Michael Fullan is a (or perhaps the) world leading authority on educational change. So when he identifies 'seminal ideas' on educational change it is worth engaging with them. Here is a summary of his 12 seminal ideas, which he identified in his auto-biography. ...continue reading "Fullan’s seminal ideas on educational change"
Author: PeterT
Professor of Education focussed on issues to do with the purposes of education, the management of educational change, and enhancing education systems, informed by understandings of learning, pedagogy and the potentials of digital technology. Views expressed are my own.
Subjective well-being – the ultimate metric?
It seems reasonable to want to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of public schooling. The problem is that the metrics that are currently used are inadequate and distort practice. Would the subjective well-being of the school community be a better metric and if so how could you measure it? ...continue reading "Subjective well-being – the ultimate metric?"
COVID-19, education, neoliberalism
Are you familiar with the game rock, paper, scissors? (Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, scissors beats paper). I think we need a modern version: COVID-19, education, neoliberalism. Let me explain ... ...continue reading "COVID-19, education, neoliberalism"
Introducing nano-credentials
We are familiar with micro credentials - things like digital badges. One of the claimed advantages of micro-credentials is that they enable you to assess competences (knowledge, skills and dispositions) that cannot easily be assessed or captured using traditional metrics (e.g. exams, essays). Assessing competences (e.g. leadership; resilience) often involves looking at what people do, looking at their practice, at their ability to apply 'knowledge' in particular contexts. This creates a problem, which nano-credentials will help to overcome. ...continue reading "Introducing nano-credentials"
Trust, Empowerment and Learning with Digital Technology
The COVID-19 crisis raised many issues about the purpose(s) of schooling, views about what should be learnt and what learning looks like, and who is responsible for young people’s learning. The rapid move from face to face to online schooling involved some amazing and some terrible uses of digital technology. Perhaps most glaringly was the difference between those who tried to maintain formal schooling, with virtual lessons interspersed with ‘independent learning’ (which in practice often meant filling in worksheets) and those who used it as an opportunity to spark young people’s intrinsic curiosity and capacity to learn. In both cases digital technology was critical. However, in the latter case so too was having a digital mindset. ...continue reading "Trust, Empowerment and Learning with Digital Technology"
Trust and empowerment of teachers
In any school, some decisions are made for you by your headteacher and some decisions you inherit from your students and their beyond-school lives. However, many decisions are completely down to you. Let’s take a look at why you have more decision-making power than you may think. ...continue reading "Trust and empowerment of teachers"
What can you do in practice?
So, what changes do we need to make to our current practice so that we too can adopt similar Digital Mindsets? Notice the language used by these headteachers (taken from the previous post in this series):
- “I don’t hear my teachers talking about the difficulties that students are facing, I hear them talking about what they are doing about those difficulties”
- “I only ask that they look at the students in front of them and think about how they are moving those students on”
Their focus is on ...continue reading "What can you do in practice?"
Trust and empowerment of students
Some of the most important changes you can make relate to the nature of your relationship with your students and the degree to which you treat them as responsible and capable young people. The table below provides some examples of changes in ...continue reading "Trust and empowerment of students"
But I can’t because …
You can probably think of lots of good reasons why you can’t use digital technology in the ways we have been suggesting in the previous posts in this series:
- We don’t have enough devices
- I would have to totally change how I teach
- I’m not very confident with digital technology
- The students will be distracted from learning
Concluding the series
Encouraging students to bring their existing expertise – from other classes, from their home and social worlds, into our classrooms expands possibilities (Twining et al., 2017), but also removes another bottleneck: ...continue reading "Concluding the series"