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

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

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.

What teachers can learn from new approaches in archaeology

In analogy to archeology, pedagogical reflection doesn't deal with an objective truth or evidence but with a subjective construction which can become - sometimes only for a limited period - a shared truth in a given social context.
For example, an archaeological discovery like a female figurine can be seen as a religious object, or a symbol for fertility, or evidence for a matriarchal society, depending on an archaeologist interpretation of the context where it has been found and on his specific view.

In archaeology like in education different people will tell different stories about a situation or an artifact, a text, an answer, a drawing, an excavated object etc. There is no immediate self-evident nature of a learning outcome as there is no self-evident nature of an archaeological discovery. Decontextualized they become more and more difficult, sometimes even impossible to interpret and the stories told are closer to speculation than to reality.

If from a certain point of view there seems to be an objective evidence than, from a different point of view, others could well have found a different truth. Does this mean that anything is equally true or that the truth is always a bit of everything?
I don't think that extreme relativism, which I encounter frequently in my work with schools, is helpful. Most of the time it is a way to avoid to take a stand, to express an opinion for or against an interpretation and in consequence to avoid that ones opinion could be refuted by others. And, extreme relativism is often a way to avoid to make a decision and to be taken responsible for its possible consequences.

In "Towards reflexive method in archaeology : the example at Çatalhöyük" Ian Hodder, a postprocessual archaeologist describes a new aproach in archaelogy based on reflexive startegies that can be used to work your way through negotiated interpretations in a given context. Hodder calls this approach "reflexive method".

He enumerates a set of twelve methodologies and describes four resp. five themes which I think could be applied to education. After having read the following quotes try to read them again with the word "archaeological" substituted by "pedagogical" or "educational":

In analogy to archeology, pedagogical reflection doesn't deal with an objective truth or evidence but with a subjective construction which can become - sometimes only for a limited period - a shared truth in a given social context.
For example, an archaeological discovery like a female figurine can be seen as a religious object or a toy or a symbol for fertility or evidence for a matriarchal society, depending on an archaeologist interpretation of the context where the figurine has been found and on the archaelogist's specific view.
In an educational context, a non-compliant behavior of a student can be regarded differently depending on the situation where this behavior could be observed, and of course the point of view of the observer. The reason for the behavior could be found in the situation itself or be seen in the broader social context that the child lives in.


Reflexivity,
"By this I mean the examination of the effects of archaeological assumptions and actions on the verious communities involved in an archaeological process."

Relationality or contextuality
"The notion here is that meaning is relational. This emphasis is seen in the reflexive attempts to relate findings to a specific context of knowledge production. but the emphasis is also visible in the inter-relations of contextual and artefactual information."

Interactivity
"The aim here is to provide machanisms for people to question and criticize archaeological interpretations that are being made, as they are being made. (...) The prioritizing (sampling) procedures are arrived at by negotiation between staff members. (...) Interactivity is also facilitated ... by the provision of the data base on the Web (...) and by the provision of information in diary and video form that situates the data base and opens it up for critique and alternative interpretation."

Multivocality
"A wide range of different groups often have conflicting interest in the past and wish to be engaged in the archaeological process in different ways. (...) Mechanisms need to be provided so that different discourses can take place."

"An additional theme can be described as "non-dichotomous thinking" that is the breaking down and questioning of categories and boundaries. (...) It is necessary to bridge the divide between archaeology as either science or humanity either history or anthropology, as either objective or subjective."

To give you an impression on this reflective approach in action visit the official website of the site in Turkey's Anatolian plain known as Çatalhöyük : http://www.catalhoyuk.com

Points of Viewing Children's Thinking, Ricki Goldman

I recommend this book to all who used camcorders in their class for doing action research or ethnographic inquiries, and to all those who have read my last post on Jacques Duez, the Belgian teacher who used the video camera in his ethics lessons to record the discussions that took place in his classroom and to share it with other classes, the local community or teachers in his school.

Some quotes from this marvelous and inspiring book:

"I sense a crisis looming in front of us, a crisis of technological illiteracy that I believe we can overcome as a society if we simply listen carefully to the stories that young people tell us about their understanding. Although we introduce innovative programs in an attempt to reach students, we do little to find out about how they view their own thinking. Instead, we apply more and more antidotes and theoretical solutions from above. How many more "educational experiments" will we impose on our schools without listening to how children view their learning."

