Educational Research and Newshttp://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/en-GB2008-08-28T16:13:11ZSquarespace Site Server v5.0.0 (http://www.squarespace.com/)Edupunk or Just Another Techno-zealot?http://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/8/3/edupunk-or-just-another-techno-zealot.htmlJoe Nutt2008-08-03T17:32:45ZSATS Mess and US Educational Culturehttp://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/7/24/sats-mess-and-us-educational-culture.htmlJoe Nutt2008-07-24T07:57:46ZSATS mess is the light it throws on quite a few areas of educational change in the UK. The fundamental differences between a US examination culture dominated by multiple-choice and the reproduction of "correct" information, with little if any demonstration of applied knowledge, and our own: which has a much stronger tradition of applied knowledge, were bound to have led at the very least to confusion, and at worst, as we now know, chaos. As anyone who has spent more than a flying visit to the States knows, US and UK cultures are radically different and some educational ideas are very bad travelers. The question I would ask is why didn't someone involved in the selection of ETS know this?
Another good example of bad educational ideas imported by UK residents who know little of US culture, are the ideas of Marc Prensky, an American businessman whose business is online learning for adults, but whose writing strays freely into the world of schooling and has been used by techno-zealots as a very effective stick to beat teachers with. His Digital immigrants and digital natives mantra is almost as trite and glib as the pernicious catchphrase, guide on the side not sage on the stage. If a 16 year old had used that phrase in a GCSE essay for me, I would have returned it with the note, “weak-minded doggerel”.
Sadly Prensky’s digital immigrants and digital natives mantra, used by him to describe the difference between kids who know all about technology and stupid, out of touch teachers who know nothing, is still very much in vogue. I think it is possibly the single most damaging concept the profession has had to deal with in the last fifteen years. Not least because there are massive cultural differences Prensky’s UK fans just don’t understand. I saw him speaking at a conference a couple of years ago in the UK, and at one point he asserted the truth of some event with this phrase, “It’s true, I saw it on TV.” There was an audible giggle around the auditorium, as hundreds of listeners tried to decide whether he was joking or not and therefore to laugh. He wasn’t. Like many Americans he regards the TV as a crucial feature of his life. Something like a cross between Hal, the computer from Kubrick’s 2001 and a prayer table. He absolutely meant what he said, and his surprise at the British audience’s amused response was dramatically visible.
But there are some areas where US and UK educational cultures do agree. In a 2006 Harpers Magazine survey in the United States, the ratio of negative portrayals of teachers on children's TV shows, to positive portrayals, was....3:1. The sooner we reverse that figure, the better for all the children they teach. ]]>Real Change Management.http://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/7/18/real-change-management.htmlJoe Nutt2008-07-18T11:58:22Zwill go." Now that is what I call change management.
Prince Charles was the VIP guest and showed he was definitely listening with an apposite crack about not quite knowing how he felt about a story involving a Demon King. Lord Adonis, was also there, and I’ve just finished reading the book on Academies published by the liberal Thinktank, CentreForum, for which he wrote the foreword. After so much pussy footing around, for so many years, it really is a relief to read this honest and open acknowledgement by him of what the private sector does well.
…the relentless focus of academies on the quality of teaching and learning, and the development of a wider curriculum including sport and the arts – seeking to nurture the full range of talents of each individual pupil to the full, just as private schools do. ]]>The Steer Review on Behaviourhttp://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/7/11/the-steer-review-on-behaviour.htmlJoe Nutt2008-07-11T22:03:17ZSteer Review on behaviour has produced headlines like Parents and adults too often set a bad example for young people…I can’t fathom. What struck me when I read the interim report was how obvious so much of what it recommends is. The list in italics below was produced by the Practitioners’ Group, and represents their Core Beliefs. You might be tempted to think what does it say about schools if this list is seen as something they need? But I understand absolutely what this list is trying to achieve because, like parents and other adults, there are many teachers who have no idea how to set an example. I came across this teacher’s blog via the Times Educational Supplement’s website recently and thought it deserved a wider airing. If you only read the About Me section I am sure you will appreciate the point. And if you think the writer isn’t representative, I’m afraid he is, literally…he is a union rep.
The quality of learning, teaching and behaviour in schools are inseparable issues, and the responsibility of all staff;
Poor behaviour cannot be tolerated as it is a denial of the right of pupils to learn and teachers to teach.
To enable learning to take place preventative action is the most effective, but where this fails schools must have clear, firm and intelligent strategies in place to help pupils manage their behaviour;
There is no single solution to the problem of poor behaviour, but all schools have the potential to raise standards if they are consistent in implementing good practice in learning, teaching and behaviour management;
Respect has to be given in order to be received.
Parents, carers, pupils and teachers all need to operate in a culture of mutual regard;
The support of parents is essential for the maintenance of good behaviour.
