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Barefoot Learner Capabilities: How we are developing competencies for the real world

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As with many educators I have grappled with the purpose of assessment for some time. It often feels as though we are subjecting our learners to tests and assessments that serve no purpose other than to generate an arbitrary score that could be quite different if they sat the test tomorrow, and yet these situations induce anxiety and stress for teachers, learners, and families.

So a burning question for me is around the issue of assessment and measurement. Are we measuring the things that we value? Do we value that which we are measuring?

For 9 years New Zealand teachers have been required to measure students in relation to ‘national standards’ for reading, writing, and maths. This information was then required to be reported to parents, the Board of Trustees of each school and the Ministry of Education using language such as ‘below standard’, ‘at standard’, or ‘above standard’. Many educators and researchers (Ken Robinson, Tony Wagner, Guy Claxton) in the field of education have shown us that the skills and capabilities our students need for their futures are much broader than the national standards focus we have had in New Zealand for the past decade. This narrow focus created a difficult environment for teachers who worked hard to ‘shift’ students in relation to these standards very often at the expense of sciences, arts, technology, sports, etc. Whilst at the same time creating angst for the learner, families and indeed themselves.

Late in 2017 New Zealand teachers and leaders were given an opportunity to rethink ‘assessment’ in our schools. With a change of government came a change in the legislation governing schools and we are no longer required to measure or report student progress in relation to the ‘national standards’.  This has given leaders and teachers at Paekākāriki School the scope to move forward with a skills and competencies based curriculum that was, in 2017, in its early stages of development.

The process of developing the skills and competencies based curriculum began with extensive community consultation in 2016 as it was clear to the Board of Trustees that a strong vision for learning at Paekākāriki School was needed. Paekākāriki is a small village and it was important to us that our school reflected the village values and philosophies. The community consultation in 2016 provided us with great information about what our community wanted for their children at our school, we began to see a clear picture of the experiences, skills, and capabilities that were valued by our community. By the end of 2016, we had disseminated this rich information into 4 guiding principles and had established a new vision for ourselves as the Home of the Barefoot Learner.

During 2017 we took the 4 guiding principles of belonging, connecting, exploring and thriving, and broke them down into key skills and capabilities for our learners. We were able to align these with the New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies.  This, in effect, gave us our ‘graduate profile’ and has enabled us to develop our own local curriculum based around these.

The capabilities are outlined as a series of progressions in our Barefoot Learner matrix against which we measure and report on student progress. These progressions were collaboratively developed with teachers and students. These capabilities have signalled a shift to students taking ownership of their learning – learner agency and responsibility are frequent conversations. They also give us a meaningful tool for measuring and reporting on the things that our community values for their children’s education. Student’s use the progressions to self assess, teachers use them to measure progress and our next step is to ensure that quality evidence is shared for each progression with families. We have a digital platform that allows a range of evidence to be shared in real time, and seeking family feedback on this evidence is a next step for us.

These capabilities are more far reaching than the traditional reading, writing, math achievement data and so we are still in the process of refining our systems to measure and report on these. Informing parents of this process is also important. We have developed a curriculum where we focus on the skills and qualities they identified as being important, our next challenge is to be able to demonstrate progress against these things.

As with any programme of change we needed to consider how  we deliver this strong and clear vision to our community. We’ve been pleased with the reaction from the community to our Home of the Barefoot Learner vision and it seems to ring true with our community and visitors to our village. It is a continuing journey for us to embed this vision and a common language across the school, in all that we do so that everyone knows and understands us. Making the guiding principles known and understood widely, and making explicit the links to the curriculum is an ongoing process for us.

After a period of implementation, we will need to re-evaluate. As part of our self review process we need to ask questions of our students, teachers, board and families;

Have we considered everything that is important for our student’s futures?

Do we value the things we are measuring?

Or, are we still assessing that which we don’t value?

I’d love the chance to chat with you about this and other topics during my presentations at the Leading a Digital School Conference.

Abandoning ‘The Age of Manufacture’ concept: How collaboration works for learners and teachers.

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Finding your passion changes everything

 In his book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, (2009) Ken Robinson writes  “Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture.”

Children all around the world are growing up in villages where the “date of their manufacture” has never been considered. Children enjoy opportunities and experiences based on their interests and their needs. However, throughout much of the developed world, this is not the case. At some point in our history, the idea of ‘schools’ was born and the industrial model was applied. Children of similar age were placed in rooms, provided with information (inputs) and then tested on their ability to remember this information (outputs). They were taken out of their learning environments and placed in schools and classrooms but for what purpose?