"How can we think that schools are natural settings in which to observe young people? Not only are they social constructions whose purpose is to manage and enculturate the next generation, they are places where performances of gender, class, race, and economic status are played out at every turn of the head."

"Working with analog and digital video data can shift the nature of ethnographic inquiry, redefining its boundaries by blurring the distinctions that previously separated those who are the subjects of inquiry (informants and participants), those who do the recording and interpreting (ethnographers), and those who read the texts (audiences)."

"(…) will teachers ever be able to know what children really knwo in these mediated cultures? And what happens to standards and testing when each child's learning is encouraged to be intrinsically unique? My answer to the first questions is "no". The second question I answer wiht a better question, "What else do you think could replace uniformity and conformity as the measure of learning?"

"The changing role of teachers is not to become the school technologist; it is to enter into the discours with children about what it is to know something in any given culture, even a computer culture. It is to become part epistemologist, part ethnographer, and, always, to become a learner."

"We can look at the school not only as a place that disseminates culture to those who have no choice but to partake in its rituals, but also as a place where cultures emerge and are created, layer upon layer. The school is its own culture, and it contains many subcultures, each with its own past, present, and future. The young people and adults who share the same physical and psychological space for 8 to 10 hours a day are the makers of that culture, not merely its recipients."

Today Ricki Goldman works at the New York University Steinhardt School of culture, Education, and Human Development
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/profiles/faculty/ricki_goldman

MERLin, the Multimedia Ethnographic Research Lab at the University of British Columbia where Ricki Goldman used to work
http://orion.njit.edu/merlin/people/ricki/index.html

Can school change society or do we have to change society first to have a different school?

This week I attended a conference on the PISA and PIRLS surveys. As the conference had been organized by a teacher union there were some tension concerning the interpretation of the results of the surveys. If the results are poor, it could well be that not only the government but also the teachers have their part of responsibility because they may be doing a bad job or because they had their say in the defining of the curriculum in use. That neither the second nor the latter conclusion can be easily accepted by teachers and their representatives is easy to understand.

What was raised then, was that education may well be victim of circumstances set by society itself. Circumstances that were mentioned were growing individualism, consumerism and strong economic interests. From this perspective it is clear, that society is responsible for the disaster and that it should change first. But is it as simple as that? Maybe the science of complexity could help us out.

According to complexity theory, school is a complex adaptive system which is embedded in and connected to other complex adaptive systems. School is not loosely connected to society, it is an itegral part of society. The actors in the educational system are at the same time actors in other systems like the national economy. Furthermore, what makes school special, is it's long-term influence on an individual - from early childhood to adult life. And as schooling is continuously being extended, the probability is growing that it will have a strong influence on the individuals hence on society. So why shouldn't educational systems be in a position to change other social systems?

If there are doubts that school can change society, we have reasons to doubt that any subsystem (unions, non-profit organizations, governments, laws, family structures etc.) can have a considerable impact on the global system. Is this the case? If we turn to what the science of complexity tells us, I would say that the answer is yes and no.

What is highly probable is, that small changes in school, won't lead to major changes in short-term. At the same time some of the changes will have a long-term effect, but it is impossible to predict which of the changes will have a major effect, when this effect will be perceivable, and if this effect is going to beneficial. Changes in the curiculum, in the the training of teachers, in the way schools are organized will without any doubt, have a short-term impact on school life, but long-term outcomes remain unpredictable.

We have also to consider that while changes in the educational system take place, other subsystems change at the same time, influencing one another and the global system like the society in which they are embedded. We cannot stop the economical system from evolving to have enough time to analyse the impact of changes brought to education. This means, that we make decisions on assumption at a certain stage of a process an this process, or parallel processes are changing the conditions that have lead to these assumptions.

The question is now, how we should decide on what actions to take, if we have no possibility to identify what long-term outcomes an action or a decision could lead to.

In his book "Complexity and Creativity in Organizations" (1996), Ralph D. Stacey posts that "The criteria for quality actions become, not ends, but ethical considerations and criteria having to do with maintaining positions, keeping options open, retaining flexibilty, and revealing errors as fast as possible. The quality action is not one with a predetermined outcome, because that effectively excludes all creative actions, but the action that is morally good in itself, the action that keeps options open by allowing an organization to stay in the game (...)."