Parents and schools each need to have a clear understanding of their rights and responsibilities;
School leaders have a critical role in establishing high standards of learning, teaching and behaviour. ]]>Techno-cheating.http://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/7/4/techno-cheating.htmlJoe Nutt2008-07-04T15:28:00ZCycleops indoor trainer for weeks. When the time came to get out on my new bike on the road again, (see photo for new bike and note…helmet!) JoeBike1.JPGwhat shocked and actually made me smile, was how you suddenly realize what you are doing is forcing yourself through a wall of air. Inside this doesn’t happen. But outside there is this weight of air pressure you are constantly battling through, which is why it is up to 30% more efficient to ride behind another rider….or car. In terms of testing your own physical ability, there is something extremely pure, about sitting on this incredibly efficient machine, with only a thin piece of rubber between you and the road’s surface, forcing yourself through the air at speed. When you train yourself to do it, and your body can do it well, it is amazingly exhilarating. Lance Armstrong had an expression for those moments, “Look, no chain!” he would yell at his team-mates.
So I was really interested in reading this article, by Bruno Macaes on drugs and sport in the New Atlantis Journal. In it he articulates the reasons why we feel drug use in sport is morally indefensible but goes further into the world of technology and biotechnology. In his piece he argues that,
Chemical or genetic enhancements are a way to influence human action from the outside. Precisely because they are the sort of power to which one will gladly submit, enhancement technologies should be regarded as an interference with our freedom, perhaps beneficial and attractive, but an external power nonetheless. They represent, ironically, the return of a repressed nature.
All of this has helped me clarify in my own mind, why I am so fundamentally uncomfortable with techno-zealots who encourage children to use technology for educational purposes, without ever hesitating to consider the possible consequences, or even having enough wit to realize there may be some. Time and time again, when you look through their rhetoric, the real reason why children and schools are encouraged to use technology is because it makes things easier for them. If using technology makes communicating or understanding easier for a child, I wonder have they really communicated or understood? ]]>English in the Daily World. New QCA Exam.http://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/6/27/english-in-the-daily-world-new-qca-exam.htmlJoe Nutt2008-06-27T19:50:23ZQCA are proposing to expand the number of GCSE’s children can take in English from 2 to 3, by adding a new exam, English in the Daily World. I found myself immediately asking the question, whose daily world? I have watched with increasing dismay over the past few years the rise of a really pernicious idea which I wrote about here some months ago, and which I suspect is at the heart of this new exam. It started a long time ago in English with teachers getting pupils to write newspaper articles based on Rome and Juliet or Macbeth, that sort of thing, and has ended up suggesting we shouldn’t really exam them at all, because after all, we’re all just digital immigrants and the natives are so far ahead of us. This agenda has always been to disarm difficulty through giving it some kind of spurious relevance, and is usually advocated by teachers who haven’t quite grown up yet. So I had a look at the QCA consultation papers and I will leave readers to decide if the following extracts from them suggest I’m right or not. I've italicised the bits that give it away.
The aim is to develop students’ understanding of language use in the real world through engaging with and evaluating material that is relevant to their own development as speakers, listeners, readers and writers.
reading and responding to a range of non-fiction texts that present information, events and ideas, including media, digital and multimodal forms; analysing and evaluating words, images and structures, exploring how they are adapted to create meaning and effect for specific purposes.
The assessment of non-fiction reading will have an emphasis on evaluating writers’ linguistic choices and the effects achieved in texts by different presentational devices. Subtleties of impact on the reader/viewer brought about by using digital or multimodal forms are a significant aspect of this component.
I feel sorry for the poor examiners of this new exam who will have to cope with evaluating material that is relevant to many of the candidates. Having sat on numerous trains being forced to listen to passengers on their mobiles, using the same stock phrases literally dozens of times in a single, short conversation (I actually counted once!) I have come to the conclusion that these phrases are all serving the same practical function. The speakers use them because they are operating so on the edge of inarticulacy, that they really do have to check with the other person that they are being understood. Try a little experiment for yourself the next time you find yourself having to listen. Listen carefully to the phrases they keep repeating, and you will see that they have exactly the same “are you understanding me?” function. ]]>Teach First Awards.http://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/6/21/teach-first-awards.htmlJoe Nutt2008-06-21T12:13:40Zthought it was a terrific idea, it wasn’t until I saw my own tutees teaching so effectively in schools, I knew it was. Even then I would never have predicted their meteoric rise in the graduate recruitment market to the point where they are now 14th in the Times top 100 recruiters. Their annual awards were held this week and as I was one of the judges, I was really pleased to see such a huge crowd of supporters, including my own company, and to see how fast they are expanding, not just across the UK, but internationally. In fact their international expansion is now being run by one of my ex tutees.