These are the kinds of wonderings that have niggled at me for a number of years. I have taught in classrooms where students were grouped by age, I’ve taught in small country schools were siblings, cousins, children of all ages learned and played together. I am a parent of three children and at no point could I say “well you are 10 and at 10 all children must be ….. or do ….” My children learned to walk, talk, read, write, ride a bike, cook at different ages. Their needs could not easily be correlated to their “age of manufacture”.

I have been principal of Paekākāriki School since October 2015. In that time we have implemented a school structure that helps students find collaborative learning and playing opportunities with children of a variety of ages. Our systems enable teachers and leaders to be collaborative in their everyday practice. Our process started with extensive community consultation in 2016 and we began the 2017 school year with multi-level classes in collaborative learning environments.

Paekākāriki is a small village and it was important to us that our school reflected the village values and philosophies. It no longer seemed right for us to separate children based on their age, these were children who joined clubs and sports teams with younger and older peers, they played with others in their neighbourhood based on similar interests, not a similar age. We carefully planned out how this could be actioned within our school setting, a setting that still had a very traditional physical layout. We began 2017 with 3 learning areas; our first area is aimed at supporting transition into school for our 4 – 5 year olds and their families, the second space is for those more settled into school (typically years 2 – 4), and the third space is for the students in Year 5 – 8. Students work in these spaces with a number of teachers based on needs and interests. Some students and their families took to the changes quickly and with ease, for others it has been a more difficult process as change can be very uncomfortable. Families are given the option of having siblings join the same ‘whānau’ class or to be separated – there has been an appreciation for this choice and families are able to do what works best for them. Regardless of the decision, a family has made we will often see siblings sitting together to share ideas, discuss a problem or even just reading together.

Adjusting to this new way of working provided challenges for many families and learners. Spending time educating our community about how this works on a day to day basis has been important. Students are now reporting higher levels of enjoyment of school, they have more flexibility over their learning programmes as they are not having to wait for others, they can move on and work with other students as needed. Being exposed to a wider range of skills and opinions is also helpful. There is a sense that behaviour is calmer as students know and understand others better.

A key factor that led us to implement this approach was the recognition of the importance of relationships for the learner and the stress and anxiety that can be caused when students transition from one class/teacher to another every year. Our students transition between learning areas twice in the 8 years they are with us. Over their 8 years, they will learn in 3 main learning areas forming relationships with 3 key teachers, known as ‘whanau teachers’. Families also build strong relationships with teachers – everyone develops strong relationships and a deeper knowledge and understanding of one another. We have experienced more settled starts and less downtime at the start of the new year meaning that the learning is picked more quickly and progress is faster.

Teaching teams required more time together to plan and problem solve so we had to make some changes to our meeting schedules to enable this to happen. Staff have worked collaboratively to overcome some of the challenges associated with reporting to parents, communication, timetabling and meeting a diverse range of student needs. We have used a variety of digital tools to achieve this, however, we still recognise the value of face to face communication and sharing information.

This is an ongoing process for us as we seek to continually modify our systems and processes. Paekākāriki School is situated in a village, we embrace the philosophy that “it takes a village to raise a child” and we enjoy working and learning collaboratively as a group of learners with individual needs, where our ‘age of manufacture’ is not the thing that determines our daily pattern.

Come along and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will be presenting on this subject along with a session called Barefoot Learner Capabilities: How we are developing competencies for the real world.

Leadership actions matter: step three

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This post is a continuation of step one and step two published earlier.

Today’s world is increasingly complex and fast-paced.  This brings new and stimulating opportunities to enhance learning, while at the same time, it requires us to navigate the disruptions that come with phenomena such as globalisation, technological advancements, and the changing nature of work. Leadership is the key…..

Lead yourself to lead others

To expect teachers to do what school leaders are not doing themselves will be a barrier to driving innovation and transformation in schools. School leaders need to ensure that they are modelling the change they wish to see. This is achieved by their rhetoric matching their actions. Rather than imposing change, it is essential that school leaders are setting an example via their own practice.

When teachers see leaders working side by side, displaying enthusiasm and optimism to work together in creating future directions for the school, and facing the same challenges during times of uncertainty, it illustrates that it is a shared endeavour, and encourages others to embrace and support the change. So how might school leaders model the change they wish to see? Look for opportunities to model new pedagogical approaches in professional development and model the effective use of technology in school operations. This might include flipping a whole school PD, using online collaborative tools for staff collaboration or undertaking a professional development session which demonstrates the effective use of flexible spaces.

