Schools for today and tomorrow

The more I got involved in educational development, as a school consultant or as a teacher trainer, the more I got aware that school buildings and facilities represent a major obstacle to innovative educational concepts and policies. On rare occasions contemporary school design offers new perspectives to teaching and learning but unfortunately most of the time new schools are not better than old ones even if they look better.

When I contemplate the structure of most schools, I always ask myself: Will these school facilities support the learning design of tomorrow? Would I enjoy going to this school as a teacher or as I student, and would I be able to develop a sense of belonging in these walls and school surroundings? Is this an environment that inspires collaboration, autonomy and communication, diversity and community, transparency, participation, and appropriation?

Of course high quality teaching can happen anywhere, even in the shade under a tree in the desert. The best equipment and the coziest environment cannot prevent uninspired teachers to sap students’ motivation to learn or undisciplined and frustrated students to undermine teachers’ motivation to teach. But, education is not limited to what happens in a classroom or to the relationship between a teacher and his students. The environment itself plays a significant role in the learning. Here I refer to the Scandinavian school models or the Reggio Emilia approach, where the environment is said to be the "third teacher" the first being the children themselves and the second the teacher or the adults in general.


When one sees the computers, the interactive whiteboards, the high quality ergonomic furniture the well designed architectural details and the exclusive materials, the question must be permitted if these components really shake off old structures and generate a new quality in learning and teaching. Do they make a difference when a classroom has the same proportions as those that were built one hundred and fifty years ago? It's not because everything is new and expensive that it may not be poor.


I don't think that a poor school design in a pedagogical sense is the result of a major communication problem between educators, stakeholders and architects. Their expertise maybe different but unfortunately their visions of school facilities are most of the time very similar. I doubt that most architects, stakeholders and teachers have other tenets to define what a school should look like besides aesthetic architectural considerations like harmony, symmetry, proportions and materials or basic characteristics that most of us consider being intrinsic truths of educational environments which are: 15 to 30 students will have to be instructed in a room separated from other rooms, accessible through one or two doors, with a blackboard at the front or a whiteboard or both, windows on one side, wall cupboards on the other, enough individual seats and worktables for each student and "one" desk for "the" teacher.


Do school planners think of education as a multidimensional collaborative and constructive process? Do they assume that the actors involved may be organized in networks and sub networks and multidimensional hierarchical structures defined by multiple levels of expertise instead of linear top down relationships and centralized instruction? I am convinced that they don't. The internal structure of modern schools and also their surroundings are seldom open to appropriation, in a constructionist perspective. But appropriation may well be a precondition so that the inhabitants of a structure can identify themselves with the environment in which they evolve, learn, interact, and think … In this respect, the German Peter Hübner, who sees "building as a social process" could offer some inspiration for anybody involved in school development and planning. Unfortunately schools are seldom conceived ass social meeting places as he sees them.


At least in Luxembourg we have schools that are disconnected from cultural centers and libraries (if there are any) and we have separate buildings for after school activities and lunchtime. Those buildings are empty during school time, and schools are empty during after school time, as if it were obvious that students need to flee from school after 4 or 6 hours of teaching. In every structure the students meet with a different staff, that has its own separated view on them. We build schools without libraries or open spaces for leisure and after school care structures without surroundings that offer the slightest potential for exploration. We have a ministry for education, one for family and yet another one for culture, and of course we have one for regional planning, one for public building, and last but not least one for environmental planning, but they hardly seem to communicate when it comes to developing a sound vision of educational infrastructures for today and tomorrow.


So far, I cannot but draw the following conclusion: First, for what schools have to offer, they are too expensive. Secondly, the total costs for separated structures are to high and none of them offers the richness and interconnectedness that they should. Finally, if stakeholders persist in believing that it is better to have separated structures for every aspect of education, and if, what we have is the maximum of what one can get for the money that has been spent, then, schools are not expensive enough.

The teacher is a cat

Teachers are like old cats. It's very difficult to teach them new tricks, especially if they feel comfortable using old ones.

ICT for Schools: What you buy is what you think

When I have a difficult subject to discuss, I sometimes like to start off with a graph to visualise my ideas and the complexity of the subject. The first draft of this one was hand-made. I did it during a discussion I had with teachers about choices of ICT equipment, systems and applications. I argued that you need to have a sound framework for ICT decision-making in education.

Any choice that you can make has multiple reasons and consequences. Decision about ICT in education are always – consciously or unconsciously – based on a theory about and a vision on learning and teaching, media and society. Most of the time people are not conscious about their own theories that are guiding their choices and they rarely have a realistic idea of what effects of their decisions will have on learning, teaching and school organisation for instance.

If you are in favor of a computer lab you have a different view on learning organisation and learning processes than if you prefer distributed equipment. The same is true if you expect a wireless laptop cart to be the best solution for using ICT with your students. If you think you need specialised educational software you probably also have a different view on learning, literacy, instruction and teaching than if you prefer production-oriented software with no predefined content. In case you have a limited budget for equipment, the decision to spend it on interactive whiteboards says something about your teaching concept. It probably differs from the concept someone has, who would prefer to spend the same amount on computers with free software, cameras, camcorders, digital microscopes or robotics sets first. The second fosters simultaneous and autonomous hands on activity by many, the first promotes centralized lecture style activity of one at a time.

Most decision makers have hardly an overview on the short term and long term effects of the decisions they make. Some effects are purely financial or technical. Of course they ought to be considered even if for the moment your budget is big enough.

Some effects are organisational. A computer lab for instance is fine, if you don’t use computers on a daily bases. If the classes who use it are few and if you are near to the lab, you can use it whenever it’s free. If every teacher wants his time share for using the lab and if there are many teachers and classes, they will have access once a week or once every two weeks. If at the assigned time a technical or organisational problem comes up, you will have to come back two weeks later – unfortunately that’s when you had planned your field trip. The same logic applies to mobile systems like laptop carts.

The most important however are the effects on teaching and learning. Do the invest in ICT serve old ideas with new means or are your invests a stepping stone to new educational practices? And, what else is needed to implement new educational practices?

As an educational ICT consultant I have experienced that teachers' views are often guided by considerations of high availability (for themselves and for today), handling, short term productivity, control, fast familiarisation, and technical modernism.

Schoolboards and politicians are focused on costs and social equity, but sometimes, if the salesman has good convincing skills, their hunger for modernism overwhelms their decisions, with the consequence that costly hype equipment is bought without any noticeable effect on education.

Technicians mostly concentrate on reliability, efficiency, maintenance and standardisation, but are also driven by ideology and by the option to take control over the technology and the users.

Architects are generally concerned about budget limits – if equipment is part of the project package – about design issues of cabling and computer furniture.

In the end what is lacking is a sound framework connecting teaching, learning, equipment and software to guide people to choose from all the options that are available.