If this is true, which I believe to be the case, then we should invest time to define an ethical framework that would help us to choose between possible actions. We should also set conditions in which creativity of a large number of actors is possible so that through a double-loop learning process innovation is possible. The science of complexity also tells us, that there is no justification to an organizational model in which change is built on a decisional hierarchy where "a few do the thinking and the creating while the many do as they are told." (Stacey)

For all those who would like to know precisely what to do (stakeholders or teachers alike), who want to be in controle of the outcomes, who need a blueprint for change that they would then impose on others, and who think that self-organization only leads to disorder, this may not be a very satisfying position. From such a perspective there is no guarantee for success, not even a lot of control and obviously many actions will be futile and will have neither visible or beneficial short-term nor long-term outcomes. But if uncertainty is the price for creativity (and according to complexity science we need a lot of creativity to increase the probability of innovation and to avoid that a system gets stuck in a stable equilibrium) then, we should opt for uncertainty instead of top down control.

"It is honesty, not rightness, that moves children." Herbert Kohl

During my three days trip to the French Atlantic coast I reread 36 children and Growing Minds, on Becoming a Teacher by Herbert Kohl.

H. Kohl is a great example of a reflecting teacher who is also a gifted writer. He is often qualified as "provocative" educator with "revolutionary" teaching ideas and methods. Considering that his beginning teaching experiences happened back in 1962, in a primary school class in Harlem, with 36 black children, they are indeed revolutionary.

But what stroke me most, is his honesty regarding his first steps in teaching, where he still stuck to the curriculum and tried to establish order and gain authority in his classroom while simultaneously trying to do innovative projects and bringing in his enthousiasm for teaching.

In my view, what he did is the same as most young teachers do (me included, when I started teaching), trying to merge or serve system expectations and a self-image of an innovative, skilled and respected educator.

What makes H. Kohl exceptional to me - as a teacher, not as a writer - is his self-criticisme, the conclusion he drew out of his daily experiences and his statements on the role of the teacher.

It's definitively a must read for every educator regardless if he/she is in his/her beginning or final years of teaching.

I don't want to spoil your pleasure of discovering the books by yourself so I won't quote to much from them, except for the title and the following :

"I've been involved with what has been called open or progressive education for over twenty years and found these concepts frequently misunderstood. One can teach Shakespeare, microbiology, computer math, as well as simple reading , writing and arithmetic, in open ways that leat do understanding, mastery, and occasionally love of the subject itself. To teach in an open way does not mean the loss of content, the indulgence of the whims of students, or the avoidance of complexity. On the contrary, it implies control of content, and the ability to deal with new and difficult ideas and concepts - in other words, the development of sophisticated thinking."

"In a boring classroom where learning is not much more than filling out forms and taking tests, ther's little reason to want to join back in once you've been separated from the group. (...)

Decent nonviolent discipline will only be effective in a learning environment where interesting things are happening. There is an essential relationship between the quality of content an the use of nonpunitive discipline strategies in any learning situation. Effective discipline is dependent upon building an attractive and comfortable world that children don't want to be excluded from, and not upon how you respond in any particular instance."

"Because they saw my researching they learned to do research. They wouldn't have learned had I merely told them to do it."

The Book of Learning and Forgetting, Frank Smith

This is one of the books I regularly reread and one of those that I wish I had written. On 120 thought-provoking and illuminating pages the author retraces the roots and illustrates the consequences of some of the well established practices that inhabit school. Most of these practices are taken for granted by teachers, parents and politicians. Among these practices you'll find learning through repetition, hard work, individual effort, conditioning, reinforcement, exercises and corrections, testing, rewards and control.
He opposes this "official theory of learning" to a "classic view" of learning which says that most of the time "you learn from the company you keep" from the individuals and the groups you most identify with. We learn "new things" from them by connecting those things to what we already know, to what we have discovered, imagined or understood and by connecting them to our beliefs and theories, and to what we would like to learn.
Smith also says that the question should never be if you are learning, but always what are we learning, because you always learn. I totally agree with that. In reading lessons you could for instance be learning that reading opens new doors to imagination and understanding, or you could be learning, that you are a poor reader, that you will never be a member of the "literacy club", or you could be learning which strategies are most effective to avoid reading until you end up being illiterate - as school expected you to be from the start.
If you are asked to memorize word lists, you may be learning that putting things into short term memory helps getting good marks in tests or, if you have difficulties remembering those words, you may be learning that you probably have a learning disability, that you don't fit, that you have no talent for languages, that your brain is not made for learning, that learning is an endless struggle and a continuous war against forgetting.
Smith also questions the value of testing, measurement and standardization as a means to achieve quality in education. On the contrary, continuous testing diminishes the motivation and the self-confidence of the low scorers. On the other hand the high scorers "become so addicted to tests (...) that thy are reluctant to read or write anything, in school or out, unless a score or a grade will be attached."

