…educational decision-makers seem to prefer an approach to resources drawn from the Hollywood film, Field of Dreams: "Build it, and they will come." In practice, buildings, classrooms, computer labs and other educational ‘hardware’ take precedence over the development of human resources, as if building an attractive new classroom will somehow magically guarantee that effective teaching and learning takes place.
I’ve always found my spine contracts slightly even at the mere sight of Hillary Clinton, and her use of that bland truism, “It takes a village to bring up a child,” reveals far more about her than she thinks, but coming across the comment above in the report I was reading, really does drive home the point so many politicians are just too dim to grasp. Education is about big people working with little people…now which bit didn’t you understand?
]]>Yet this isn't a trivial matter. It is frighteningly indicative of the problem because the comma changes the entire meaning of Obama's words, rendering them incomplete and meaningless. But hey, who cares...this is only education we're debating with a group of invited "experts" in the field.
You can see the trailer I saw here, and reach your own conclusions about it, but for me the opening montage with compulsory belching chimney, starving child and pathetic polar bear scrambling onto a shrinking ice floe, said it all. This is a film that mistakes politics for education. In fact I found the entire event quite worrying, apart from one insightful comment by a headmistress, which I will come to later, because it seemed to be peddling a covert message it was actually too naïve to be even aware of. This is the anti-schools agenda, so many people on the fringes of education are eagerly pushing.
Numerous voices were raised in the discussion which followed the screening that displayed not only a profound ignorance about what excellent schools and teachers do, but a palpable contempt for them. We have the absurd situation in the UK where we have some of the greatest schools in the world, who know what education is and how to do it superbly, to such an extent they are busy exporting their model around the world to countries who do appreciate and value the concept of a school, in all its considerable subtlety and complexity. At the same time, individuals in the UK who have never set foot in a great (never mind a good school) are busily trying to undermine the whole concept.
Being very familiar with this covert agenda, it was no surprise to me that one of the panel voiced their disappointment in the failure of the Building Schools for the Future programme to deliver anything like real innovation or transformation, a key buzz word of the film. A representative of the key quango responsible for delivering the programme happened to be present and when they were asked to provide an example of innovation or transformation that wasn’t about buildings…they couldn’t.
The reason is (as everyone who has ever attended or taught in one knows) a good or great school is just a little bit more than a building. If anything clearly demonstrates the problem created when political ideology stifles the experienced voice of good teachers, it is the BSF programme. No one with any serious experience of working in great schools would ever have argued that a building is transformational. Similarly, only those with a personal grudge or political agenda rather than an educational one, would ever seek to undermine the idea of a school as a means to educate children.
And the headmistress’s comment? She had recently been to a school in India where she saw a 60 strong chemistry class she described as more difficult than anything she's ever seen in the UK, which was utterly inspiring, because the incredible energy and the desire to learn from the children was “tangible.” She described it as a Damascene moment for her and she returned home wanting exactly the same thing for her own school. Well if that is what she wants, she won’t get it from any of the fringe characters driving this anti-schools claptrap.
]]>The future of universities in a knowledge economy. That is the subtitle of BIS’s report on Higher Education, out in the week of November. A knowledge economy is where it is recognized that knowledge contributes to the economy, right? Well, that’s incontrovertible. The Universities UK report last week announced that Higher Education contributed £56bn to the British economy in 2007-8.
We are making money out of knowledge.
But there is a difference between the (hard-to-be-exact about) financial contribution of the sector to a national economy, and the financial sustainability of any single HEI.
As the two at the moment look about to become confused, there are some tough questions.
Does the new definition of ‘knowledge economy’ now mean that universities must pursue only forms of knowledge that directly and measurably make money for the economy (and if so, how would that ‘directly’ and ‘measurably’ be—measured?) Or, even, does it mean that universities must primarily or only pursue forms of knowledge that make money for the individual HEI and directly and measurably for the national economy?
Such a view would make universities businesses entirely, only undertaking academic activity that would be immediately profit-making or internally sustainable within a short-term financial plan.
