovation and human capability. He suggests:
• We are caught up in a social and economic revolution; and
• To survive we need a new conception of human resources; and
• To develop these resources we need radically new strategies
Einstein once suggested that we will not solve a problem by bringing the same thinking that created it. All of us involved in compulsory sector education are currently thinking about the implementation of the NZC in our schools; are we brave enough to take Einstein’s advice whilst reconceptualising curriculum delivery and learner connectedness or will we simply tinker at the edges with existing practice?
As Ken Robinson suggests it is vital to educate more people – and to a much higher standard but we also have to educate them differently. Are the policy makers brave enough to really encourage creativity and risk taking or will schools simply be pressured by central accountability systems to prioritise those curriculum areas deemed to be most relevant to the economy? We require an atmosphere where risk-taking and experimentation is encouraged, indeed lauded, rather than stifled. Ken Robinson gives us cause to reflect in his statement:
Education standards should be high and it is obviously a good idea to raise them. There’s no point in lowering them. But standards of what and why? The essential problem is that many governments and organisations seem to think that the best way to prepare for the future is to do better than what we did in the past – just to do more of it and to higher standard. The fact is we have to do something else.
It is essential therefore that all education sectors work to ensure that there is relevance, authenticity, connectivity and belonging for those at the centre of the discussion i.e. the learner and that the innate creativity that they all possess is given a chance to flourish. Further Ken Robinson believes that creativity (Ken defines this as original ideas that have value) and literacy should be treated with the same status. One of these is easier to measure than the other and so systems through their messages, often unintended, value one more highly than the other. Is it surprising then that Ken Robinson believes that our current industrially designed education system educates people out of their creativity?
Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind explores the change from 20 Century Knowledge Age skill sets based very much on left brain thinking to the 21 Century Conceptual Age, the age of the right brain creative thinker.
We’ve moved from an economy built on people’s backs to an economy built on people’s left brains to what is emerging today: an economy and society built more and more on people’s right brains.
The challenge therefore for the compulsory sector is to ensure that in reconceptualising the curriculum we give priority to the whole child and his / her inherent creativity and resist any centralist move to constrict curriculum delivery as has happened in other countries.
It is important that schools are encouraged to take risks and form partnerships with other schools and their communities. The less the capacity of teachers, the more they attempt to play it safe behind the classroom door or school walls. Confidence and competence breed risk taking of the kind that will bring us new breakthroughs.
Sector capacity, confidence and competence will not be achieved by centrally imposed benchmarks; giving encouragement to make mistakes, to find solutions and to try again will ….. if the hearts and minds of all in the learning community are not captured then the desired change will not happen. Desire cannot be mandated!
The findings of Black & William, commissioned by the Assessment Reform Group in the United Kingdom, has had / is having a considerable impact on teaching and learning throughout the western world.
Their research indicated that improving learning through assessment depends on five, deceptively simple, key factors:
1. The provision of effective feedback to pupils; and
2. The active involvement of pupils in their own learning; and
3. Adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment; and
4. A recognition of the profound influence assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of pupils, both of which are crucial influences on learning; and
5. The need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve.
The inhibiting factors identified included:
1. A tendency for teachers to assess quantity of work and presentation rather than the quality of learning; and
2. Greater attention given to marking and grading, much of it tending to lower the self-esteem of pupils, rather than to provide advice for improvement; and
3. A strong emphasis on comparing pupils with each other which demoralises the less successful learners; and
4. Teacher’s feedback to pupils often serves managerial and social purposes rather than helping them to learn more effectively.
Now to ask schools to attempt to reconceptualise the curriculum in isolation from methods of assessment is folly; there must not only be congruence in theory but also in practice. Central decision makers must resource schools to do both. Most schools are still battling data collection; one would have to ask the question if the data collected is not being used to inform learning then why is it being collected?
The answer I believe is that schools are driven by Ministry of Education Planning & Reporting requirements and perceived ERO expectations. Is there a danger that perceived centralised requirements will, by osmosis, become the de facto curriculum?
In any education system effective assessment and testing is central to learning and has a strong effect on the lives of young people.
When the results of tests and examinations are used to pass judgments on teachers and schools, they also affect the ways in which pupils are taught.
Further to avoid the negative consequences of using high stakes summative assessment to evaluate teachers and schools it is argued that systems of school accountability should not rely solely on the data derived from summative assessment of pupils and that the monitoring of standards of pupils’ achievement should be derived from a wider base of evidence than test results from individual pupils.
It is clear that some politicians, when looking for a point of difference to engage disaffected voters, look to education to create that point of difference. Accountability and national testing are great catch cries to engage the ill –informed. In my view it is the job of educational leaders to ensure that their learning communities are informed about what affects improved learning outcomes for all children and what does not.
