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  1. Policy Rhetoric Regarding Technology in Education

    13 October 2013 by shartley

     

    Photo by author

    Photo by author

    The rhetoric of the role of technology in education spruiked by government bodies and other institutions was clearly demonstrated by Jordan (2011).  It provided a similar awakening for me that the research conducted by Marcos, Sanchez and Emilio (2011) into teacher reflections also provided (see previous post).  Basically, in both cases, there are a lot of statements made emphatically, authoritatively but with little evidence of research into the effectiveness of the promoted course of action.

    The problem is the rate of change in education today, particularly in regards to education.  People feel there isn’t enough time to conduct research.  It is compounded by the familiarity many people feel towards technology and the absolute horror felt by others.  Those who have the knowledge and experience easily dictate how it should all work to those who know little.

    However, in my not so humble opinion, some of Jordan’s criticisms are of almost universally accepted truths. For instance, technology is a driver of change.  It is evident by the smart phones in people’s pockets and how they use them.  Jordan (2011) lists “ICT as driving welcomed change” (p.419) as her first theme in representations of ICT.  My issue is with the word ‘welcome’.  The language in political rhetoric is more about “opportunities” (p.420) that can be gained with ICT change.  The more emotive and persuasive language is found in words such as “vital” (p.420) in regards to how technology should be used for learning.  This is not saying it is welcomed.

    Of course politicians and educational institutions want to focus on the positives students’ futures.  Don’t we teachers want the same?  I believe it is fairly obvious that there is potential to harness and transform technology for the good of education so I don’t agree with Jordan’s criticism on these points (p.421).  However, the word ‘revolutionise’, to me, is pushing the rhetoric a bit too far.

    Overall I don’t object much to the rhetoric used regarding the potential of ICT in education.  However, I agree with Jordan’s criticisms of descriptions of students as “digitally savvy” (2011, p.425), a term coined by Mark Prensky, a prolific keynote speaker around the world.  He has experienced four years in the classroom, 1968-1971 (Prensky 2013).  In the classroom we too often see the shortfalls in students’ ICT knowledge, such as not knowing to use CTRL F to search for a particular term in a screed of text.  From my experience, they have a much more narrow experience of technology than I, generally restricted to gaming and social networking.

    At my previous school, teachers were constantly marginalised to being facilitators and technology lifted to the role of teacher.  Jordan (2011) argued that where students are deemed digitally savvy, “the teacher is relegated to the role of passive mediator, the instrumental means to predetermined ends” (p.428).  It is a false depiction.

    Popenici (2013) lamented the portrayal of an ideal where students completely self-direct their learning in a blog post that resonated to an extent with the experience I had with my previous school.  For instance a ‘Deep Learning Day’ was introduce one day a week for Year 11 to work on whatever they chose, even though teachers were expected to provide work that may not be completed.  Students were allowed to consult with teachers but teachers were (originally) not meant to keep them on task or offer unrequested assistance.

    Personally, I agree with most of the rhetoric of the politicians but agree with Jordan’s concerns for the way students are depicted as having a technological advantage over teachers.  The framing of the use of technology in education needs to more realistic for the opportunities and possibilities to be achieved through recognition of the true support and development required to make it happen.

     

    References

    Jordan, K. 2011. Framing ICT, teachers and learners in Australian school education ICT policy, Australian Educational Researcher, 38:4, pp.47-431, http://www.academia.edu/1964725/Framing_ICT_teachers_and_learners_in_Australian_school_education_ICT_policy

    Marcos, J.M., Sanchez, E., and Tillema, H.H. 2011. “Promoting teacher reflection: What is said to be done” Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37:1, pp.21-36

    Popenici, S. 2013. Devaluation of Teaching and Learning, 10 October, http://popenici.com/2013/10/10/teaching/

    Prensky, M. 2013. Marc’s Resume (CV). http://marcprensky.com/marcs-resume-cv/

     

     

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  2. Pedagogy

    13 October 2013 by shartley

    PowerToolReadingCooking

    Photos by author

    I have recently been immersed in a wide range of activities learning about curriculum, pedagogy and technology in schools.  As a consequence I am attempting to write a series of related blog posts. Yesterday I wrote about IT Infrastructure.  Today I’m writing about pedagogy with a focus on research by Kalantzis and Cope, as seen in their New Learning website.

    I don’t have a single pedagogical model to call my own.  I am deeply cynical and resent prescribed models dictating a single way of teaching, yet this week I had to present on 21st Century Fluencies because this is a the model I’ve been training teachers in PD sessions at my school, as part of my role on the Innovative Learning Team. Solution Fluency is just one style of Project Based Learning (PBL) and PBL is just one pedagogical practice. What I like about PBL is its focus on process as much or more than the product.