Which is the dominant learning and teaching style in our school today, and where do we want to go from here? Which technological strategy will help us develop our school? Which are the competencies that our students really need to develop, when we consider that they are three, eight or fifteen years from entering the job market or playing an active part in social, economical or political “adult” life? Which are the competencies that teachers need to develop in order to serve as guides or even role models for their students? What are the implicit and explicit “messages” to the learners and the community, of the different hardware of software solutions that schools can choose from? Are students treated as responsible autonomous learners or are they vessels to fill with information that is expected to morph into knowledge? Do we talk about standards to the learners meaning specific software that “everyone” uses in the office, or do we talk about standards in the sense of information management, communication, non-linear production processes and so forth. Are ethics, authorship and empowerment important aspects of schools considerations, and are they connected to technology, or are technological resources seen as value free “tools”? Is the learner in control of the machine or is the machine in control of the learner? And who controls the machine that controls the learner?

Such questions are never left unanswered even if they are not raised. At least the answers are hidden in the choices schools make regarding hardware, software and distribution of technology.

At times where choices have to been made, my graph doesn’t necessary simplify the task but it helps to critically analyse possible scenarios and describe the interconnectedness of some major layers that maybe considered.

Constructing oral narratives online

Ages ago, I participated in a R&D Project called TEO. I was a primary school teacher then, back in 1994. The project's main objectives were to develop a software to record narratives using a computer, and to use this application to practice oral language skills. The tool was called TEO - meaning Text Editor Oral. It worked under the old MacOS 9.

We used TEO in primary school but tested it also in special needs education and in Kindergarten. In primary school, students aged from 7 to 12 used it to record self invented narratives in French, which is the 3rd language that is taught in Luxembourg from 2nd grade up, after Luxembourgish and German.

In TEO, the narratives could be edited by adding and deleting recording parts, or by rearraging them using drag and drop. Each recording was represented by a simple icon that could be used for these manipulations, there were no complex soundwaves or timelines. The icons were automatically numbered so that you could easily tell if the recordings had been rearranged, if parts had been added or deleted.

The theoretical framework of the project was a constructivist view on second language acquisition, embedded in a multilingual context and based on a concept of 'Storying' - meaning a narrative approach to language production. Collaboration, using and sharing implicit language knowledge, students' voice, self-evaluation, students' control over their productions and autonomy were major tenets of the framework.

The tool was great and so easy to handle, that very young children had no difficulty to work with it without any assistance from elders or adults. The project was e great success, which means that students made enormous progress in oral French without a lot of instructive teaching. They eagerly constructed narratives with the knowledge they shared and were not at all afraid of expressing themselves in a language they hardly mastered, mainly because they were not forced to speak in front a class and they had full control over their recordings. If they were not satisfied with the sentence they produced they could just drop it and have another try without leaving traces of "failure". Anyone knows that this is reassuring but you seldom work under such conditions in school.

Of course you could misuse the application for drill and practice exercises but the overall project's framework and the teachers' views on language acquisition prevented such an approach.

The project lasted one year and was documented in a written report, three videos showing children at work and a multimedia CD-Rom explaining and illustrating the framework. Unfortunately the documentations haven't been reedited yet or put online, so that they aren't available any more except for my own report of that time which can be found online on my other website. http://www.fiermonte.lu/resources/wiki/Education/TEO.shtml

After the official R&D project was over, two additional Windows PC versions had been developed with the funding of two other projects, and a few teachers continued to work with it although the PC version was hardly running stable. There was no large scale implementation, promotion or distribution of it after that.

TEO was not forgotten but it didn't last long as nobody seemed to be interested to finance software maintenance in order keep pace with the development of operating systems, and software libraries. But that's the way things often go with R&D projects.

In the early years of EducDesign we wanted to develop a new version of the application for the Ministry of Education in Luxembourg but we got no funding for that either, so we finally decided to do it on our own.

Instead of TEO we called it Tiparlo which in Italian means "I speak to you". We created an online browser based version of the tool and added also some great new features like export into mp3, adding images and comments and setting access rights. It works fine with most common browser in their latest versions. Up until this year Tiparlo could not be used independently of a global OLEFA CMS/IMS based Website in which Tiparlo is part of an online software suite called Collaboration Server which contains other modules like Storyboard, Painter, Webbook and Wiki.
As some people asked us if there was no other way to get it, because they had no support from their schoolboard or the Ministry of Education to get an OLEFA based website, we decided to give it a try and offer Tiparlo separately. Well, it's online now and it can be found at http://www.tiparlo.com.

Its main objective is still to encourage authentic oral expression, communication and language reflection. Tiparlo is very helpful to keep track of someone’s language development or second language acquisition. It fosters cooperation and autonomy, peer tutoring, learning from one another, self-evaluation and critical thinking.

Tiparlo is perfect for minimal invasive language "teaching" and for second language acquisition in multilingual contexts where students share their explicit and implicit language knowledge in meaningful situations.

I know that a lot of teachers would prefer closed applications where students listen to phrases and words, repeat them and get a right or wrong, and a score. With such tools students can also work on their own and you don't need to spend to much time on their productions. The number of rights and wrongs says everything you need to know. But that's not the way I like to promote IT in school.

With Tiparlo it's different. It's not the teacher or the tool that controls the production and the learning but the students themselves. To evaluate the learning processes, you need listen to the narratives, consider the context in which the production process took place and have a discussion with your students. Now and then it may be interesting to film or to record the discussions among the students during the production process. Not with the "big brother is listening" approach but with permission of the authors, if you want to get a somehow authentic work and have a respectful relationship with your students. Such "teaching" demands a lot of effort, much more that if you use closed ready made applications, but the results are worth it and have much more impact on the language acquisition progress than forever popular drill and kill exercises, which in my view are an insult to the intelligence and the creativity of children, who always prove to be born language learners when embedded in a language rich context.

Jacques Duez : The pleasure of the real questions

I have completed the list of the interview transcripts below, that have been published on the website on http://www.desimages.be/spip.php?article404

• 01 - le chemin pour devenir professeur de morale
• 02 - l’invention d’une pratique vidéo avec les enfants
• 03 - ne pas garder de savoir en réserve
• 04 - la caméra introduit de la distance
• 05 - rencontrer l’humanité à travers un écran
• 06 - la correspondance comme effet de montage
• 07 - une égale capacité à dire ce que l'on ressent
  
• 08 - le savoir et le vivant
  
• 09 - paroles de proximité, paroles populaires
• 10 - l'existence de ceux qui ont la parole
• 11 - les rencontres avec des artistes
• 12 - le plaisir des vraies questions
• 13 - problèmes des retrouvailles
• 14 - sauver sa peau face au pouvoir
• 15 - l’univers infini des personnages
• 16 - ne pas faire du journalisme
• 17 - être vivant, se casser la figure, faire ce que l’on ne peut pas (published sept. 7th 2010)
  
  

I find chapter 12 very interesting and also funny. Translated it's entitled "the pleasure of the real questions" It includes a reply to to a child saying "Jacques, with you we haven't learned anything." - absolutely great!
I reminds me of a situation where Frank Trierweiler and I coached a group of teachers who were supposed to reflect on an evaluate their teaching strategies and concepts. In the final session one of the teachers said that she hadn't learned anything out of all this. I don't remember my reply but I remember that I was frustrated. Jacques in his situation wasn't. Read it for yourself it's worth it.