Besides the devastating critic Smith has also to offer some interesting suggestions on how to change school, well knowing what questions they will generate. Regarding these suggestions he anticipates:
"The teachers then ask who should bring all this change about. My answer is that they must. Teachers shouldn't expect people outside the classroom to improve their working conditions for them; all their problems were created by people outside the classroom. Teachers must take charge of their own professional lives. How might teachers take charge and improve what goes on in schools? I have a simple answer. They must change the world. And when they ask how they could possibly change the world, I have another simple answer - a little bit at a time. I suggest they start with their own classrooms."

For me, one of the key statements in the book is this one:
"You learn in communities of people who do what you are expected to learn."
My interpretation of this is the following : If you expect your students to write, you have to write and share your writing. If you want them to read, then read and share your readings experience with your students. If you want them to reflect on their learning, then you should reflect on your teaching and share your reflections with them ...
Teachers - think about this!

Become a Reflective Practitioner in Three Steps

My last post was meant to encourage teachers to reflect on their teaching by writing. I'd like to come back to this subject.
Teachers often feel more threatened than encouraged, when they are asked to do what they expect students to do - to write. This tells us a lot about their schooling experience. If you are one of those teachers, or if you have never done the effort to reflect on your teaching by writing, this post is meant for you.
I suppose, that usually you choose from one of the following replies when asked to write down your thoughts or feelings: I am a poor writer. I have nothing really interesting to report. I don't know what to choose from all these events that occur every day im my classroom. When I read what others have written I feel incompetent. I don't know if it's fair to concentrate on one child when all of them deserve my attention. What's the use in writing on something that belongs to the past, even a recent past, when everyday new events occur that are equally important. I have so much preparation to do. How should I find the time to write? I don't like to leave written traces when I'm still searching for the right answer. Why should I spent the time on writing when I can tell it in our next meeting. etc.
(In case you have other excuses I am interested to know them;-)

How can we get past this obstacle? It's not easy, I know it by experience. Let's do it step by step.

First step:
What I say is not: Write down your reflections!
I say : Reflect by writing down your thoughts on your teaching!
What's the difference? Well, you don't need to know in detail what your writing will be about. Whatever comes to your mind is perfect to start from. You don't even need to start with a good question. Often the good questions emerge during writing or only at the end.
Your reflections will take shape during the writing process, trust me. There is no need for having thought out beforehand where to start or to end and what should happen in between. Don't think about details and depth. In short, don't reflect to much before you've started to write. Both are closely connected.
What happened today? Can you think of a specific situation, one child? Was there something you didn't feel comfortable with or something you would like to improve? Is a specific student's behaviour a mystery to you? Was their a conflict difficult to handle, maybe with parents or your principle? Have you been bored by a task, one that you repeat continuously because you think you have to, without being convinced that it's useful?
I am sure you can find something. Sit down at the computer or take a pen and give it a try. A few sentences or one hundred - it doesn't matter. What comes out comes out.

Second step: What should you do with your writing? You should share it with somebody. Do it as soon as possible. Do it before you've thought it over and over and before you consider deleting the file. Who should you share it with? It can be another teacher or anybody else who could be interested; a parent, your students, your principal, your daughter or son, your grandma, ...
The easiest would be to share it with your students of course. But if you don't feel comfortable with that idea and if you can't think of anybody who maybe interested in your writing, post it here, or send me an email (fr, en, de, lu).
Whoever your conversational partner will be, you will probably get some reaction in return, maybe even a good question. Don't expect to much. It's not that important how much reaction you get. What counts is your effort to write and to share.

Third step:
After having shared your writing with somebody, go back to your text and develop one aspect of it. Or if another subjects turns up keep the first one, add the reactions you got as a comment and a short description of the sharing situation, and continue with the new subject.

Next steps:
Is there a fourth and a fifth step? Yes, of course but it depends on what you have written about and on the reactions you got, and on your reaction to the reactions you got. We'll think about that when you've done the first steps.

That's it for today. I wish you an inspiring quest.
May the courage and passion be with you!

This post has largely been inspired by recent meetings with teachers and the connections I made with some (re)readings like : On Listening to What Children Say, by Vivian Gussin Paley and A Teacher's Quest for a Child's Questions, by Kathe Jervis both published in Teachers, Teaching, & Teaching Education, Ed. M. Okazawa-Rey, J. Anderson, R. Traver.

To finish this post, here's a quote by V. G. Paley: "The act of teaching became a daily search for the child's point of view accompanied by the sometimes unwelcome disclosure of my hidden attitudes. The search was what mattered - only later did someone tell me it was research - and it provided an open-ended script from which to observe, interpret, and integrate the living drama of the classroom." in On Listening to What Children Say.

Die Welle - The Wave

On Friday I went the see the movie "Die Welle". It is based on an experiment by Ron Jones that took place April 1967 in his Highschool history class. Jones' objective was to demonstrate to his students that if the context is right and the slogans strong and clear enough, individuality and critical thinking can easily be replaced by a kind of mass-"consciousness" with fascist tendencies.

In 1972, 5 Years after the experiment Ron Jones wrote down his view of the experience - called at that time The Third Way. You can find his report here :
http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psychology/Frank/Thirdwave.html


In this report Ron Jones tells us how it all started: "We were studying Nazi Germany and in the middle of a lecture I was interrupted by the question. How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people. How could the townspeople, railroad conductors, teachers, doctors, claim they knew nothing about concentration camps and human carnage. How can people who were neighbors and maybe even friends of the Jewish citizen say they weren't there when it happened. it was a good question. I didn't know the answer."

In only five days the students experienced the metamorphoses from critical thinkers to subjects completely submitted to discipline and authority similar to the one of Nazi regime.

Ron Jones : "We have seen that fascism is not just something those other people did. No. it's right here. In this room. In our own personal habits and way of life. Scratch the surface and it appears. Something in all of us. We carry it like a disease. The belief that human beings are basically evil and therefore unable to act well toward each other. A belief that demands a strong leader and discipline to preserve social order."

But the experience not only has an effect on his students but also on Ron Jones himself:
"I now began to ponder not just how far this class could be pushed but how such I would change my basic beliefs toward an open classroom and self directed learning".

For my part I didn't like the end of the film to much. I prefer the version in Ron Jones report on the final day of the experience. But anyway, The film is a must for all educators and good occasion to reflect on some of the classroom rituals they sometimes impose on their students without thinking of possible drawbacks of a "uniform code of behavior" as Jones calls it.

I strongly recommend to read the original report by Jones and also read through the following Wikipedia pages
on the Milgram-Experiment : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment,
the Stanford-Prison-Experiment : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
on Jane Elliott, best known for her workshops on racism : http://www.janeelliott.com/
and on Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's theory of the 'spiral of silence' (Die Schweigespirale in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweigespirale

Finally Ron Jones' website : http://www.ronjoneswriter.com/

Who the Hell is Gianni?

Gianni is one of the boys who visited the school of Barbiana and one of the students who wrote the "Letter to a Teacher" back in 1967. Gianni as all the other schoolboys from Barbiana didn't succeed in school, meaning, that his school carreer was very short and a painful experience in opposition to the one of Pierino, a Doctor's son, who seemed to have been born for school and did quite well. The book starts with these words that really stroke me when I first read them as a student teacher in 1982: "Dear Miss, You won't remember me or my name. You have flunked so many of us. On the other hand I have often had thoughts about you, and the other teachers, and about that institution which you call "school" and about the kids that you flunk. You flunk us right out into the fields and factories and there you forget us."

What the PISA survey conducted by the OECD shows (and it seems to have been confirmed by a recent survey conducted by the University of Luxembourg) is in fact nothing we didn't know in Luxembourg, but something we liked and still like to ignore : Students - the Giannis - from low socio-economic status, and recent immigrant backgrounds are less likely to succeed in school than their native counterparts or the students from families with a higher socio-economic status - the Pierinos. This means that the inequality of educational opportunities has and continues to caracterise the Luxembourgish school system. The schoolboys of Barbiana would say that "It remains a school cut to measure for the rich. For people who can get their culture at home and are going to school just in order to collect diplomas."

