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.