Leadership: Flexible Learning Spaces

Flipped Learning, a brief grounding in the research literature, by a teacher, for teachers

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Flipped Learning, a brief grounding of the research literature

I was recently challenged to show the effectiveness of flipped learning through research by a member of leadership at my school. What follows is a brief summary of the research that I had at hand that situates a reader generally within the literature and opens some avenues for further exploration. It also gives a good overview of the general direction of flipped learning research with many recommendations of where further research needs to be aimed to produce a greater understanding of the methodology. Keep in mind this is simply an excerpt of my current understanding, as a full-time teacher, not currently participating in any part-time study. I am pursuing research into flipped learning, purely as a hobby rather than any structured academic study. For a broader overview of flipped learning in regards to adding to the research base, I would recommend this blog by Robert Talbert: http://rtalbert.org/what-does-the-research-say/

With that in mind, I hope that teachers interested in the concept of flipped learning, educational technology or using instructional video in their classroom would find this an interesting starting place and jumping-off point for further investigation of these ideas in their own practice. Or in a pinch, use this to justify the interest and emerging nature of flipped learning and some of its positive findings in regard to learning outcomes for students.

Firstly, as meta-analyses are all the rage at the moment, let us begin with these two-literature review/meta-analysis style articles that give us a good aerial view of the research and a good grounding in some of the already completed research.

The Flipped Classroom: A Survey of the Research

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This document provides a good summary of the research circa 2013, it sets out some of the pedagogical practices and ideas that underpin the practice and allow it to be used. It is an approachable and easy to read piece that defines key words and ideas well and establishes some of the intellectual lineages of flipped learning. It is especially valuable for people with a limited understanding of flipped learning in the way that it outlines key ideas that most teachers and educational practitioners will find familiar and easy to engage with. It focuses mostly on qualitative information (numbers) and is therefore easy for a person wired in this way to engage with quickly and without requiring much of an analysis of complex results.

A critical review of flipped classroom challenges in K-12 education: possible solutions and recommendations for future research

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A very recent paper (2017) that comments on the paucity of K-12 flipped learning research and discusses some of the issues that are presented by this pedagogy for teacher workload and other key factors. Appendix 1 provides a summary of a number of studies and their results, whilst Appendix 2 provides a brief summary of the ways that class time was being used in each of these studies. This is useful in the way that it can be used to understand the myriad ways that flipped learning can be used to transform the classroom environment and the activities that take place there. It must be noted, however, that a number of the studies cited do not very closely align with flipped learning as it is generally defined or best practice. As a result, some of the studies show less than favourable results due to a number of reasons, which I will refer back to in a future piece of writing. It also gives a good overview of the way that different uses of this methodology can be applied and as a shortcut around where it would be best to begin a practice of flipped learning for an individual or school aimed in a positive direction. In summary, the paper shows that without looking too closely at what is or isn’t flipped learning, all studies that purported to be flipped learning showed positive results or no significant loss or gain (stayed comparable). Looking more closely, those studies that made use of video in the individual space and used group discussion or some other form of active learning in the class space showed improvements in student’s learning outcomes. These two simple factors being present could be used as a rough proxy for best practice and something to be expanded upon in further research. The two aforementioned appendices also show that deviating beyond the accepted knowledge of best practice in regards to flipped learning does not show a positive result for student outcomes.

The Impact of the Flipped Classroom on Mathematics Concept Learning in High School

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This paper is a more recent (2016) study that took a small scale (82 participants) approach and used the traditional lecture vs flipped learning approach. Notably, this paper used genuine high school students, aged 14-15 years, a group that many practitioners tend to presume will not complete the pre-class work of watching videos. This study showed that this was not true but rather showed that the FL participant group outperformed the control group and were highly satisfied and positive towards the methodology. Notably, the study showed that the ‘low achievers’, as recognised via pre-test results, had greater success than the control group who received conventional teaching. It is suggested that this is due to these students with higher learning needs receiving more attention from teachers and greater time for the deeper discussion and engagement with mathematical problems.

The flipped classroom and cooperative learning: Evidence from a randomised experiment

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A recent study (2016) that comparing the flipped learning classroom with lecture-based lessons. It found a 12% increase in test scores when comparing these two methodologies, in favour of the flipped learning classroom. The study drew its participants from undergraduate students and used a simplistic multiple-choice style test form of testing. The sample size (235 students) is significant and indicates support for flipped learning, but also more specifically the types of active, collaborative pedagogies that it allows to take precedence over traditional lecture style teaching.