It is no secret, that children - like Gianni - whose parents don't read much, have had a short educational career, don't speak the languages used in school and therefore can't assist them in doing their homework or in preparing for a test, will have enourmous difficulties to follow the teaching rhythm dictated by textbooks and testing. On the other hand, will the children - like Pierino - whose parents know what is expected from their kids at school have higher chances to get their degrees, regardless of the intellectual potential they may have. As the schoolboys from Barbiana put it : "The doctor's chromosomes are powerful. Pierino could write when he was only five. He has no need for a first grade. He enters the second at age six. And he can speak like a printed book. He, too, is already branded, but with the mark of the chosen race." and "Even the rich have difficult offspring. But they push them ahead."

A few pages later in the book the schoolboys continue quoting their former teacher. She sees the difficulty of teaching Giannis and Pierinos in one class from her own perspective, with these significant words : "Now that everybody comes to school it's impossible to teach. We get quite illiterate students."

This statement resonates with the viewpoint a lot of people persist in and share in Luxembourg and elsewhere. Keeping the doors open as long as possible for students with poor results (in the majority identical with children having a recent immigrant background and/or from families having a low socio-economic status), is suspected to be one of the main reasons for the leveling down of the value of educational degrees.

At the eve of the possible adoption of a new school law by the Luxembourgish government (the old law is from 1912 !) there are a lot of discussion on how to reform education. I'm curious to see if the changes will have a beneficial effect on the Giannis. I have strong doubts because a lot of key factors which determine the so called "hidden curriculum" are not questioned in all the discussions that I have followed so far. Two of these key factors I see are the textbooks that teachers are supposed to work through with an entire class in a given frame of time (on or two years) and the achievements that students are expected to reach in the same period and which they will get certified through test results or by checklists of attained skills and knowledge. If these key factors remain unquestioned, teachers will see themselves evaluated and ranked by these testings and checklists as much as the students and react like the former teacher of the schoolboys did. They will continue to teach under continuous pressure of attaining - in short term - equal outcomes for all students with very different potentials and backgrounds thus having the same old problem - "the Giannis they loose".

Célestin Freinet : Too progressive to be remembered ?

80 years ago the French pedagogue and educational reformer Célestin Freinet moved to Saint-Paul-de-Vence with his wife Elise where they both worked as teachers.

At that time C. Freinet had already developed most of his major teaching principles which he called techniques (in opposition to methods which he associated with a top down approach). Each of his techniques were meant to connect learning in school to real life outside school and to encourage students to be productive, explorative, critical and collaborative while learning.

Freinet's students regularly left the school building to join their teacher in exploratory walks during which they gathered impressions and interesting information about their natural and social environment. Back to their classroom the students composed their own "free texts" which they discussed with their classmates and used a printing press to publish their "authentic" and most of the time collaborative work in newspapers. Gradually these newspapers were used as meaningful and rooted learning material instead of the preestablished curricula schoolbooks and they were exchanged with those of other schools.
These exchanges of "culture packages" between the Freinet's and René Daniel's students marked the beginning of interschool networks which became one of the characteristics of the Modern School Movement.

Besides the printing press Freinet's students used other instruments like photography, slide shows or audio-tape recorders. The instruments and techniques established a different relationship between students and teachers, between students and school as an institution, and most important between students and knowledge.

Freinet's efforts to establish collaborative teaching through interschool network was also motivated by the strong conviction that collaborative reflective teaching is essential to any serious school development and a necessary ground for reaching beyond rigid top down curricula and the latest teaching tricks, methods or ceremonials in fashion.

The cathedral and the bazaar in Luxembourgish education

In his book "The Cathedral & The Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary" Eric Raymond writes about the rise of the Linux operating system and of open source software but his metaphor can easily be applied to education in general and also to ICT in education. What I observe in education in Luxembourg for example are several attempts to enforce or construct educational change following a centralized, more or less coordinated top down approach. Intended is the building of controlled innovative hot-spots (cathedrals) that could, if successful, serve as transferable models, lightning the path for the rest of the educational community.
Surprisingly - and maybe not surprisingly after all - the same stakeholders that argue in favour of fundamental educational change persistently ignoring emergent creative efforts in the bazaar and giving disproportionate weight to the innovation they think they are controlling.
To me there is a significant mismatch between what is said to be intended and what is happening real-time in school. I'll come back to this subject in short ...
If you have comments on this I would be glad to hear from you ...