The picture has been taken by Christian Schwarz during the evening dedicated to Jacques Duez on April 15th. Thanks to you Christian.

Jacques Duez has died

Jacques Duez has died Monday 2nd of February 2010.
It's difficult to find words to express how sad I am that I will not have the chance to meet with you again as we planned to do it the last time we met, and the last time we talked on the phone.
I'm thankful that I had the chance to know you and that you followed my invitation to Luxembourg for a presentation of your work on 19th of June 2008.
With your death, the world of education has lost a charismatic figure. You had the sensibility and the intelligence to give room to children's voices like only few people I have met could do it.
Thank you for the marvelous work you've done and which will continue to inspire me.

I'm planning an evening dedicated to Jacques Duez on Thursday 15th of April in the Cultural Center in Bivange, for all those who had the pleasure to meet him in Dudelange (L) 2008 and for those who don't know his work yet. Help me spread the word and send me an email if you plan to come: In Memory of Jacques Duez

My post on Jacques:
http://www.pinofiermonte.com/2008/06/jacques-duez-on-listening-to-children.html

Read the authentic words of Jacques Duez
by Massart on http://www.desimages.be/spip.php?article404

• le chemin pour devenir professeur de morale
• l’invention d’une pratique vidéo avec les enfants
• ne pas garder de savoir en réserve
• la caméra introduit de la distance
• rencontrer l’humanité à travers un écran
• la correspondance comme effet de montage
• une égale capacité à dire ce que l'on ressent (nouveau)
  
• le savoir et le vivant (nouveau)
  

Also available as Feed:
feed://www.desimages.be/spip.php?page=backend&id_rubrique=112

Biographical article written by Jacques and published 5th July 2007:
http://philohorsclasse.free.fr/article.php3?id_article=10

Some interesting extracts of Jacques' interviews can be found on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jacques+duez&search_type=&aq=f

To me one of the most impressing video sequences by Jacques Duez is the following one, in which Jacques interviews one of his former students who has become a young man and who reflects on himself when he was a child and on his experience in Jacques Duez lessons.



Announcement of Jacques Duez's death on Arte TV-channel:
http://www.arte-belgique.be/mensuel/EM_300810

http://www.telemb.be/content/view/5827/166/

A way out of pseudoscience

Science education is non-existent in Luxembourgish elementary school. We do a little bit of geography and history in fifth and sixth grade and we have a science curriculum for first to sixth grade. But, as far as I can observe, natural science is often reduced to filling out work sheets and doing personal projects where students individually or in groups look up information on the Internet or in science books to produce a short work on a topic they choose. Common subjects are dinosaurs, an animal, natural phenomena like tsunamis, volcanos and hurricanes, a social problem like alcohol and tobacco consumption, and so on. The production of these pieces of work are usually referred to as "project work" although most of the time they are limited to a few text pages with pictures and illustrations downloaded from the Internet. The situation in secondary school is not much better - sometimes even worse.

When teachers want to offer "real science" and scientific experiences to their students they go to the museum of natural history and science once or twice a year where expert animators take over. Subjects range from fossils to robotics, and from astronomy to chemistry. Most of the time, the teacher's activity is reduced to accompanying their students during the bus trip to the external expert institution. They seem to act according to the principle: If you don't know something yourself, at least you should know where you can find it. Why not? If students have fun and learn, it is better to leave the job to someone who knows something about science, and who is passionate about it, than to try to teach something you don't master yourself, or something you are not interested in. But, back to school, the experience is soon forgotten and nobody seems to care a lot about that.

There are some obvious reasons why science isn't valued that much in Luxembourg. It could well be that the majority of elementary school teachers' interest in science is as low as their knowledge about science because they have experienced a school system where science wasn't valued. Then, there is the fact, that Luxembourgish language curriculum (with German, French and Luxembourgish) has such a high status, that there seems to be not much time left for science - and I don't expect this to change in the near future. Another characteristic of Luxembourgish elementary school is, that more and more teachers are female, which by "tradition" seem less interested in science. There's no doubt that this is a serious gender issue, but only few seem to care about it so far.

Recently some think, that science teaching should be taken more seriously. The reasons are obvious. The worldwide economic crisis has left its footprint on the Luxembourgish economy which, since the decline of the steel industry, is characterized by a low degree of differentiation and a high dependency on the financial sector.
A second cause has been the PISA-Test (Programme for International Student Assessment) where Luxembourg scored as low in science as in math. Finally, compared to its neighbours, Luxembourg has not enough young people choosing careers in science and engineering. Nowadays, where scientific literacy seems to be more important than ever, this turns out to be a serious issue.

So how could schools respond to this challenge? If teachers aren't passionate about science, forcing them to teach more of it will not necessarily bring the effect that stakeholders hope for. Bringing the students to science labs or museums once or twice a year doesn't seem to have that lasting effects either.

Maybe a new way to teach science would be to just leave most of the "teaching" to the students themselves. Even and sometimes due to the absence of direct instruction from teachers, students can learn by themselves and develop knowledge through experimentation, self-instruction and by peer-sharing knowledge.

For this to happen schools should provide time to students to investigate in scientific questions engaging in long-term open activities, room for experimentation, and some material.

Putting to much emphasize on factual knowledge which is often thought to be the same as scientific knowledge is definitely not the right way. Nor do I think that designing a new curriculum with prescribed topics, just to make sure that all important areas of science are covered makes much sense.

Teachers (and politicians) should have more confidence in children's will and potential to learn. Interventions from adults should not be invasive but marked by their interest in the ways children question the world and deal with challenging thoughts. Answers and solutions are not what they should expect from their students, neither should giving answers and quick solutions be expected from teachers. Their main contribution should be curiosity, dialogue, collaboration and awareness for possible networks between children and connections between fields of inquiry.

Of course, when questions get really challenging teachers should provide guidance to their students so that they - themselves - can get in touch with scientific experts. Such experts could then be invited to school, not to bring answers but to help scaffolding scientific thinking.