As always, they do a very polished job of presentations and one of their videos showed a number of teachers nominated for awards, actually at work. What struck me, and you can see it even on screen, was they all displayed exactly the same high level of intense engagement with their audience. Teaching has always been a complex skill, but I think we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what that skill actually consists of. And certainly from my experience, that intense, even demanding demeanour, is far more effective with children than the guide-on-the-side lameness so often trumpeted as a skill.]]>Boys into Books Schemehttp://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/6/14/boys-into-books-scheme.htmlJoe Nutt2008-06-14T12:54:07Zboys into books scheme got a boost this week, albeit overshadowed by straw-clutching headlines about closing failing schools, and it raised a bit of a smile at the thought that a librarian had been asked to compile a list of books boys between the ages of 11 and 14 would like. In almost a decade teaching at the City of London Boys school, I put quite a lot of thought, time and effort into trying to find books that the younger boys I was teaching in the school would like because in essence, that was my job. I never measured myself by the GCSE or A level grades accumulated every year, but simply by the fact that it was my job to make sure the boys I taught left school with at the very least a respect for books, and at best a passion, that would last them a lifetime.
One of the problems is that the kind of novels marketed by publishers to schools for that age range are incredibly girly, and I very quickly learned to ignore them. I would number Philip Pullman among them. I found a few books that the majority of boys would enjoy, and interestingly Bill Bryson was one of the authors, and he does appear in the Boys into Books list, but in nine years I only found one book I could guarantee any boy aged about 11-13 would love. It was The Maneaters of Kumoan, by Jim Corbett. Corbett was an English diplomat who lived in India for much of his life in the thirties and there is a national park there named after him. Corbett.jpgIn his spare time he killed man eating tigers and the occasional leopard. He was not a writer but his unassuming accounts of the expeditions and hunts he undertook to track down the maneaters, some after having terrorised whole regions and eaten over 200 people, are just breathtakingly exciting. I found even boys brought up in single parent, Islingtonian households, under the strictest no toy guns, veggie regimes, adored his book. If I tell you that his main assistant on these hunts was a springer spaniel called Robin, you will maybe get just a hint of why they liked it. ]]>Howard Jacobson and Computer Gameshttp://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/6/5/howard-jacobson-and-computer-games.htmlJoe Nutt2008-06-05T19:21:04Zrecent piece in the Independent by Howard Jacobson on the social impact of media entertainment, immediately got my attention. It is one of the most intelligent, lucid and well informed essays on the subject I have come across. These two paragraphs below strike me as simply irrefutable.
No test will ever establish a direct link between an image seen, an emotion provoked, and an action performed. So, no, you can't with certainty attribute contemporary knife-wielding among the underaged to the violence they've seen on films, television, or whatever virtual-reality murder toys they play with. But you can't with certainty deny the association either.
What astonishes me is that anybody would want to. Since we know that what we watch and read is capable of moving us to tears of compassion, and not necessarily passive, soon-to-be-forgotten compassion, as witness the charitable giving television is able to inspire, it stands to reason that it can variously move us to rage, to pain, to jealousy, to lust, and not necessarily soon-to-be-forgotten sadism, too.
I am just as astonished as Jacobson. Many years ago I came out of a screening of the Silence of the Lambs to hear a little clutch of teenage boys, all undoubtedly under 18, chattering in a way which can only be described as a kind of frenzied titillation. It chilled me then, and still does to think that was the effect the film had on them. ]]>Amy Winehouse, Raleigh and Milton.http://joenutt.squarespace.com/educational-research-and-news/2008/5/30/amy-winehouse-raleigh-and-milton.htmlJoe Nutt2008-05-30T09:17:46Z0708-0000-0081-nicholas_hilliard_007_mid.jpgYou can actually read the lyrics in question in the Times Online story here and what they were actually asked to do was compare a specific song by Raleigh with one by Winehouse. Genius on the part of the examiner, and I'm sure not the witless attempt to appear cool, some of the respondents to the Times story thought it was. I tried to cut and paste the Winehouse song, but hilariously, my blog software kept spitting it out. I guess since html uses punctuation marks as code, it blew a little hissy fit when there weren’t any. I even tried adding them but it made no difference. In fact the only way I could publish this post was to remove the chunk of Winehouse! So if you want to read lyrical gems like, For you I was a Flame and Love is a losing game, you will have to go to the Times Online story. Winehouse.jpgCivitas published some research a year or so ago about the way the curriculum has been corrupted by political correctness and one of their findings was to do with the study of English poetry. They discovered that you could easily study English Literature to A level, and gain a place to study it at university, never having studied any pre twentieth century poetry at all, apart from Shakespeare. For some exam boards, one in particular I could name, it is simply far more important to have poetry with the right political sympathies, than any other criteria. So is it any surprise that when some of these students do get to university and come up against Milton and the rest, a lot of them just feel utterly at sea, one reason I’m prepared to devote hours and hours of research and writing, to a book on a seventeenth century blind, regicide poet who writes like this.
Me miserable!/ Which way shall I fly/ Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?/ Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;/ And in the lowest deep a lower deep/ Still threatening to devour me opens wide,/ To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
But is it really that difficult to see why one is obviously worth studying three hundred years later, while the other…three weeks? ]]>