    I believe teaching should be a balance of a whole variety of methods and be flexible according to circumstances, with circumstances being anything from the students themselves to the weather.

    Kalantzis and Cope (2012, p.86) describe today’s typical learning environment accurately, “We have in our classes today a generation of young people who will be bored and frustrated by learning environments that fail to engage every fiber of their intellectual and active capabilities”.

    I hence also like how Kalantzis and Cope (2012, p.84) advocate for traditional teaching “to be replaced by new notions of ‘learning design’”.  In some ways planning for learning is my favourite part of teaching because Plan A is for a perfect world where students behave according to expectations and technology works as it should and I’m excited for its potential.  It is then a case of Plan B, Plan C and so on as all the possible variables come into play.  Plan A generally focuses on “addressing the big questions” (p.84), much in line with the programming model my school follows, Understanding by Design, not that I think this needs to be followed strictly either.

    I would love to see schools that Kalantzis and Cope (2012) call “sites of energetic intellectual inquiry and practical solution development” (p.86) and my previous school was trying to do this but at the expense of other aspects of education, such as nurturing students.  I think this community centre of thinking is almost science fiction idealism but I dream.

    Back to class, I like students to be active in their learning, meaning I am student centred in my pedagogy.  I’m not so fond of the term student-directed because I believe, in the main, students still need to be provided with direction, although there should be a place for passion projects.  This why I’m against open-plan learning but support flexible learning spaces so that learning can occur at a cohort level, large groups, classes, small groups, triplets, pairs or alone.

    Technology must have a role in Australian education because it is so integrated into our daily lives and is engaging for students.  It also allows for a wider audience and collaborators outside textbooks, schools and teachers’ own knowledge.  Thus learning is more connected to reality.  Students therefore need to be literate and discerning with technology.

    My pedagogical model is a mixed bag but my motto, Keeping it Real, is what’s closest to my heart.

     

    Kalantzis, M. & Cope, B.  (2012) New learning: a charter for change in education, Critical Studies in Education, 53:1, pp.83-94

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  3. Protected: The Importance of IT Infrastructure

    12 October 2013 by shartley

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  4. A reflection about reflections

    1 September 2013 by shartley

    reflection

    My number one goal of today was to begin a critical analysis of a journal article for my Advanced Pedagogy course which is part of my Masters of Education at Macquarie University. I have been enjoying this subject very much because it is closely related to my role on the Innovative Learning Team at Oakhill College. In fact, in my professional life these are the two aspects that have me fired up, excited about what I do as a teacher. The university readings have helped give academic evidence to what the ILT is suggesting and preparing for the future direction of the school in terms of technology and teaching practices. My real life experiences as a classroom practitioner and the discussions and research in which I’ve been participating with the ILT have been feeding the online exchanges I have with fellow students and the course convenor. Further to this, the ILT has been accepted to present a paper at the Twenty-First International Conference of Learning in New York, July 2014, so I’m looking to use research I do as part of the Advanced Pedagogy course to contribute to the preparation for the New York Conference.

    But now, let’s look at the article I chose for the critical review and the impact it had on me. One of the many recommendations the ILT is making for the school is that all teachers create and regularly contribute to online reflective journals about their teaching and learning experiences to develop their meta-cognitive processes and therefore improve their teaching. The paper we’re presenting in New York is called Pulling No Punches: The Metamorphic Process of Turning Teachers into Professionals with Pedagogical Practices of the Modern Era so obviously we envisage reflective journals to be part of this process. The article I found, on a list supplied by the Advanced Pedagogy convenor, is called Promoting teacher reflection: what is said to be done (Marcos, Sanchez, Tillema 2011). The article scares me. To explain, I’ll start with an anecdote.

    A science teacher friend and I were chatting about our approaches to studying our different Masters of Education and found we had almost opposing attitudes to reading journal articles. I generally skip over the scientific research components where the method and statistical analysis were conducted and go straight to the findings and conclusion. I like to know what the research found but am rarely interested in how it is found out. My friend says that’s the part he likes, checking the research for scientific and statistical authenticity. We both agreed though that case studies of just a few teachers, often in the same school, were just hopeless as proper research. However, since I had to conduct a critical analysis on this article about teacher reflection, in this case I did read the bits I would normally skip.

    The abstract of the article intrigued me when it mentioned investigating “possible differences between what is evidenced in research and what is promoted in practice” (Marcos, Sanchez, Tillema 2011, p.21). When I promote a course of action in my school I want to have it right and implement it effectively. This was the article for me.