In my view, letting children take over science education would cause no more harm than letting teachers continue to teach science, as long as many of them don't know

• that if the ice on the Arctic Ocean melted, sea levels would not rise,
• that the cause of the Moon's phases is not the shadow of the Earth, http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonphase/
• that if two falling objects don't reach the ground at the same time it's not due to their difference in weight,
• that if species evolve it's not due to the transmission of characteristics individuals have acquired during their life, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/getting_the_monkey_off_darwins_back/
• that the cause of the low temperature in winter is not due to the distance between the Earth and the sun, ://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/seasons.htm
• that the complexity of an ant colony has nothing to do with the "intelligence" of ants, http://nirmukta.com/2009/08/22/complexity-explained-2-swarm-intelligence/

It's fine with me if children do an experiment with baking sodan and vinegar to simulate an erupting volcano. But it's problematic if teachers rely on such a scientific experiment to demonstrate and explain volcanic activity - without questioning the experiment.

One last word on Wikipedia or the Internet in general as a source of information. I use both a lot myself, but I don't think that it's the place where students should begin their project work. Being able to find the "right" information is important but it's not equal to constructing knowledge or to thinking scientifically.

Title image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2006-01-15_coin_on_water.jpg

The Making of Teachers

Since the reform of the teacher training at the newly created university in Luxembourg I have met a some teachers complaining that student teachers had been sent to their schools for practical training with their heads filled with theories about education, but lacking the most basic teaching skills. The answer to my question which kind of basic teaching skills they expected the students to have were not very clear to me and since I continue to ask myself: What is it that teachers do? And, how do you learn to become a teacher? But also, under what circumstances new answers to these questions could possibly be found.

For years, in Luxembourg, student teacher's practical pre-service training was (and sometimes still is) based on a collaboration between a single teacher working as a tutor and a single student teacher or a pair of student teachers. In this constellation, lesson planning, interpretation of the curriculum and reflection on pupils development is most of the time part of the hidden work of the teacher because she/he usually doesn't stay in school to accomplish these tasks. What teachers do in the presence of student teachers, is performing in front of the classroom, managing and coordinating pupils' tasks, and maintaining classroom order. And this is mainly what the student teachers can observe. The tutor serves as a role model, a master who transfers her/his knowledge to the apprentice, an experienced practitioner who rarely needs to refer to a theoretical framework to justify his/her choices, and seldom struggles - in public - for solution in the face of pedagogical dilemmas. The job of referring to theory and discussing pedagogical dilemmas is most of the time left to the university lecturers doing supervision and visiting the student teacher once or twice during their teaching practice at the school. The concept of a teacher that a student teacher has constructed throughout the years during her/his own school life is more or less equivalent to the concept she/he constructs during practical pre-service training. This pre-service training cloning approach strongly depends on finding good "self-made" teachers serving as tutors and as role models for future teachers. The schools in which they act, only play a secondary role.

Since more and more teachers have started to work in small teams (usually 3 to 5 teachers taking in charge an extended group of pupils) student teachers have the opportunity not only to copy teaching techniques from one isolated expert teacher but to witness the negotiations between teachers sharing ideas, preparing lessons together, defining common objectives and, hopefully, discussing the progression of their pupils and if there is enough time left, also discussing their personal understanding of their pedagogical mission. This insight in the off work is possible because when working in teams, teachers stay in school more often to do their preparation work instead of leaving the campus. Here student teachers can be present and develop a more realistic concept of what teachers do, when they don't "teach". But still, what we have here, is a reproductive cycle, a kind of single-loop learning, through which teachers or team-teachers are "made".

What is missing, is the opportunity for student teachers to be part of a deeper reflection in a school community on educational practices and purposes. They need to experience that the process of developing an explicit shared school culture transforms the teachers themselves. This can be the case in schools evolving as learning organizations, where single teachers and teacher teams are transformative actors pursuing a common goal. which is, developing their school, and at the same time, developing themselves, collaboratively. In such a school teachers meet not only to plan and organize but to controversially discuss their approaches, their key concepts and beliefs, as well as their relationship to teaching and learning. Here new patterns of teaching behavior and reflection can emerge which cannot be reduced to the change of a handful teachers' behaviors, attitudes and understanding alone.

The process of negotiating common objectives is inextricably linked with the effort to uncover espoused theories or tacit knowledge. But, this latter process doesn't take place when teacher communities engage in open discussions without an external participant observer or coach. When individuals are deeply involved in an organization it is extremely difficult to them to sustain enough mental and emotional distance to their roles to act simultaneously as observers. (What I don't mean here, is that schools are in need of charismatic leaders somehow intentionally controlling school development. The risk would be to high, that the organization falls back to a previous more or less stable state of evolution as soon as the leader leaves the organization, because new practices have been imposed to teachers instead of having been negotiated among them.)

If we want schools to evolve faster and better than today, becoming teachers should be exposed to communities of teachers articulating multiple perspectives on what learning and teaching means to them in general and in the specific context of institutionally organized education. Even more important, student teachers should not learn from but learn with teachers arguing in favor of their specific viewpoints by referring not exclusively to teaching experience or personal preferences, but also to their own learning biography and, of course, to theory and research.

But can this really be achieved if teachers are mainly used to refer to their experience and if they tend to ignore or even to depreciate theory and research? I don't think so. That's why we should stop keeping one process secret to the eyes of one of the actors and develop a practice school model where pre-service, in-service training and organizational development are strongly connected and not approached separately. In a framework where the making of teachers and the making of schools are deeply connected, theory will be easier recognized as being inevitable.

But what about research? Certainly there is great potential to do research in practice school where pre-service training, in-service training and school development are intentionally interconnected. But there is also a need to discuss the purpose of research and the types of research that should be in use. If the way to find new teaching patterns is not build on a behaviorist framework where mainly copy-paste or input-output processes are at work but on a complex adaptive system approach where self-organization gives room to emergence, creativity and unpredictability, the role of research is very different too. It tends more to describing the conditions under which a certain type of teaching and learning may be possible than to identifying in a linear way the link between specific actions and its presumed outcomes.

I would like to conclude by affirming that a best practice school is more than a school with good scores and some highly motivated expert teachers where universities can sent their students to.
Not only student teachers, but all actors involved, need to understand that teachers are not made during 4 of 5 years of higher education and by passing future teachers through some kind of cloning processes, but through an ongoing dialectical rearrangement of ideas, references and practices. To find new answers to questions like, What is it that teachers do? And, how do you learn to be a teacher? we have to change the circumstances under which these questions are posed.

Neuroscience is a hype

Recently I attended a seminar on learning and emotion. A major part of the penal presentations were on neuroscience. As, according to Della Sala, the famous scientist, "neuroscience is a hype", no surprise then, that a lot of teachers were present to get an overview on the recent findings in that field. I suspect that anyone attending the conference Sergio probably has his on view on the subject of neuroscience and everyone listening carefully to the presentations found enough justifications for what he/she thinks is the right way to teach. As an example let's take the following statement: "Emotion and cognitive processes students engage in, cannot be dissociated."

For some teachers this means, that if the learner doesn't feel connected to the subjects he is supposed to learn, there will be little outcome of learning, even if efforts have been made by the teacher and hopefully by the student. The conclusion for those acknowledging this point of view would then be to link what should be learned to the personal interests and the personal context of the learner or to embed it in what the student has already identified as interesting. If such a link is not possible, than there is no use to try to force learning, as it will not last beyond the next test.

For others, the statement that emotion and cognition cannot be separated, means, that, whatever you think should be learned, should be wrapped up in a way so that it becomes interesting, and that the learner becomes motivated, no matter the subject and no matter her/his initial motivation. From this perspective, the good teacher has to know how to present a subject in an interesting and a seductive way and she/he has to have some knowledge on the "right" techniques to motivate students. Among those you'll find specific teaching and classroom management techniques as well as reinforcement techniques which could be anything from dissuasion to encouragement, or from punishment to rewards and grades.

And then, there are those who think, that between the first and the second option there is the realistic one. They tend to say that, of course, whenever a link between the learning material and an intrinsic motivation can be established it should be done. But, as most of what teachers are supposed to teach is not very interesting, and as interest cannot be expected to be on time when the subject is on the timetable, there is no way to get around the fact that you have to motivate students by some means if personal motivation is lacking. That's how life is and how it has always been, how could anyone expect schools to work differently? According to this view, self-directed learning is only possible if motivation is present - in the presence of the curriculum. If not, then good teaching skills, classroom leadership and reinforcement of school compliant behavior are inevitable to get the job done. Those teachers like constructivist ideas but rely on Skinnerian principles because human nature cannot be ignored.

So what's my point here? Well, I think we could have the same discussion on any other subjects related to school, like guidance and structure, exposure to challenging questions, etc. Neuroscience alone will not give us the answers that schools need. Anyone, can use oversimplified neurosciencific theories to justify whatever she/he thinks is right in education. Neuroscience alone will not tell us what structure, guidance, learning etc. mean.

There is a risk that popular views on neuroscience serve as arguments to continue the worst of educational practices not necessarily the best ones. I also think, that neuroscientific findings and theories are overgeneralized and in many cases dangerously implanted not only into schools but also into the homes. For those who haven't noticed it yet, we are witnessing a major shift from "pop-behaviorism" as Alfie Kohn calls it, to pop-neuroscience built on an a strong Skinnerian heritage.

But then, should educators forget about neuroscience altogether, if it is not that as relevant to education as some may think? No, not at all. It is important and necessary that teachers and parents are capable of identifying, and arguing, and acting against the so called "neuromyhts" among which you'll find theories like “There is no time to lose as everything important about the brain is decided by the age of three” or “There are critical periods when certain matters must be taught and learnt” etc. For more on this you should read "Dispelling the Neuromyths" in "Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science." (http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_35845581_38811388_1_1_1_1,00.html )

It is also important to follow the discoveries of neuroscience so that we can respond critically to an oversimplification of neuroscientific conclusions and their translation into the educational setting. Teachers and parents alike need to have enough background information on the subject so that they may resist those trying to sell them brain feeding technique trainings and tools and brain fixing recipes and remedies.

If you want to know more about the subject consider having a look at the "Views from leading thinkers" on the website "Learning about Learning" http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/learningaboutlearning/aboutlal/biogs/index.asp

Among others I like a lot Sergio Della Sala's (the editor of Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain) contributions on understanding, neuroscience, mind myths, and intelligence. Follow this link to watch the movies with Della Sala:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/learningaboutlearning/aboutlal/biogs/biogsergiodellasala.asp

Teachers should take his advice seriously when he says: "So just by taking a model over simplified may produce disasters in education." or "Teachers should not use neuroscience as a theoretical basis to justify what they do."

Now, does this post mean, that I think that no positive conclusions can be drawn form neuroscience in order to justify innovative school practices? No, this is not my point of view. But if I am critical about brain train tools I must also be careful not to take neuroscience as shortcut to justify what I think are valuable educational concepts.

Title image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NIH_PET.JPG

Sustaining the chain reactions of learning

When I go visiting school classes I usually try to avoid sitting in the back to observe the whole classroom activity. I also avoid to start a discussion with the teachers in front of their pupils. I usually go straight to one desk or group of desks and I ask the students if they don't mind me sitting next to them to observe what they are doing.

There are some reasons for me not sitting in the back of the classroom. First, I think that from a few looks around you get quite quickly a good impression of the soul that inhabits a learning community. There is no need to sit in the back for that long. I also think that if you want to observe everything you risk not seeing anything. To me, this is a typical teacher's problem. Standing up in front, in the back or in the center of the classroom to be in control leaves little room for profound observation or dialogue. Another reason why I try to avoid to observe the whole class, is that most of the time, it makes teachers feel uncomfortable because they see themselves in the focus of the observation.

The main reason to go straight to a desk to observe, talk and take notes, is that it's always a unique chance to gain an insight in at least one child's thinking, working and being.

For example, there is this boy sitting next to me doing math. Sometimes he uses his fingers. The result is always correct, but I can't see how his finger algorithm is related to the result. So I ask him how his strategy works. No answer. - I ask if at the next example he could try to speak while using his fingers to calculate. He calculates, uses his fingers, but again he doesn't say anything. I wait. Finally he says: "I can't in the had, and with fingers and talk." - Isn't this an impressive example how complex simple things can be? How profound a child is capable of self-reflecting and analyzing? How misleading any interpretation of what he's doing, how he may be thinking and why he doesn't respond to my demand could be? And what if his calculation results had been wrong? Would I have persisted as much on trying to understand his way of thinking?

Another example: There's this nine or ten year old girl who tells me how she makes soup for herself and her sister and sometimes cooks for her father when he comes home late after work. She has done a creative work with a tin can and I asked her where she got this can from. She told me that she has brought it from home and that it had contained beans which she doesn't like. So when I ask her what she likes to eat she says that she likes soup and she tells me a lot about her life at home and how much responsibility she already has to take for herself, her sister and her farther. It's the first time we talk to each other. I haven't met her before. I don't have to ask a lot of questions. Finally she tells me that she doesn't like to go to school because of homework which she has difficulties to do alone. I ask myself if teachers know about and take into account the conditions that children live in and if they are aware of the opportunity provided by a tin can to get to know a child.

And then, there's this boy who apparently is not interested in writing but only in playing and drawing. His drawing tells a whole adventure - he explains one object which he can't name and which I can't identify at first. When I finally understand that it's a periscope, I ask him if I should write it down for him. He tells me where I should write it and that I should use blockletters - not this adult handwriting which he can't read. Finally we write names of other things he has drawn. I ask If I may get a copy of it. He rushes to the Xerox and is happy to make a copy for me. Who said that this boy has no interest in writing?

And then there is this boy who wants to be a volunteer fire fighter like all men in his family. He shows me his favorite book about fire fighting and tells me that he has to prepare for a fire fighter exam, which his teacher allows him to do in class. He seems to know everything about fire brigades and fire fighting. Together we compare information about which elements are needed for a fire to start. These elements are grouped in the fire tetrahedron. I never heard about that before. A fire can be extinguished by removing at least one of the elements grouped in the fire tetrahedron, heat, oxygen, ... In our discussions my questions are real questions and his answers are real answers. There's no need for extrinsic motivation strategies to keep his interest alive. He has found something which fascinates and challenges him. My interest is authentic. So is his teacher's. She has set the conditions to make this all possible. She is there, close enough to listen to our conversation but she doesn't interfere. Nothing more is required. The boy doesn't need praise. Anyway he's the expert. Experts don't need praise to keep them going. Once the process of self-determination is ignited the curriculum emerges. The learning process is kept alive as long as all the elements are present. Anything can be connected to the core subject of fire fighting: math, chemistry, history, languages, ...

Some say "You are lucky, you don't have to teach things like grammar and math." They are right, I'm lucky. And I don't have to teach these things, indeed. But do they have as much and as often as they think they should?

Pedagogy starts where instruction ends. The more I observe the more I am convinced that teaching is about sustaining the chain reaction of a child's learning and reflecting which has started long before entering school.

Thank you teachers for leaving your classroom door open and for letting me in.

Image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire_tetrahedron.svg

A new way the money goes

When I see the capital that is needed to save the banking sector and the automotive industry, and maybe there will be other sectors, I can't help but asking myself if this money is more real than the one these sectors have produced so far. There must be some endless reservoir somewhere. Maybe politicians have finally managed to find the only endless resource in the Universe before scientist have.

Anyway, as there seems to be no limit regarding the money that states manage and are asked to bring up, the other question that strikes to my mind is, if it's not time to seriously consider the proposition of a "Guaranteed minimum income" (GMI) for every citizen, or as I would prefer to formulate it, for every human being on earth - child or adult.

If you think this is a crazy idea which is not practicable, you probably have have one excuse and one reason for that. The excuse may be that you never have considered the idea - and therefore you have never taken the time to think it over in depth.

Recently I have read an interesting and convincing book by Götz Wolfgang Werner, a quite famous German businessman. The book is called Einkommen für alle. Der dm-Chef über die Machbarkeit des bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-03775-3.

If this guy, who has proved many times in his career as a successful business man, to have a profound knowledge on a lot of what has to do with money, is convinced that the GMI is a feasible concept, I think it's worth considering the idea. I invite you to take the time to read about this visionary proposition come back to the negotiation table, when you have made up your mind on the basis of your own arguments and on the basis of arguments that you can find in quite a few sereous sources. So far for the excuse.

Now what about the reason for possibly rejecting the idea? You actually may think that people will never be mature and responsible enough to make a substantial contribution to society if they are not forced to work to earn some money and that this would be the end of society how it works today.

To this I must answer with two questions: Isn't the option to make a substantial contribution to society dependent on decent life conditions? And second, what in the end has been the substantial contribution to society of those who have a major responsibility in probably one of the biggest worldwide economic crisis the world has seen so far?

I don't want to go in a detailed discussion about the success of current economical models, as I don't want to speak to much about the necessity to save automotive industry in order to save jobs of ordinary employees or corporate jet users, when at least one of the main reasons for the decline of this industry, besides mismanagement, is that people have stopped considering buying cars as one of their priorities for the moment.

What I'm mostly interested in is what the effect on education would be of such a measure like providing every person on earth with a basic income that would be high enough to live decently and safely.

What would education be like if teachers and parents would not feel obliged to tell their students and children "If you don't learn you won't get a job, and you'll suffer all the consequences of being unemployed; no house, not enough food, no decent living for your children, no whatever you can think of that you only get if you got a job and enough money?"
What would the messages to the coming generation be like if there were no such threats like : "If you have no job, you will be forced to live in the street, to steel, to beg or at least you will always be dependent on someone else to survive?"

Maybe you would ask children more questions like: "What would you like to do in your life? What occupation would you find challenging?" Whatever their answer would be, you could reply: "Fine, if that's your life project, wouldn't it be great to find out what could be important to know if you want to do that?"

I'm sure there would still be people wanting to be astrophysicists, politicians, teachers, farmers or car builders. I can also imagine that there would be people doing nothing or doing the wrong things - as many do today - paid or not. We would also have to think of what incentives could motivate people to collect our garbage.

But what I am sure of, is, that we would develop a different viewpoint on what is important and interesting in life and what education is for. At least we could ask everyone what her/his life project is, without being sarcastic.

image source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marketmakers.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jakarta_slumlife43.JPG

Thinking with Charles Darwin

On February 12th we are going to celebrate (some would probably prefer to say "deplore") Charles Darwin's 200s birthday and on November 24th 2009 the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - in short called The Origin of Species. Another milestone of his work is the book "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" which he published in 1871.

Although many other scientists have worked on evolutionary theories, Darwin is the one who built his on the principles of mutation, variation and natural selection and the common descent of living organisms. The convergence of Charles Darwin's theory, with Mendel's findings on heredity, with the discovery of the DNA and it's role in heredity, but also with Wegener's theory of the continental drift and with many other theories have conducted to our modern view on the origine and the development of the living organisms, the face of the Earth and the Universe.

Ok, this is all stuff that you can read up in most science books and on the Internet. But there are two reasons why I think that it is important to bring this up on my blog on educational matters.
First, teachers are those who have to deal with the conflict between scientific findings and beliefs. Second, teachers have to encourage the development of critical thinking and scientific thinking - at least that's my point of view.

Regarding the first issue, there is a serious risk that science is not taught as it should because,"Teachers hesitate to offend to religious beliefs of their pupils even when these directly contradict scientific fact." as Richard Dawkins puts its. (For more information see: "The Genius of Charles Darwin" Richard Dawkins; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfAS2kBJDBw ; in 10 episodes.)

To get a feeling of how serious this problem is taken you should read the report "The dangers of creationism in education" by the Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Council of Europe published June 8th 2007 (Doc. 11297). http://assembly.coe.int/main.asp?Link=/documents/workingdocs/doc07/edoc11297.htm

But there's the other issue. There is a risk that science is not taught as it should be, because schools continue to rely on a concept of transmission of knowledge which has much more in common with indoctrination and brainwashing than with teaching or with scientific thinking. I would even go so far as to say that this is not a risk but a fact in most classrooms.

To open a science book, to paraphrase the content of a chapter on evolution for example and to impose on the students that they memorize and recite the theories that have been presented has nothing - nothing at all - to do with anything that comes close to scientific thinking. Such a practice fosters belief, not very different from religious belief, but not thinking.

