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“The Howwood Illuminations” by me! My little corner of creativity:-)
I am a proponent of creativity and innovation. The problem is that everything we know about the conditions required to maximise our creative activity tell us that we need a lot of “provocation”. Provocation is a word that Edward De Bono used to describe external challenges to our thinking that force us away from known solutions. One example of this is asking people to design a new suspension system for a car while imagining that the car will have square wheels. Of course no-one really intends to make a square car, but the visualising of the square wheel and thinking through the consequences is the “provocation” that might bring a breakthrough in thinking that will make suspension better for round wheeled cars. If you want to know more about the theory, then I urge you to read De Bono’s Lateral thinking.
Anyway, what’s your point blogger? It worries me hugely that in education we have the deadly combination of more internally generated literature than any of us can realistically keep up with and a majority of conscientious educators who attempt to keep up with it. Government and HMIe between them ensure that my desk has a stack of ten to fifteen “essential documents” that tell me, despite what HMIe constantly claim to the contrary, what “good practice” in education is. This, in a time of requests for innovation is a recipe for failure. Central documents should be cut now to a minimum, with only “Building the curriculum” documents and similar frameworks being on our must read list. It would be good now to read some great new outside sources. I really don’t care what you read, as long as it gets you thinking new thoughts, and challenges your assumptions about what we do at present.
My current favourite journals are “Scientific American – Mind”, “New Scientist”, “Wired Magazine (UK edition now available)”.
My recent influential reads are “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson and “The six secrets of change” by Michael Fullan. I would have to include “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins as my most recent read; excellent and thought provoking.
In the audio world, I listen to “This Week in Tech” podcast. They discuss lots of current thinking in web 2.0 and technology business news. From listening to this I have become really convinced that we could learn from how Google works and apply some of their thinking to education.
We won’t move on from the same old ideas folks. The right way to do it might be stifling us all. What sources are getting your creative juices flowing?
Norman Doidge from his book website
I was lucky enough to be invited to a lecture for a small group of people organised by Scottish Enterprise and held in Anniesland College. I found the talk incredibly thought provoking and have been considering it ever since. The talk was given by Norman Doidge, a psychologist and psychiatrist who is developing an interest in neuroscience. His specific interest is in the relatively young area of neuroplasticity. Dr Doidge presented a number of case studies illustrating the ability of the human brain to heal itself when given some new stimulus or even targeted exercises. Dr Doidge asserts that manyof our therapeutic interventions are based on a belief that the brain once damaged or if not functioning correctly, will remain in this state. Our therapies therefore become palliative and provide support, not cure. The evidence presented was dramatic. He showed videos of people learning to “see” using cameras linked to sensor arrays on their tongues, people with chronic balance disorders learning to stand upright without falling after a training intervention using position sensors (accelerometers) linked to a similar tongue electrode, and most interestingly for educators, young people learning to read and write who were previously considered deficient. If you want to know more about this exciting work, then you should check out the Arrowsmith School in Canada. Have a look at the video on the page.
The exciting thing about the work of Barbara Arrowsmith, is that it is diagnostic and targeted with the intention of fixing the young persons problem. As Dr Doidge points out, a task like reading is not simple. It may involve a number of brain functions, motor movement of the eye, language recognition through a visual processing area, use of the speech area even if you are not actually speaking aloud, presumably a comprehension or higher processing area. Some of these functions may be problematic only in one side of the brain! If any one of these links in the chain are not functioning well, then the young learner will seem “deficient” and may find themselves on the receiving end of an education system that attempts to help them within their learning disability, but not to fix them! Barbara Arrowsmith’s school attempts to diagnose the problem, and then runs a short programme of training for the brain to repair that function if at all possible. There are a number of real successes that fundamentally challenge the morality of just helping young people to cope, but not repairing their cognitive function so that they can actually thrive again with all the life opportunities that that implies.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in this area, but I saw enough of interest to convince me that some of our educators who specialise in the area of “Additional Support Needs” should learn what is happening at the Arrowsmith school. I have a real sense that much of our learning support is too primitive; perhaps its time we challenged the assumptions that underpin many of the low expectations that learners who are struggling in schools experience.
The book that Norman Doidge has written is called “The Brain that Changes Itself”. Could be worth a read?
