Cowboy doctors? Cowboy teachers - surely not!

A delightful and interesting essay in the New Yorker, Cowboys and Pit Crews by Atul Gawende, who is a surgeon and staff member at Harvard among other amazing achievements, says that medicine is practised according to its cowboy roots in the 1930s and now in a much more medically complex environment should work more like a pit crew. A pit crew is a highly coordinated team working on a task rather than the individualistic cowboy approach that he says still exists. Gawende says that in the 1930s a doctor could carry around his patient records in his head and his treatments were quite limited in number and complexity. He says this leads to a cowboy culture, where highly individualistic doctors act according to their own judgements when in fact they depend on a growing team of fellow professions and specialists. In other words he is saying a lack of team work is damaging health delivery. He says, "A structure that prioritizes the independence of all those specialists will have enormous difficulty achieving great care."

Well, isn't this the same criticism that is being made of our traditional school culture, where the classroom teacher is in almost full control of her methods of teaching and the tradition of privacy blocks accountability? It seems that from every quarter there is more evidence that intelligent collaboration works better than

By the way, Gawende points out, in conclusion, that modern cowboys are very sophisticated in their cattle management and work in well coordinated teams!

What to talk about over Christmas: Australian schools doing very well

The highly reputed Pisa tests for 2009 were published this week and despite what you hear in the media, Australia continues to do very well. The overall results for Reading, Mathematics and Science show the pattern. The chart results on the left are just the overall mark for Reading for the top 26 countries, and light blue indicates 'significantly above average performance' of the 60 or so countries and darker blue is 'average'. Australia is clearly in the top league, and well above Britain, USA, France, Germany. For the full summary results, see here. For links to all the reports, see here.

This is what all chalkies should berate their relative with over Christmas. Last time I told some friends that Australia performs well in international terms, I was met with disbelief. After I yelled at them about actual tests, such as Pisa, they thought for a while, and then said, "You education people have clearly done a poor job of promoting school achievements." The press coverage has largely been along the lines of: 'Australia beaten by countries x, y and z, and Australia slips in Reading.'

Pisa is highly respected because it pays due attention to how student use knowledge, and apply it. The common belief that Asian students mainly learn by rote is clearly wrong.

How school systems get better - Minister, please read!

McKinsey have just released a follow up report for the OECD titled How the world's most improved school systems keep get better. Their 2007 report How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top was widely respected. In the new report they they did not just look at school systems at the highest levels, but good performers at each of the stages of development. For example, a school system in West Cape, South Africa is just moving out of basic standards of schooling in a very poor community.

McKinsey found that there are six common interventions that all good systems undertake.
"Our research suggests that six interventions are common to all performance stages across the entire improvement journey:

• building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals,
• assessing students,
  
• improving data systems,
• facilitating improvement through the introduction of policy documents and education laws,
  
• revising standards and curriculum,
• ensuring an appropriate reward and remuneration structure for teachers and principals.

Though these interventions occur at all performance stages, they manifest differently at each stage."

The most interesting thing to me about this report is what they say next; that the in building a basic system, central control with a strictly managed curriculum is appropriate, and when a system is moving from Good to Excellent, this central control should give way to schools and teachers having more autonomy. And this is for a very believable reason, that when a system is at the 'good' level, teachers have the necessary skills to be more autonomous.

Their message for Australia is clear, Minister, that we are at the middle to advanced levels overall, so it is not appropriate for rigid testing and comparisons of schools to be in the forefront. We should have some of that, but be focusing on building the professionalism of teachers.

The also found that spending lots of money is not necessarily a pathway to system improvement.

On the link above there is an executive report and the full report.

By they way, how well have we done the 6 steps in my experience, in SA?

• building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals - not in a systematic way, except for the occasional splurge
  
• assessing students - not in a systematic way in primary schools, until the last few years, and still focused too much on basic skills; rarely in a way that links back to item 1.
  
• improving data systems - improving in recent years, but needs much more work.
  
• facilitating improvement through the introduction of policy documents and education laws - quite a bit of this; got lots of policies
  
• revising standards and curriculum - not much in measurable standards, but the national curriculum is heading there, maybe?
• ensuring an appropriate reward and remuneration structure for teachers and principals - very little reward for teachers and principals based on actual student performance.

Technology (video) rescues teacher improvement

There is a very interesting story in the NY Times about a major initiative in the US, funded by the Gates Foundation, to use video extensively in observing and improving classroom teaching. Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by a Rich Watcher There is a considerable likelihood that the initiative will be ruined by too much focus on policing and not enough on professionalism, but here's hoping. Digital video might be coming to the rescue of a very sad history of teacher observation and self improvement. It can allow observation to be relatively unobtrusive, and provide an objective record of what happens in a class. Video is relatively cheap now, and small cameras can record vast amounts of vision and sound, all with precise time tracking. A problem is that single camera covering a whole room does not provide the ability to focus in on detail as a human viewer can do. This means that an effective system is relatively expensive. But then so is ineffective teaching.

ICT planning: real goals from a cloudy vision

Everyone agrees that school implementation of ICT into the curriculum is very complicated. And every one talks about goals and strategic planning. But there are dangerous distractions for school leaders taking their attention off what really matters. I think what matters is kids learning, and that we should focus most of our attention on this. But look at what gets in the way.
Here are the four strands that the Digital Education Revolution (DER) set out as the basis for school strategic planning.
Schools are reporting to DEEWR on their achievement of these four strands. However, there are many such lists of goals. Most ar similar, but they approach the task from different perspectives.
Here is another set of national goals for integration of ICT, alongside the DER four strands.

I have drawn lines to connect elements that seem to match. Clearly, the Making Change Happen set of goals is broader, and is focused more on student learning and outcomes.

But lists can be quite deceptive and cloud our vision because they imply that listed items are of similar importance. They rarely are. A more precise list of the elements would look like this:
But this is my judgment of their relative position. The original document does not tell the reader this information. But there is only a limited indication in this list of the relative importance of the 3 main items.

Pity the poor school administrator who is looking for a quick overview of what to focus on when planning school ICT development. No one needs to tell school principals that ICT infrastructure is costly, complex and urgent. Unless one has a clear view of direction, the urgent will tend to displace the important.

Strategic planning for school ICT - there be dragons there

Strategic planning is a well meaning strategy for school to manage the very real complexity of change. It creates a nice logical structure, but hidden within the process are some very real dragons that can smite well intentioned school administrators setting out on this voyage of school improvement.

Here are the typical stages for strategic planning for the use of ICT. First, the happy scenario without the dragons.

1. Assess where you are
A small team of leaders and special interest people review what happens in the use of ICT, maybe surveying staff and consulting teachers.
2. Identify where you want to be
The planning group explore reasonable next steps for development based on what exists and what is desired.
3. Identify actions
The planning group in consultation with staff decide on actions to improve the program.
4. Document the plan
The details of what is planned are documented and distributed.
5. Implement the plan
The teachers and others involved in the implementation proceed with the agreed plan.
6. Review what you have achieved
The planning group or another group survey, measure and and assess how much improvement has occurred the the cycle of improvement starts again.

When dragons exist, and they usually do, they smite the unsuspecting sailor who is simply trying to get from A to B. This is what might happen to the strategic planning process.

Stages 1-4
The planning group of leadership people and enthusiasts for ICT may not have the same perspective as that of the average teacher and so may proceed without understanding the impediments. They may be influenced by technology enthusiasts in the planning group rather than the curriculum leaders. Dragon 1, experts leading the way. Planning stages 1-4 assume that the planning group and those they consult with actually know the direction the development should take. There is a sense of confidence about actions to take that is not justified. Dragon 2, a false sense of clear direction. Planning by a small group of people with a mission can easily become too ambitious and complex as the planning process takes on a life of its own. Dragon 3, excessive complexity. This dragon is particularly dangerous because its existence is used to justify a planning group doing most of the thinking because it is too complex to interest normal teachers.

Stage 5
This may be the first time the general teacher population are really engaged with the changes, and they may not be happy or committed. Dragon 4, disengaged teachers.

Here are some steps that will help avoid the dragons.

Dragon 3 - excessive complexity
Settle on a small number of objectives that are directly related to student learning. For example:
Primary benefits of technology in learning: students achieve higher levels of: [from the Florida Matrix]

• Active engagement in learning - choosing, selecting, pursuing topics
• Collaboration with peers, experts, near and far
• Constructive activities to build understanding, sharing, publishing
• Authentic learning engaging with real world issues beyond the school
• Goal directed planning, monitoring, reviewing - metacognition

I think these five elements adequately sum up how ICT can benefit learning. Teachers understand them all. They are widely accepted and are unlikely to change very much, and are not dependent on any particular technology.

Dragon 1: experts leading they way
Listen to experts by all means, but test their input with teachers all the way along. Last year's solution might not work now.
Dragon 2: a false sense of clear direction
Test innovations in the classroom before adopting them, gaining supporters along the way. Gain commitment to it being a learning process for classroom practice, not simply the implementation of a set procedure.
Dragon 4: disengaged teachers
Involve teachers all along the way in change they can observe in students.

To the unwary, the six step strategic planning process is a risky way to plan a voyage into unfamiliar territory.

Image: Baylee46

Planning for school improvement (and avoiding strategic planning)

The short video (3min 30 sec) explains some of the limitations of strategic planning for ICT development in schools. Then it outlines an alternative approach - emergent planning.