I see the same risk when students are asked to choose a "science" subject, to gather information on the Internet and to translate them "into their own words", during a few so called "project work" lessons. Even if this maybe more motivating and even challenging than to follow chalk-and-talk lessons, this isn't sufficient to produce thinking young people either. In my view this approach mainly produces superficial and fragmented knowledge and seldom helps students develop a transferable critical attitude, particularly if gathering and assembling of information is a substitute for discussion, negotiation of concepts, formulation of questions and hypothesis, reconstruction of scientific interpretations, justification of choices, evaluation of different viewpoints and analysis of their dependency on the sociocultural context in a specific period in history etc. (see also http://www.criticalthinking.org)

What's the use of such teaching if in the end, most of what is left of it are some simplistic beliefs (why should I call them concepts?) of how things work, were it mathematics, language, learning, intelligence or evolution.

Am I asking to much from school? I don't think so. I am asking less but more in depth work, much more time spent on one project and a lot of socratic dialogue. If you are of those who persist on thinking that past teaching methods were useful to develop scientific and critical thinking, I suggest that you design a test like the ones that have been developed for the PISA survey, but for adults - parents, teachers, whoever you want. You will see right away what I mean - as sure as death and taxes - and you will acknowledge that a lot of teaching has been, continues to be and will be for long nothing but a big waste of time.

But, we started with Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory.
How does it work again? ……………………………………………………? Who cares?
If it's important, and if I need it, I'll find it easily on wikipedia.org or in some other bible.
And if you give me some time, I'll put it in my own words if you prefer.
But there's this question that I can't get out of my mind:
Do I believe what I read or do I understand what I read?
Let's see if I can find the answer to this where I found the other one.
If not, maybe it's not a good question after all.

image sources:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Darwin_ape.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Darwin_tree.png

Andragogy and Pedagogy, what's the Difference?

Recently I came across the term Andragogy which was used by Alexander Kapp in 1833 and which was adopted by Malcolm Knowles to designate "the art and science of teaching adults". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy).
On most websites dealing with andragogy, I found that it should be distinguished from pedagogy, which relates to teaching children. The authors generally state that andragogy, in opposition to pedagogy, builds upon a different (!?) set of assumptions (four or five) about learning.

I must say, that I was astonished when I read what these assumptions are, and I thought, well, if, in the view of these authors, these assumptions differ from those of pedagogy, I wonder what strange concept of pedagogy these authors must have. And, I also wonder what concept of children, childhood and children's learning they must have. Below, I've quoted from five different websites. See for yourself, and try to find for each statement an opposite view that you would associate with pedagogy - meaning the art and science of teaching children. I just couldn't find any.

I don't question the rightness and the usefulness of those statements in general, but I question that there exists a concept of pedagogy that builds on the opposite assumptions, even if sometimes realities of teaching may suggest that there is one. At least, in my personal view, pedagogy and andragogy are not different. To state that there is a difference, is also to state that meaningfulness of learning applies to adults and not to children - which is absurd - nothing more nothing less.

From http://tip.psychology.org/knowles.html :
"(…) Andragogy makes the following assumptions about the design of learning: (1) Adults need to know why they need to learn something (2) Adults need to learn experientially, (3) Adults approach learning as problem-solving, and (4) Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value. (…)"

From http://agelesslearner.com/intros/andragogy.html :
"(…) The andragogic model asserts that five issues be considered and addressed in formal learning. They include (1) letting learners know why something is important to learn, (2) showing learners how to direct themselves through information, and (3) relating the topic to the learners' experiences. In addition, (4) people will not learn until they are ready and motivated to learn. Often this (5) requires helping them overcome inhibitions, behaviors, and beliefs about learning. (…)"

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andragogy :
"(…) Knowles' theory can be stated as four simple postulates: 1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction (Self-concept and Motivation to learn). 2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities (Experience). 3. Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life (Readiness to learn). 4. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented (Orientation to learning). (…)"

From http://www.infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-andra.htm :
"(…) 1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being 2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning. 3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles. 4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness. 5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12). (…)"

From http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2008/10/The-Institutional-Path-for-Change-in-This-Age-Andragogy-not-Pedagogy.aspx :
"(…) 1. Letting learners know why something is important to learn 2. Showing learners how to direct themselves through information 3. Relating the topic to the learners' experiences 4. People will not learn until they are ready and motivated to learn 5. Requires helping them overcome inhibitions, behaviors, and beliefs about learning (…)"

Rethinking the Architecture of Teaching

To be able to scaffold students’ learning and to amplify their cultural awareness and their selfawareness, teachers should engage in a process of investigation on how young people see the world and themselves, how they feel about learning and schooling, how they build concepts of something and how they reflect on their own thinking, doing and being.

Teachers don't know more about their students as their students know about themselves. Students and teachers are equally information providers as they are receivers of information. Furthermore, in an active learning community, students and teachers have the opportunity to collaboratively explore multiple ways to construct concepts and generate knowledge, especially if this learning community is guided by a teacher-learner concept where the adult is not necessarily the teacher and the child or the adolescent is not necessarily the learner.

My conviction is that all teaching and learning situations defined by superiority-inferiority, observer-observed, giver-receiver, knower-ignorer, naive thinker - advanced thinker dichotomies should be questioned and systematically reshaped to become opportunities for collective and critical inquiry – breaking down the boundaries between teaching, learning and research.

If teachers are supposed to engage in a professional development they have to develop a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that define educational relationships and ask questions like: Why and what do I teach or learn? Do I teach or learn what I think I teach or learn? What defines a school and an educational relationship? What differences are there between teaching and learning? What is teaching? What is learning? Who decides what has to be taught an learned?

This is true for students as it is for teachers. If young people are supposed to develop a critical attitude and critical thinking they must be encouraged to observe, to study and to analyse their context and to gain a deeper understanding of how social practices and including educational practices are generated.

But, how should young people gain critical understanding, if they are supposed to think critically about everything that happens in the “outside” world but not about what happens in school, the place where they spend a representative part of the day and the context which sometimes even structures their life and thinking for the rest of the day?

This paradigm shift in education requires an honest curiosity by teachers and an intense faith in young people’s will to learn and in their potential to acquire an understanding of the world around them by developing their own view points, by re-building shared concepts or constructing new ones.

Of course, to develop something which we may call research literacy, students should be encouraged to explore a wide range of learning styles and interest and they should also be encouraged to develop a critical position against any intellectual monopoly. It also requires teachers to become participant observers, in an anthropological sense, and to spend more time than they do today, on reflecting on education than on pre-structuring schooldays for their students and on preparing detailed lesson plans and materials in order to transmit pseudo-objective content to the next generation.

To use M. Mead’s three types of enculturation (postfigurative, cofigurative, prefigurative), I think that school is still to much based on the postfigurative model where knowledge is passed from adults to children and where adults have difficulties to conceive of another future for the next generation than their own lives.