Photo by “Policy Network” on Flickr. (Creative Commons)
I despair of a real learning conversation about the future of education ever happening in the glare of our appalling media culture. Today Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco was quoted as a critic of “woefully low standards from our school leavers” (Presumably UK wide?). He was scathing about the various distractions to schools and teachers that distracted them from teaching. He wasn’t alone, the Confederation of British Industry waded in with the statistic that 40% of employers agreed. What should we make of this?
First of all the government via a spokesperson asserted that standards have never been higher in secondary schools. The National Union of Teachers ploughed in to the fray with an assertion that he was “plainly wrong”, and somewhat bizarrely went on to state that schools could benefit from the same levels of funding as the private sector; Is it just me or does this add nothing helpful to our joint learning? It was only the analysis of BBC correspondent Kim Catcheside that got me thinking sensibly, and it was buried in a side box of the BBC news site. Many people will never get beyond the main text and in my experience will either side with the schools or with the employers. Will this help us? Not in my view. We need the grown up and thoughtful response that is so hard to make in an emotional world.
Terry Leahy is not wrong. He is our customer in a very real way. Not only does he speak as head of the UK’s largest private employer, but the BBC analysis reminds us that the cohort he is referring to is largely the 16 year old school leaver. From this group an analysis reveals approximately 40% failure to achieve GCSE Maths and English. Mr Leahy is reporting on a group who are not shining in Maths or English. 17% of employers report having to provide remedial learning in literacy and numeracy. He raised concerns about work attitudes and skills as well, but I am unclear on what precisely he referred to. Suffice to say it is reasonable for him to be concerned. We are providing education, we claim to be a reflective profession, are we concerned that the feedback is not what we want? Apparently we want to tell the complainant that he doesn’t understand.
The government predictably only wants to report short term gains under their tenure. Our media and immature political system makes it impossible for a government to say, “Well we’re disappointed to hear these views as we know that overall standards are up, but we’ll get round the table and learn from all our partners how we can address this need”. They can’t say that because no government, and in fact very few leaders in the UK are allowed to learn from experience or error; we simply pillory for all errors to gain political advantage. The real response should be a learning one; we need to involve young people, employers, parents and educators in some urgent learning to continue improving how we support this cohort in gaining essential skills. No blame, just an acknowledgement that this is good learning.
As for the union, I won’t deny unions do a good job, but I despair of their ability to move into the same learning mode, taking on board feedback and having an open exploration of options that might involve the admission that teachers could work in better ways. They are simply not free to do this. (This is why I profoundly believe that unions should deal with employment rights, and teachers should have a professional body that speaks intelligently and reflectively on their behalf). This would help teachers to get more involved in higher level thinking that moves our system forward.
So in my ideal world, the various UK governments would be sitting round a table with teachers, learners, think-tanks, parents and enjoying the Tesco boardroom’s hospitality as they all admit that it’s a tough problem and that they are more likely to create something better together.
I heard a light hearted comment on Twitter that “Tesco would be running schools soon”. Well why not. Perhaps they might bring some new thinking to the table. Presumably they would hire expert teachers to teach (like us!), and avoid having the senior leaders supervising dinner queues and filling in endless low level tedious paperwork. If they could get those senior leaders walking the classrooms and leading pedagogical practice how would that be so bad! I presume they could just give these irritating computers for schools vouchers directly to their own schools!
Greg Whitby telling us that he doesn’t care how learners choose to do it, as long as they can “show him the gain”!
I was a guest of Learning and Teaching Scotland today at the quirkily named “gregmeet”. The eponymous gentleman is the “Executive Director of Schools and leads a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools serving the Catholic community of greater Western Sydney.” Greg is a visionary leader of learning and has been named in at least one award as “Australia’s most innovative educator”.
Greg was an easy and intimate presenter and so it was a pleasure as he took us through his philosophy of leading education in the Sydney area. (Despite his Catholic credentials, his thinking is quite universal and entirely about good learning). His Aussieness did break through in a number of charming ways and at least two of the B**** words interspersed his stories; he knows how to speak to a Glasgow audience.
Check Greg’s site and his thought provoking blog.
I took no notes, and so now five hours later, I thought it would be good to capture what has stayed with me as I have digested his message:
Overall, Greg was refreshingly in-line with a lot of good leadership theory that is influencing many of us at present. For example, he is scathing about rigid programmes; he prefers to define outcomes and to leave students and teachers to achieve these in their own way. Could Scottish education learn from this? My sense is that we are beginning to devolve that kind of creative control to teachers in little ways, but if we don’t like how they use it, we tend to control the agenda again.
Greg was solid on the view that teachers have to be learning professionals. He lambasted those wasters who were proud of their lack of academic reading in a manner that would have cheered one Brian Boyd, regular scourge of the non-reflective teacher. He suggested that they “find another sandpit to play in”! He went further though, stating that those who lead and those who comment-on and by implication monitor pedagogy should be in classrooms themselves. The challenge to the Scottish system here is clear, with teacher trainers, headteachers and my own Quality Improvement Officer colleagues in range of his critical arrows.
Greg had much to say about letting learners define their own preferred learning tools whether they be Facebook or their smartphones; Greg is clear that our obsession with laptops is not sufficient. He is also critical of overly controlling web filtering, although he is comfortable with filtering that stops the “real nasty stuff”. Again, we are all over the place on this question across Scotland. We certainly have no uniform pedagogy in terms of implementing the new web tools. Some authorities are progressive while others have “grey men in suits saying no to anything that hasn’t been ordered in advance on a teaching plan (triplicate signed)”. I think it’s time we had some national leadership on this based on progressive and evidence based thinking. How about it LTS? Where is your voice on this?
Timetables for learning along with the factory model of teaching by age were ridiculed in turn. Greg favours a future with learning-teams in schools. defining desired outcomes and arranging or brokering opportunities to attain what the learners need. He went even further than the usual proponents of this view by suggesting that the curricula once in place would inevitably lead to assessment, assessment timetables and teaching to the curriculum; he seemed to be suggesting that there is a lot of real-learning as part of the natural interaction between teachers and learners. Essentially his summary said that “schools are boring” and since surveys continue to tell us this, then he is annoyed that we continue to ignore what young people consistently tell us. Waken up to this he says, “before we lose relevance and in turn our influence”
Greg answered lots of questions which he tended to label as hard questions in his amusing way. The question I wanted to ask but didn’t as only a Scottish educator could have a worthwhile stab at an answer is:
“How many visionary leaders are driving our system forward here”? Answers anyone?
Above: The dots show the spread of personality traits across 20 young leaders in Islay High School. These differences explain a little of why no two people ever seem to see a task in the same way!
Last Thursday I had an incredible day in Islay High as a guest of the S6 “student leadership” group. Never a school to do things the traditional way, Islay has had its sixth-year students adopt leadership roles around the school. They help with general supervision of younger learners as well as running events and initiatives for the school. The school has taken the view that a body of useful talent such as this group constitutes, need to be nurtured and trained in leadership itself. The group have been involved in a number of leadership training events. I was with them on Thursday to explore “team building” theory and to help them in thinking about their own teamwork as a Student Leadership team.
I covered personality, talent and current theories of talent management. We went on to explore the 9 team traits while specifically applying this to their own team. As we worked through these team-development basics, I was struck by how easily they grasped and explored the concepts that we associate strongly with the world of adult work and adult teams. Likewise, I was amazed by how absolutely similar the challenges that their team faced in terms of their own team-growth were to those of adult teams I have worked with. Their team was facing the challenge of having different team members with vastly different personalities and talents in the same way that adult teams do. They understand the issues, and have planned some actions that will improve team communication while helping people with different styles to work together with less friction. They were a joy to work with; humorous and insightful, and to reiterate, just like the adult groups I work with.
So I’m left with two thoughts percolating as a result of my Islay High Visit:
1. Senior learners in schools can enjoy leadership learning and will be much better prepared for the world of work whatever they aspire to do.
2. We are not doing nearly enough to equip young people with leadership and management knowledge in most schools.
Perhaps schools themselves don’t have a body of knowledge about leadership and team development. Perhaps the new gold standard of the Scottish Qualification for Headship is concentrated on too few people in a school, and those who are learning are unlikely to have the time to cascade their learning to others including interested student groups?
There is a newly announced SQA leadership qualification which might be a vehicle to carry us into this area for young people, staff and senior leaders. The modern world will be easier to navigate for those who understand how teams work together and fix problems together regardless of whether you aspire to lead such teams or work in them.
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