See the next post for more on strategic planning.

Godness gracious: the internet changed my brain!

There have recently been some excellent articles about an issue that is fundamental to how schools think about the impact of technology on learning. On one side are the pessimists who see the changes being brought about by new technologies as a threat to the way we should learn and engage with information and ideas. On the other hand there are the optimists who believe that we adapt to make the appropriate use of new technogy and ways of doing things.

Nicholas Carr, in Is the internet making us dumber? in the Wall Street Journal writes about evidence that multi-tasking and the sheer distracting nature of the internet interferes with deep and sustained thinking. He says that people are losing the capacity they used to have to read a sustained argument and follow through complex ideas in an orderly manner. He writes:

"What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection. The Web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state of perpetual mental locomotion"

Carr quotes research that suggests that our brains and being modified to adapt to this new dominant form of communication, and we are diminished by the process, and becoming more shallow in our thinking. It is a pretty frightening prospect: technology makes people dumb!

On the other hand, Clay Shirky, also in WSJ asks, Does the internet making you smarter? He takes a closer look at history and points out that we have been here before. The invention of movable type printing famously had a major impact on the refomation, breaking the control of access to scripture away from the established church. And, as Shirky says,

"Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life."

And it did, and we generally now think of this as a good thing. No doubt Nicholas Carr's of the day were filled with foreboding. Shirkey goes on to say,

"Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society."

We can say this now, but at the time it must have been frightening, with the controlled and well ordered system of distributing and interpreting text being destroyed all of a sudden - over a few decades.

Shirky points out a flaw in the story of the pessimists regarding technology, that they romanticise the past. Carr writes about people in the past ploughing through readings that kept their minds on a sustained argument. Very few people did this. It wasn't ever the experience of most people. He also acknowledges that the path to progress is very crooked. Guttenberg's presses produced erotic novels before scientific journals were invented.

"Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it's our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools."

Presumably learning how to read changed our brains. It should be remembered that Socratese complained bitterly about the intoduction of writing to the curriculum in ancient Greece because it would reduce the capacity of young people to memorise, which no doubt it did.

A third player, Steven Pinker in the New York Times in Mind over Mass Media addresses the issue of our brains being changed by new experiences. He says "cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk". Every time the brain learns something new it changes, and adapts. He accepts that distraction, for example, as Carr complains, is a problem,

"But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life."

This is where teachers and common sense come into play. Yes, the internet offers great potential for distraction, so teachers have to work to help students manage it, so they can benefit from its undoubed bounty of information and communication.

The three short articles are much more detailed than my summary. They address a crucial issue for school leaders to be clear about.

It's about student outcomes, stupid!

The 'stupid' in question is me. The following 3 min video outlines some re-thinking I have done over the last 6 months. While I am changing my ideas about school professional learning and what we need to focus on - student outcomes, I can now see how we can resolve the contradictions that have be-deviled us for years - the tension between teacher freedom and external testing.




See also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnNSd6PIsc

The (relatively) simple formula for successful school systems

The OECD commissioned a report from McKinsey & Company on successful school systems and the report was published in 2007: How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top . The report concludes that there are three unremarkable things that high performing systems do consistently:

1. They get the right people to become teachers (the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers).
2. They develop these people into effective instructors (the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction).
3. They put in place systems and targeted support to ensure that every child is able to benefit from excellent instruction (the only way for the system to ready the highests performance is to raise the standard of every student).

The top systems include England, Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Boston, Japan. The report is very readable and basically hopeful because the answer is not just money or extraordinary leadership, but consistency and determination focused on some basiclly straightforward targets. Take teacher quality for example. The report says that all but one of the top systems filter teacher training applicants before University, and then again on entry to the profession. They achieve this in part by restricting the number of teacher training places, which raises the standard of those accepted. They set beginning salaries a little higher, and flatten later salary rises. Most low performing systems have relatively open admission to teacher training, consequent lowering of standards, then there are many graduates for each teaching position, leading to a generally low morale and status for teacher preparation. There is more to it than these measures, but a few smart policy measures have a large impact and, the report claims, prove that the calibre of graduate teachers can be significantly improved at little net increase in cost.