The question remains if it is possible for teachers to act as transformative agents in an institution they are supposed to serve? Is it conceivable, that they engage in a critical discourse with their students about knowledge and social practices when at the same time they feel obliged to follow a fixed curriculum, textbooks and participate in national tests?

Yes and no. The answer is no, if teachers think that they can do project-based learning, reflective education and collaborative inquiry and, at the same time, avoid the curriculum, textbooks and tests as a object for critical inquiry.

The answer is yes, if curricula, textbooks and tests are critically analyzed and deconstructed and if their hidden objectives and underlying assumptions are made transparent. If critical thinking is one of the aims of education, then young people must be encourage to think critically about learning, schooling and curriculum, about pseudo-objective textbook contents and testing.

After the PISA surveys conducted by the OECD, Luxembourg, tries to bring major changes to education by changing the way schools evaluate students' learning. I think that indeed there is an urgent need to change evaluation practices but I have serious doubts that a tangible progress in education is possible without a fundamental redesign of the sanitized textbook and worksheets pedagogy and thus the teacher-student-knowledge relationship.

Thoughts on Education

I have set up a new website with my past and current short publications on learning and teaching. You can find it at the address http://www.fiermonte.lu. Some articles are in German, others in English or French. Only one has been translated from French to English. (If someone is interested to provide a translation for anything I have written, feel free to contact me.) Most of the articles have been published in print and some can only be found online. As I am not working in school anymore I have more difficulties to find the time to write although I have quite a few ideas on interesting subjects that I should consider thinking over more in depth. This could best be done by discussing it with other professionals and by writing about it of course. Today I know, that during my teaching days, I didn't write enough to make my thinking more transparent and explicit - to myself and to others. I can remember very well when I said to Gérard Gretsch and Christian Wolzfeld with whom I started to work on different projects in the beginning of the nineties - "I can't write!" because this was what I thought of myself and what was left of fifteen years schooling during which I d been untaught how to write.
I'm convinced that teachers should be encourage - and take the courage and the time - to investigate more on their teaching by writing and sharing their thoughts, but I also know how difficult it is to put something on paper or on the computer if you always expect it to be near to perfection or if you think that others may have such an expectation.

As I have no big ideas and no academic position to defend - which could prevent me to reveal to soon what I'm working on - I will also publish draft articles on what I am currently interested. This does not mean that I wouldn't be happy to be quoted if you use any of my contributions in your work or if you find some interesting ideas in my writings.

To make it easier for everyone to decide on how to use the stuff I've written I will publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution License. You will find a notification regarding this license and links Creative Commons licenses under every article on www.fiermonte.lu.

If only teachers could all be Pygmalions

40 Years ago, in 1968, the psychologist Robert Rosenthal and the principal of an elementary school Lenore F. Jacobson conducted their famous study to test the hypothesis if children would become brighter when expected to by their teachers. The study was conducted in 18 primary school classes from which 20% of the students were randomly chosen to be the "brighter" kids after they all had taken a non-verbal intelligence test which in fact was not taken into account to choose the children.
After 8 month the study apparently showed that a strong "interpersonal expectancy effect", also called "Pygmalion effect" or "Rosenthal effect" had influenced the attitudes of the teachers in a way that as a matter of fact, the randomly chosen kids showed intellectual gains than their non-chosen classmates.

Funnily enough, on this 40th birthday of the Pygmalion-in-the-classroom-study, Luxembourg has introduce standardized testing for third graders for the known reasons which there are, raise the standards after the disastrous PISA study results, accountability and better student's orientation (!). Funny also, that when years ago standardized testing was introduced at the end of the primary school, I said that this would only be the beginning and that it was just a matter of time until standardized testing would be introduced in lower grades. Now here we are. But as it took quite a few years, I can affirm that I was not at the origin of a self-fulfilling prophecy I made - at least I hope so.

For those who would like to get a short overview of the study by R. Rosenthal, here are his own words which I took the liberty to transcribe from the video below. This is a must read for all the teachers especially those in third grades in Luxembourg.

R. Rosenthal: "What we wanted to show was the extend to which teachers expectations could actually effect pupils intellectual performance, for example their IQ scores.
So what we did was, we tested everybody in the school with a test that pretended to be a test that would predict academic blooming - the so called Harvard test of inflected acquisition - and allegedly on the basis of that test but not really we gave each of the teachers in the school the names of a handful of children in her classroom that would get smart in the academic year ahead.

These kids names were taken out of a hat. We chose them by means of a table of random numbers. The children themselves did not know in any direct way that teachers were holding certain expectations for them. Teachers were told not to tell the kids and of course we didn't tell the children either. So the children never knew.

And then when we tested the children a year later we found that those kids who'd be alledgedly to their teachers be showing or going to show intellectual gains, in fact showed greater intellectual gains than did the children of whom we'd said nothing in particular. So the kids actually got smarter when they were expected to get smarter by their teachers.

We've come to feel that there are really four factors that operate in the mediation or communication of these self-fulfilling prophecies, especially in a classroom but not only in a classroom.

So what are these four things that teachers tend to do differently to kids for whom they have more favorable expectations?

The first factor is the climate factor. Teachers tend to create a warmer climate for those children for whom they have more favorable expectations. They are nicer to them. Both in terms of the things they say and also in the non-verbal channels of communication.

The other very important factor is the so called input factor. That one probably won't surprise anyone. Teachers teach more material to those kids for whom they have more favorable expectations. After all, if you think a kid is dumb and can't learn you are not going to put yourself out to try to teach him very much.

Two other factor though make a difference. One is the response opportunity factor, that is
kids get more of a chance to respond if the teachers expect more of them. They call on them more often and when they do call on them they let them talk longer and they help and shape with them the answers that the kids speak out - kind of working together to put the response out.

The last is feedback. The feedback factor works in this way: As you might expect if more is expected of the kid, the kid is praised more, positively reinforced more for getting a good answer out, but interestingly enough is given more differentiated feedback when they get the wrong answer.
One of the ways in which you can sometimes tell a little bit that the teacher does not have very high expectations for a kid is that the teacher is willing to accept a low quality response or won't really clarify what would have been a good quality response. Maybe because he or she feels well what's the use, the kid is not smart enough to profit from this additional clarification.

So those are the four factors climate, input, response opportunity and feedback."

Source:



Additional resources:

Covert Communication in Classrooms, Clinics, and Courtrooms
by Robert Rosenthal - Harvard University
http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_121.asp

T&C TOWER - Rediscovering the Pygmalion myth in today's education
Expectation stimulates the mind
http://maincc.hufs.ac.kr/~theargus/378/theory_01.htm
(His conclusion lead to the title of this blog post. Thank you Lee Hyae-myung.)

Rosenthal, Robert & Jacobson, Lenore Pygmalion in the classroom (1992). Expanded edition. New York: Irvington

For details on the Pygmalion myth or the play by George B. Shaw, go to wikipedia.org.