    The introduction listed the ways teacher reflection had been promoted, including (p.21):

    • “to scaffold critical thinking”
    • for “knowledge construction”
    • to “promote self-regulation”
    • because teaching is “a process that lies open to scrutiny and deliberation”
    • as part of “professional development”
    • to improve “metacognitive ability” of teachers

    I thought this was good list and a reasonable explanation of why teachers should maintain a reflective journal. However, the introduction then went on to outline critiques of reflective journals, such as trying to meet too many aims and neglecting to acknowledge underlying assumptions about why teachers should use them (p.22). My summary of this paragraph was that reflective journals had lost their way.

    The authors then summarised quite nicely what has been said about reflection (pp.22-23):

    • it’s a cyclical and recursive process
    • includes “problem solving”, “awareness-raising” and “professional knowledge”
    • teachers need to “build on experiential knowledge” (preferably using “action research” eg “observe and analyse classrooms”), “be critical” and “work collaboratively”
    • “requires personal involvement”

    The authors appear concerned that awareness-raising is promoted more than problem solving as the primary reason for conducting a reflection process and that few “studies provide information on its applicability and implementation in the classroom” (p.23).

    Now to my favourite part (not), the method. A total of 122 articles were examined from two Spanish journals, involving 168 authors (p.24). Each article was broken into paragraphs (units) and then all units were divided into 1509 “propositions” which were grouped into 117 “themes” (p.24). These themes were then further split into nine “content-specific categories” (p.25). Is it any wonder I don’t like reading this section? From all this the findings were boiled down to (p.25):

    1. What was said about reflection: What was said was what had already been said in the article too and the concern about the lack of problem solving as an aim was made more clear at this point. The authors were quite repetitive at this point.
    2. The reasons for reflection and the evidence behind these reasons for reflection: This was the scary part. The authors found that there was little real evidence backing statements made about the reasons for teachers undertaking reflection. What empirical evidence they found was based on “specific and iconic research projects…rather than specific data” (p.26). I find this scary because much of the reading I do is based on anecdotes from my Professional Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter and various teacher blogs. My convictions about pedagogy and teacher professionalism are based on these readings and personal experience, not academic or scientific research of my own, until now. A table summarising statements made and the evidence provided (or not) ran for five pages and it wasn’t pretty with numerous crosses in the evidence column.
    3. The persuasive techniques used: The authors actually worded this section as “mode of convincing” (p.32). This was another section where I felt damned. The language used was broken into three methods:
    • Implicative – involving an expression of “interesting thoughts and new ways of thinking (i.e.[sic], ‘we believe’)”
    • Descriptive – statements as facts “(e.g., ‘reflection has’)”
    • Prescriptive – “the article directs or hints at a preferable action (e.g., ‘we must’)”

    This is how I write. When I write blog posts, or even for the ILT report into the implications of ICT for the future of the school, I do so based on my convictions from experience, observations, discussion with colleagues and what I read haphazardly online. Although some of this was intentional primary research it isn’t enough.

    A few weeks ago all the contributors to the report met and went through the recommendations thoroughly. It was at this point I realised that everything we wrote in that report had to be supported by evidence or it would have no weight. Yet, reading this article today still came as a shock. I think the message is finally hitting home.

    The article concluded with a discussion about the biases they had discovered. The two most important were (1) how the literature stressed what reflective journals were about without enough attention to how to go about it and (2) how convictions rather than real research were behind promotions for reflective practice (pp.32-33). I liked how the authors said their intent wasn’t to be overly critical but to reveal “certain blind spots” (p.33) and they suggested teachers should be provided with “more evidence-based or research validated information on what works in reflective practice” and that reflections should be scaffolded for them (p.34).

    I definitely intend to provide a scaffold for the teachers at my school when we begin implementing reflections as part of our PD process next year. I’ll leave it to my colleague to back up what we do with the research since he prides himself as being the academic one on the ILT.  He’s also taken on the writing of the paper we’re going to present in New York, dissing my proposal because I’d written ‘the metamorphosis process’ instead of ‘the metamorphic process’ (note that the proposal was accepted anyway).

    This whole investigation into pedagogy at uni and school is a load of fun and I’m learning heaps about the way I act, learn and think, perhaps even more than I am learning about the way I teach.

     

    Marcos, Juanjo Mena; Sanchez, Emilio; Tillema, Harm H. “Promoting teacher reflection: What is said to be done” Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37:1 , 2011 , 21-36

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