The top performing systems invest great effort in developing their human capital, creating a culture of permanent review and improvement, focused on student performance, for which teachers and schools are accountable. The major point here is that developing human capital is the goal and accountability measures are one of the means to achieve this. Not the other way around. The McKinsey report makes a key point regarding improvement under the heading:

"NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT
Top-performing systems are relentless in their focus on improving the quality of instruction in their classrooms. Yet this focus on instruction, though a necessary condition, is in itself insufficient to bring about improvement. In order to improve instructing, school systems need to find ways to change fundamentally what happens in the classrooms. At the level of individual teachers, this implies getting three things to happen:

• Individual teachers need to become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practice. In most cases, this not only involves building an awareness of what they do but the mindset underlying it.
• Individual teachers need to gain understanding of specific best practices. In general, this can only be achieved through the demonstration of such practices in an authentic setting.
• Individual teachers need to be motivated to make the necessary improvements. In general, this requires a deeper change in motivation that cannot be achieved through changing material incentives. Such changes come about when teachers have high expectations, a shared sense of purpose, and above all, a collective belief in their common ability to make a difference to the education of the children they serve."

It is difficult to imagine how these can be achieved without a 'learning community' approach to professional learning. This is an environment where teachers can safely consider 'weakensses is their own practice', test things in 'authentic settings' and find 'a shared sense of purpose'.

A dominant message from this report is that top systems are overwhelmingly consistent. Everything fits together aiming at the three ingredients: teacher quality, instructional focus, everyone learns.

Professional standards trump 'loose coupling'

I recently read an article written in 2000 by Richard Elmore that has severely dented a concept that was important to school education in the English speaking world during most of my career as a principal. He wrote Building a New Structure For School Leadership to explain why large-scale 'standards-based reform' is critical to the survival of public education. The shocking aspect of this paper for me was his criticism of the concept of 'loose coupling' which I widely touted in the '80s and 90s. Elmore blames the notion of loose-coupling for much of our current troubles. Loose coupling was not a term on everybody's lips, but the concept was widespread.

"This [loose coupling] view, in brief, posits that the "technical core" of education, detailed decisions about what should be taught at any given time, how it should be taught, what students should be expected to learn at any given time, how they should be grouped within classrooms for purposes of instruction, what they should be required to do to demonstrate their knowledge, and, perhaps most importantly, how their learning should be evaluated, resides in individual classrooms, not in the organizations that surround them."

He then accurately describes the dominant culture of schools in the west for the last few decades where principals were promoted on their ability to do everything except focus on student outcomes.

"...direct involvement in instruction is among the least frequent activities performed by administrators of any kind at any level..."

We did everything we could to develop a culture and environment where students learnt successfully, but as Elmore explains, much of our work was to provide a buffer behind which teachers could engage privately in the mysterious business of teaching and learning.

Elmore then point to the groundswell of community demand for improved school standards and this has become obvious even in Australia since 2000. But he advocates a strong emphasis on accountability for teaching not as a weapon to punish poor performing schools, but as an accompaniment to a rigorous staff learning program.

"...standards-based reform hits at a critical weakness of the existing institutional structure, namely its inability to account for why certain students master academic content and can demonstrate academic performance while others do not. When the core technology of schools is buried in the individual decisions of classroom teachers and buffered from external scrutiny, outcomes are the consequence of mysterious processes that no one understands at the collective, institutional level. Therefore, school people and the public at large are free to assign causality to whatever their favorite theory suggests: weak family structures, poverty, discrimination, lack of aptitude, peer pressure, diet, television, etc.

So Elmore makes what I think is the best case for school reform that I have seen over many years. It is: build the human capital in the school on a large scale basis, remove the privacy veil from teaching and use rigorous assessment of learning to guide this process and demonstrate the teachers' and the schools' achievements.

Design Principles in this article for large-scale improvement in school systems are:

• Maintain a tight instructional focus sustained over time.
• Routinize Accountability for Practice and Performance in Face-to-Face Relationships.
• Reduce Isolation and Open Practice Up to Direct Observation, Analysis, and Criticism.
• Exercise Differential Treatment Based on Performing and Capacity, Not on Volunteerism.
• Devolve Increased discretion Based on Practice and Performance.

Elmore R, Building a New Structure For School Leadership, 2000 Albert Shanker Institute .

Infernal technology: the automobile

The Editor,
The Times
29th September 1899

Sir,
I wish to express my dismay at the appearance of the automobile on the roads of England. This increasingly popular form of travel heralds a severe deterioration in the standards of transport of people. A good horse and light buggy provides a quiet, gentle, reflective and throughly pleasant mode of travel. The motor car on the other hand is noisy, smelly, and much too fast for safety. Furthermore, as seems likely, the cost of the motor car is falling below the cost of maintaining horses, and the development of the ominbus with up to twenty passengers, will mean that travel of longer distances will be economic for the lower classes which will lead to the deterioration of roads and crowding thereof. Furthermore, there is the likelihood that crowds of unruly people will congest popular places of leisure.

On a personal level, we must note that Man's relationship with the horse has been treasured by many people for thousands of years and may be lost if this trend continues.

The so called advancement of technology in the form of the automobile may have some benefits, but overall, its introduction is to be resisted because it disturbs our way of life.

Yours faithfully,

Disgusted.