If we are truly interested in improving learning outcomes for all children then it is time that the spectre of National Testing fell off the educational horizon. It is pleasing that our current Minister of Education has categorically declared that it is not the government’s intention to engage in high stakes testing; the government must be proactive then in ensuring that National Standards do not become a de facto National Test.
The focus is, and should continue to be on developing effective child centred assessment practice. The research of Amrein and Berliner attests to the negative impacts of national testing. Those that espouse national testing obviously have some belief that somehow the rewards and consequences attached to rigorous tests will somehow motivate the unmotivated to learn. Researchers however have found that when the stakes attached to tests are high students become “less intrinsically motivated and less likely to engage in critical thinking.”
What would lead anyone to think that constantly telling a child and their parents / whanau in Plain Language that their child is well below the standard would somehow act as a motivator for them to rise above it?
James Popham, in his book “The Truth about Testing” cites three reasons why we should not allow students scores in standardised tests to be indicators of educational quality:
1. Standardised achievement tests should not be used to evaluate the quality of student’s schooling because there are meaningful mismatches between what is tested and what is supposed to be taught, and those mismatches are often unrecognised.
2. Standardised achievement tests should not be used to evaluate the quality of student’s schooling because the quest for wide score-spread tends to eliminate items covering important content that teachers have emphasised and students mastered.
3. Standardised achievement tests should not be used to judge the quality of student’s schooling because factors other than instruction also influence performance on these tests.
National testing in what ever guise will not improve learning outcomes for children, enhanced assessment practice, home – learner – teacher relationships, and enhanced teacher pedagogy developed within a positive, supportive environment will.
New Zealand has historically looked overseas for models of best educational practice. The irony of this is that whilst we are looking overseas they are looking at what we are doing and lauding it.
The Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development’s (ASCD) Education Leadership magazine implores policy makers to revisit their narrow, high stakes No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy framework and to focus on whole child education. The salient messages contained in this magazine give cause for New Zealand educators and policy makers to reflect as we work to reconceptualise our curriculum framework.
There are none so blind! New Zealand is leading the way in developing assessment tools SEA, ARB’s, asTTLE, e-asTTle, PAT’s or STA to name but a few. We can improve on these tools further by providing the resourcing to allow teachers and principals to maximise their potential. The discussion should really be about how we might use this data to improve our teaching and thus our delivery for children.
The National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) is a world leader in providing nationally sampled achievement information based on “rich assessment tasks.” We need to continue to be leaders in this field not followers. The Assessment Reform Group recognises the excellence of NEMP in a recently published paper. Separating monitoring from the performance of individual pupils would obviate the need for central collection of individual pupil assessment data. This would remove the “need” for high stakes testing and would ensure that assessment – and, more importantly, what is taught – was no longer restricted to what can be tested.
Parents and learners have a right to quality assessment feedback that gives indication as to progress made, learning strengths and weaknesses, what the learner needs to do to build on strengths and address weaknesses and what we all need to do to help the learner get there. It is also not unreasonable for a learner to know where their strengths and weaknesses are comparative to their peers. The image of the learning triangle with the child supported by the teacher and the home is a powerful one. We need to engage our school communities in the assessment discussion. If we are to truly personalise learning we must ensure that the contexts for learning are truly authentic, that the child’s voice is heard, that our Learning Communities are informed and supported, that our schools are appropriately resourced and that teachers and school principals are nurtured, challenged, informed and most importantly affirmed.
We are living in an age that is data rich, but information poor. As a sector we are working hard to use the evidence collected to inform our decision making, enhance next steps learning, focus and make relevant our practice and address the much publicised gaps. It is the quality of the information gleaned from the data that will inform and effect school wide change and thus improved learning outcomes for children. The differences will be made at the local level!
The NZC presents an exciting opportunity for New Zealand educators and their communities to ensure that their localised curriculum, engages and challenges learners, inspires teachers, focuses on key competencies and equips our young people to reach their potential.
As Sir Ken Robinson so passionately states We have a big problem at the moment – education is becoming so dominated by this culture of testing, by a particular view of intelligence and a narrow curriculum and education system, that we’re flattening and stifling some of the basic skills and processes that creative achievement depends on.
It is a 21st Century imperative that we give our education system the freedom to develop the whole child and his / her inherent creativity, because this will be the key to their and our nation’s future prosperity.
Kelvin Squire
Principal
Stratford Primary School
Past President New Zealand Principals’ Federation ANZPF
Associate New Zealand Educational Institute ANZEI
No Comments » | 
Uncategorized | 
Permalink
Posted by spswebmaster