Optimizing Learning From Examples Using Animated Pedagogical Agents

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A laboratory-based, experimental based study (2003) that looks specifically at the levels of knowledge retention by undergraduate students based on the learning/teaching resource involved in the delivery of the content. The content was presented through three forms: text only, text and audio, or text and ‘animated agent’ (a small cartoon character who gestures and refers to key elements of the text). I interpret this study firstly in the sense that a teacher, known to the student will always be more effective than the noted ‘animated agent’, as well as more knowledgeable. More simply, however, this study posits that learning through video is simply more effective than more traditional and conventional means. Extending this concept further, this seems to indicate that even without flipped learning being applied, but simply replacing learning resources from text or worksheet towards instructional video would show an improvement in knowledge retention just as was shown in this study.

Learning from Examples: Instructional Principles from the Worked Examples Research

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This study (2000) is a very exhaustive summary of cognitive load theory which I believe holds many connections and associations with flipped learning. I believe it also suggests a number of practices and understandings that should become mainstream within the practice of producing instructional video and flipped learning. Rather than go over some of the complex interaction between the pedagogy of flipped learning and Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), I would suggest you look over this short summary of how these ideas and those raised by the previous research study are applicable in this video I made on the topic here:

Overall, I hope this limited overview of some of the recent research on flipped learning has shown you some of the ways that different ideas are being applied under the umbrella of flipped learning. As well as giving you some things to provide to interested individuals to begin their own learning journeys into flipped learning and its applications in a variety of contexts. If you are interested in any of these ideas please let me know, or if there is anything that you believe here is improperly covered I would love to hear about it. You can email me on kolber.steven.s@edumail.vic.gov.au

Can a culture of innovation be created?

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Schools value innovation but often find it difficult to develop a culture of innovation. Why is this so?

A school’s culture is represented by the values which it truly lives by, not just by the words that it chooses to showcase on a wall somewhere.

This takes vision, time and sacrifice. Its easy to understand the need for vision and time – they are terms all educators are familiar with, however sacrifice may be an element not previously considered. At the school level (macro level) espouses a vision and the leaders promote this but if the teachers (micro level) are not actually empowered and expected to fulfill this vision, it falls flat. Culture is continually changing and this enablement of change allows creativity to thrive which in turn develops innovative thinking. What is valued in your school? Does each teacher in the school exemplify the core values every day?

So how can a school develop an innovative culture?

It starts with the leaders who influence what happens at the macro level but equally inspire openness of thinking and the permission to take risks at the micro level.

Macro level:

  1. Are teachers encouraged to take risks and look at how they teach to find new ways of doing this? Are they acknowledged for innovative practices that are successful and improve student learning? Eg Support teachers to take risks by allowing a new idea to be trialled by each teacher at least once each year. If the new idea is successful, enable the teacher to present at a state / national / international conference.
  2. How is creativity injected into teacher and student learning? Eg. Start with students and allow them to provide ideas as to how a subject or curriculum could be taught / learnt that was more suited to their learning needs. Start a creative lab in the library and allow anything from STEM through to Arts or humanities to be trialled in this lab and ensure that student creativity is acknowledged and celebrated.
  3. Google’s 20% time – how can time be flexible to encourage creativity and innovation? Eg Make 10 mins of each staff meeting an ideas generation time; Make 1 period of each term in each subject a time when staff and students can work on their own projects (for students there needs to be a relationship to the subject)

Micro level:

  1. Increase dialogue – not just communication, but active conversation
  2. Suspend assumptions and accept ideas for continued dialogue
  3. Actively listen – respect everyone’s ideas and allow them to be discussed
  4. Try to remove bureaucratic barriers for new ideas to be trialled.

A process to consider for your school :

  1. Ideas generation
  2. Curation – research the idea, talk about the idea with stakeholders (more often than not, this will be students and parents). This will help to decide on the best value ideas and which ones are worth moving on to the next phase.
  3. Use a tool such as McKinseys Three Horizons Model. For schools this could be re-phrased as:
    1. Continuous innovation in relation to learning. Maintain student learning outcomes and ensure the general capabilities are embedded in each subject explicitly
    2. Expand learning opportunities for students. This could be achieved through a flipped or blended learning model or a different approach to timetabling etc
    3. Take advantage of the digital disruption cycle to develop totally new ways of learning or managing. Incorporate entrepreneurial skills.

If you are interested in following this learning path, then perhaps you may be interested in attending sessions at the Leading a Digital School conference: