We hold these truths to be self evident: that giving students some choice in their own learning directions is likely to lead to them becoming more actively engaged in their own learning, and likely to help them find that ‘thing’ they love.
So, I was pleased to read in the NY TImes today that some US high schools are returning to electives as a tool to keep senior students interested in school.
The comment that caught my eye though, in light of our Federal Government’s recent interest in NY style schooling and national curriculum imperatives was this:
After years in which tight school budgets and a battery of federal and state testing mandates have narrowed curriculums nationwide to emphasize basic reading, math and science, Pelham and a handful of other high-performing school districts have begun to expand their course catalogs with electives.
Narrowing curriculum? Federal testing mandates? Sound familiar?
Radio National’s Australia Talksprogram had an interesting discussion on the ‘education revolution’, national curriculum and assorted responses to educational issues including the crowded curriculum.
The thing liked was the refreshing lack of politics to the discussion, thg good sense and, from a couple of speakers, the emphasis on hearing student voices in the debate. Would it were so.
The k-12 Online Conference I blogged about back in May has just begun, with an initial presentation by Dr Stephen Heppell already online. Details of his pre-conference keynote ‘“It Simply Isn’t the 20th Century Any More Is It?: So Why Would We Teach as Though It Was?” are available HERE and the full program for the conference HERE Lots to look forward to! I’ve embedded Heppell’s keynote here, for your convenience.
Ever since the Expanding Learning Horizons Conference in Lorne and particularly Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s presentation which I blogged about earlier, I’ve been thinking about the importance of professional networks, formal and informal, between schools and within, particularly in their potential in promoting change. I think it will be my big curriculum theme next year.
Those thoughts were re-affirmed yesterday when I attended the Ithaka October Conference, a one day event based around a network of about a dozen Melbourne schools. It was great to work with teachers and curriculum leaders from a variety of schools and hear what they were doing, but it was just as good to have some time to talk and work with a number of teachers from my own school, some of whom I don’t have regular daily contact with.
I’m convinced that these networks, internal and external, properly supported and facilitated, valued are where real change will come from.
I’ve seen a python coiled tightly in a tree, toured the Daintree River looking for crocs, saw a sea-eagle soaring over the freshly mown cane fields, swam with schools of fish on the Great Barrier Reef and swam all week in waters that are 24 degrees in days where it’s 29C every day.
Funny, I can’t seem to get that excited about national curriculum this week. I’m tagging this post as ‘learnng’!
What if the national curriculum that’s going to revolutionise everything also included HOW to teach certain subjects such as perhaps reading? Would we all think it so benevolent and non-invasive then.
I’ve railed and wailed here about national curriculum before but Caroline Milburn’s article in the AGE today opens a new line; that methodology might also be part of this nationalist zeal. Summarising an ACER report the article says:
The major challenge in improving teaching lies not so much in identifying and describing quality teaching, but in developing structures and approaches that ensure widespread use of successful practices: to make best practice, common practice,” says the report, written for the BCA by senior researchers at ACER. The Rudd Government has signalled its intention to take an unprecedented role in influencing teaching methods. The first steps of a more interventionist approach in areas traditionally the preserve of education authorities and teacher training institutions were announced this year.
I like the response of literacy expert Dr Ilina Synder who writes:
The national curriculum initiative is an exciting opportunity to forge new directions and aspirations for school education, but she warns that teachers will resist it if it tells them what they should do in the classroom rather than setting out principles to inform the curriculum. Teachers will not welcome a heavy-handed approach that requires them to perform specific tasks without having control or input in the way they are conceived and evaluated. “Teachers expect to be accountable as professionals but they also expect acknowledgment of their professional knowledge and expertise,”
The debates moves on, but it’s currently only being had among politicians and academics. If teacher aren’t careful they’ll wake up to find that the debate is done and dusted and we’ll be told new ways of operating based on what looks good in Finland and what might get a politician re-elected in four years time.