‘Universities’, says BIS’s new report, ‘need to rigorous in withdrawing from activities of lower priority and value, so that they can invest more in higher priority programmes’ (p.4). The key metric of what is of ‘value’, though, is that short-term financial sustainability/profit and imagined ‘direct’ and pretty immediate contribution to the national economy.
But universities’ role in a national economy requires more sophisticated thinking than this.
The education of highly-skilled and highly-articulate graduates to work in the United Kingdom is a crucial part of HEIs’ ongoing mission (it is not the only part of their mission, to be sure, but it is an important part). Yet that does not mean they should be imagined as some kind of industrial site for the direct production of individuals with specific skills for specific businesses at a given point in an economic cycle.
Universities teach, among other things, life skills of vital use to employers: written expression, critical thinking, analytical and problem-solving abilities, time management, a capacity to research and think about difficult issues, the ability to argue a case from evidence. They do all this very often through demanding academic subjects, rigorously taught, by professionals who are, for the most part, researchers and authorities in their fields. From such challenging training emerge graduates well equipped to learn in the future, with the aptitude to acquire new skills as new jobs that we cannot even envisage appear.
I am glad about BIS’s recognition that a university significantly contributes to the economy. But I am dismayed at the narrow and instrumentalist understanding of this in Higher Ambitions, and at the privileging of short-term economics over long-term.
Higher education is not merely a commodity, though it must be paid for. It is not merely ‘consumed’, though those who pay for it must obtain good value for money. It is not merely about ‘satisfying customers’ either, as one might be satisfied with a new car. Higher education, among many other things, provides skills, energy, confidence, knowledge, and ambition for which students did not even know they had capacity.
Universities are in the transformation business, but they are not businesses.
BIS should think with more ambition and breadth of mind about universities’ role in the UK, and the role of public money in funding them properly in support of the exceptional opportunities they create, and national resource they constitute.
]]>On several occasions I’ve cited examples in this blog of poor expression and even illiteracy from techno-zealots and edubloggers, people claiming serious educational roles, so when I heard today’s news story about Gordon Brown’s letter of condolence on the radio I wasn’t surprised, and expected he had simply misspelt the late soldier’s name, writing in a hurry. I know from my own experience as a writer, how easy it is to make very simple mistakes and not to notice them when you check through. Your eye is very good at telling you you’ve written what you intended to, not necessarily what your fingers (or hand) actually put onto the screen or paper. Proof reading is a real skill. So my guess was that this was a tabloid squall in an eggcup.
However, I’ve just found an image of the offending letter on the web and seen not just the obviously impatient, literally care-less handwriting, but the seven spelling errors a competent twelve year old wouldn’t make. It has, in all honesty, rendered me blogless.
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As far as I’m concerned, using the internet in any exam designed and properly policed for its use, is an entirely sensible exercise, but the question the BBC reporter then posed in the video, is what connects the story to Dr Pike’s desire to fine exam boards. The reporter asks, “ So is the examination system in the UK, out of date?”
Cue the most pernicious and educationally damaging piffle at large in the UK educational world today. I’ve heard it voiced by a number of ICT zealots, at a number of conferences over the last two or three years and it has been gaining currency amongst techno-acolytes and minions so that you come across it on discussions and edublogs all over the place. No skilled or professional teacher who seeks and commands the respect of their pupils would of course give it kennel room but…that’s been the big problem for a decade or more now.
The argument goes something like this. Kids today are doing such cool, 21st century things with technology, they are so amazingly creative and clever, why on earth are we still sitting them in an exam room with a paper and pen in an outmoded, nineteenth century fashion? Why are we testing them for range when we should be testing them for breadth?
This is just the latest manifestation of precisely the deceitful, egalitarian, social engineering that has led to Dr Pike having to demand exam boards are fined for failing to meet their fundamental educational responsibilities. The truth is that after years of bending over backwards in ways that would make a Chinese State Circus contortionist blanche, exams boards and many teachers have dumbed down things down to the point of utter irrelevance because they were far more interested in social engineering, than in educating the pupils to think and learn meaningfully for themselves. Behind that innocuous little word breadth lies an entire lifelong learning agenda that as Frank Furedi explains in his latest book, Wasted, undermines the notion of the teacher as expert, the value of formal education itself and I would add, actually despises the notion of schools. Never mind the quality...
Testing for breadth means it’s all equally valuable. Testing for range differentiates meaningfully, fuels competition and nurtures excellence. Things all the genuinely skilled teachers I have ever met, understand and value.
]]>So the US education department employed SRI International, to carry out some research into e-learning and K-12 students (our primary and secondary pupils.) The study, published in May 2009, was a meta-analysis, so not original research, which looked at other people’s research over 12 years, comparing the effect of e-learning to face-to-face learning. It's even titled coincidentally, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis of Online Learning Studies. The researchers wanted to answer these four questions:
The researchers hit a bit of a problem which they openly acknowledge, An unexpected finding of the literature search, however, was the small number of published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students.
What of course this means is that because they couldn’t find much in the way of real research that met their strict criteria, (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size for K-12 kids, they had to look outside that age range. They did and the more than 1000 papers they screened covered career technology, medical and higher education, as well as corporate and military training. That was the only way they could find enough studies with older learners to justify a quantitative meta-analysis.
Again this is something they openly acknowledge when they state: Thus, analytic findings with implications for K–12 learning are reported here, but caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education). My bold italics.
So how does that all translate into the real world? This is what that bastion of academic objectivity Becta, had to say about this research.
A thorough US Government report comparing results from e-learning and traditional learning, mainly in non-school based studies. Systematic search of the research literature from 1996 to July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.
So ignoring the illiterate, opening none-sentence, (no finite verb=no sentence I'm afraid guys!) my bold italics highlight the single sentence Becta quoted directly from the original research abstract. And they are far from the only ones who donned the selective spectacles. I suppose we should give them some credit for attempting to hint that the research might not be of much use, since it was in non-school based studies, but to leap from what the research actually dealt with, and the crystal clear reservations of the researchers themselves, to this huge claim that e-learning is best…well, as neat an example of policy based evidence making as Matthew could wish to find.
I guess the guys from Becta just never noticed that bit in the report (p. 51) which says, the findings of this meta-analysis...should not be construed as demonstrating that online learning is superior as a medium.
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However the dimensions are described, in almost every circumstance “ordinary” basic literacy skills are a necessary precondition for digital literacy.
You bet! And that leads me onto what I really wanted to write about. The news that the Conservatives are promising to expand the Teach First programme was accompanied by criticism from teacher union leaders. So in the interests of combining digital, with real literacy, I invite you to have a look at this quotation from a union leader on the story, and ask yourself what the speaker's choice of words tells you about them?
Chris Keates of the NASUWT, said: "It is disappointing that the Conservatives plan to hijack schemes designed by this government to nurture teachers and leadership in schools in a bid to advance the Conservative Party vision of elitism in every aspect of education."
Chris Keates might also be interested to learn that Teach First was not a scheme designed by this government, but was the original brainchild of an American, Wendy Kopp, transplanted to the UK by the consultants, McKinseys.
]]>It’s important to add that Sir Terry is also an education adviser to the current Rump and so I guess schools ought to at least sit up and listen. But I wonder if he is aware of the fact that for well over a decade now schools have been bludgeoned, cajoled, bullied and harassed to educate children for the world of work (just look at the entire 14-19 curriculum for example) yet apparently without the kind of success that even a supermarket can value. Why?
Well one reason is because, as Terry Leahy stressed, teachers aren’t allowed to get on with their work without a busy, busy little gaggle of quangos undermining pretty much everything they do. And the world of educational quangos is not exactly replete with individuals who know anything at all about high educational standards. You have to have delivered them to recognise them for a start.
But a second reason is because of a rather unholy alliance between the ICT business and the quangos themselves, an unhealthy symbiosis which has done nothing for the children or teachers on the receiving end.
So amidst a constant demand for children to have 21st century skills and be prepared for the information age and the world of work, and a whole raft of other clichés constantly pushed by the quangos and the businesses, the absolutely fundamental things employers say they need from employees get utterly neglected. The P21 organisation in the US, a prime example of this kind of symbiosis, itself states that when asked the question, Of the high school students that you recently hired, what were their deficiencies?
Employers said the following:
I’ve lost count the number of times at educational conferences, when someone is prattling on about how vital it is that kids have ICT skills, I have said my experience of real businesses has been that the one thing they need above all else, is people who can write. And so, to demonstrate just how unholy this technology/quango alliance is, here is a paragraph taken directly from guidance that a UK A level examination board sends to schools for a course that P21 recommends as exactly the kind of new, 21st century skills kids need.
Candidates should prepare there own coursework in the correct format for submission. It is the teachers responsibility to ensure that this has been done correctly and collate all the candidates work from their centre and burn it to disc (see below). They should also verify that the disc has burned correctly by opening it on another computer. (My italics and there’s plenty more where that came from!)
So my advice for any school keen to leap on the 21st century skills bandwagon would be: teach them to write, teach them to behave, teach them to work together and teach them to be responsible. That might help. Needless to say, this is what all schools with genuine high standards do, and without ever having to put it down in a strategy paper for stakeholders anywhere.
]]>Something which completely bemused me when I first left the world of academic English teaching and the scholarship that goes with it, for the world of educational technology, was what that ICT world seemed happy to call “research.” Over the years I’ve still never got used to it. The idea that someone can scribble a few inarticulate pages online, drag and drop a few minutes of video footage showing some exploited child enthusing about the latest gadget, and call it “research” just doesn’t cut it for me I’m afraid. I wasn’t at all surprised when the archetypal example told me he was simply too busy to write any books. He had loads of great ideas, of course, just couldn’t find the time to write.
Even more worrying has been the growing trend for pay-the-piper research. The pharmaceutical industry was the leader in this field but it has slowly crept its way into education too. You know the kind of thing, leading mobile phone manufacturer discovers mobile phones just happen to be responsible for a 50% improvement in GCSE grades. I actually don’t have any problems with that kind of blatant approach, it’s just another form of marketing. But some organisations and commercial suppliers are a lot less honest and their web presence is often supported by what looks at first sight like genuinely independent research. A bit of research about the researcher however, often reveals that their work is anything but objective.
In a period where a lot of energy, effort and money is being channelled into improving education, the least we should expect is that if someone cites research findings or evidence to back up their proposal or policy, it comes with a bit of integrity.
And on a different note. What a joy to find that John Donne was voted second best poet by the 18,000 people who responded to the BBC’s poll for National Poetry Day. In my view he was actually first because there is absolutely no way half the people who voted for T.S Eliot have read anything he ever wrote…just seen Cats.
]]>It was therefore quite a surprise to hear the articulate opposition, especially from Marc Rosenberg, whose rhetorical skills were extremely strong and I suspect really did swing the debate live in the hall. The Noes won hands down. Dr Rosenberg fundamentally rejected the vacuous promises made for e-learning and pointed out that the very same promises have been made about new technology all the time…and always without result. What was most impressive was his stance that no one was really suggested e-learning wasn’t useful, what he was interested in was a dramatic and fundamental rejection of the way it has been done to date: the tedious online courses; the deception of pretending something is learning when it is really merely training; the obsessive interest in the technology and not the content, but above all he called for e-learning to be done in a way that accepted the reality of human communications, schooling and work practices. Anyone who’s a regular reader will realise it was a fairly obvious choice for me to join the hordes of others queuing for the Noes exit!
The only contribution I made to the debate was to object to the proposition side’s assertion that e-learning was “safe” by pointing out that it is precisely through the combination of e-learning (Serious Games) and operant conditioning that we’ve produced the most effective infantrymen ever invented…and that many of them subsequently return home to find they have to be treated for trauma and depression using exactly the same e-learning applications used to train them! I wonder how many ex-soldiers suffering after effects would accept that the e-learning they received was safe?
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