Evaluation stumble

Last week I wrote a Moodle Book.

If you don’t know what that is, well, the way I used it, it’s a sequence of pages in a tool on the Brookes Virtual Learning Environment that has allowed me to set up a series of reading activities with videos and questions to ponder around curricular documents from England, Wales, NI and Scotland. Simpler than the bells and whistles of things like Adobe Connect, although I’m sure my version is basic even for the Moodle Book.

I am sort of proud of it, although Sue Cowley’s blog on making raised beds for her allotment was very apt when I read it on Friday. I got better over time.

And on Monday morning – tomorrow as I type – students will go and have a look, maybe dip into a page or two and say “meh,” I should imagine. They may persevere: it’s info needed for the assignment turned into a self-study tool from possibly the dullest class of the whole year.

My problem, really, is the Start-Stop-Carry On activity I gave them when we last met. High-tech stuff, this: a piece of A5 paper with the words Start, Stop and (you guessed it) Carry on, inviting students to say what they felt needed to be done about their module, by adding (‘Start’) or removing (‘Stop’) elements. An ad hoc evaluation.

And the the thing that came out loud and clear was “Stop Doing All This Online Stuff.”

Stop-Start-Carry On becomes Stop Nick in His Tracks. I’ve done this new one for Monday because I’ve said I would, but the students were all-but unanimous in wanting face-to-face sessions where they could. This could be because I suck at online learning environments; it could be because of the hidden conservatism of the students. Whatever the reason, I feel I have to ask:

What do we do with evaluation that goes against the grain?

Visual Methodologies

Hmmmm.

I’m re-reading Gillian Rose on Visual Methodology, and she has given me a lot to think about. I’d like to see if I can apply her ideas to some children’s work such as this:

So let’s look at this in more detail.

There are two figures, arms down by their sides, under or at least near a complex climbing frame. Writing explains that the child feels s/he is “very good at playing on the climbing frame.”

Now, I know who did this (I have obscured a name, although I do have the young artist’s permission to share this drawing) and the context, but if we apply Rose’s criteria to it, we need to ask:

What is being shown? What are the components of the image?
How are they arranged?
Is this a contradictory image?
What knowledges are being deployed?

At the basic level, what is shown is as I’ve said above, a climbing frame and two figures in proximity to it. There are two components as I read it: humans and climbing frame. If part of the questioning we need to undertake is around what has been missed out, what is not there is interesting too, however. It might be that we can distinguish here a sort of intransitivity: the climbing frame is not being climbed, and the figures are not climbing it. In the picture there is no sky or grass, no distraction from other equipment. Does this argue for there being a lack of need from the adult for a ‘holding activity’? “Just [go away for five minutes and] colour in the sky”? Or does it argue for purpose or maybe even haste in the interaction between adult and child?

But we might also suggest a third component: the writing, both by the child and the adult. Image and text work together, and are part of the same tradition (of which child and adult are aware) as the picture story book. The arrangement is one in which this convention is upheld.

Where it is skewed, where it has an element of contradiction, is in the adult intervention. What is the purpose of this object? The title gives it away: this is a piece of school record keeping, very probably created at the request of an adult “to go in your file.” The child’s writing (and adult transcription) and title and date suggest that this is part of a record-keeping system that tells someone (see below) something (again: more to think of here) about how the child artist-writer sees themselves.

So what knowledges are being deployed? In brief, as a first go at this I propose that we can discern:

an understanding of how text and image can work together;
an understanding of how to represent the various elements of the climbing frame (including climbers);
some understanding of purpose and power in adult-child relationships.

So in looking at this power relationship, we come to the reason the work was created. I suspect, as I said, that this is at the request of the adult – and therefore, to some extent, the adult is the intended reader, the sponsor of the activity. Even in the context of physical play, the child is constrained, as is the adult, to use the event to spawn other events closer to the curricular needs, not of the child, but of the adult: play and the observation (or in this case the self-evaluation) makes it have a purpose the adult world might value.

Beyond the Motivational

This from Carl Hendrick is such a good blog post I have to point to it, even if my comments after it are lightweight.

“This type of stuff is obviously well intentioned but beyond symbolising a culture that privileges the media-soundbite over critical reflection, it does I think signify an increasing shift towards psychological interventions aimed at changing student self perception and represents a somewhat base and quite reductive approach to an extremely complex set of issues.”

I wonder how students would feel if instead of feedback such as “You must work on creating paragraphs with a tight and logical structure” we wrote “The first step to change is wanting to,” or “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
[Read more here if you really want to.]

Lost Words

A lot was made recently of the decision by the Oxford Dictionaries to take out some words from one dictionary and put in others. The choices that were especially criticised were the ones where “nature” words were lost in favour of computing words. I’m not sure where I stand on this; it is the task of the lexicographer, and especially one working with a word-limit to make such decisions. What words do children use? What do they need?

The excellent Landreader project makes some really good points in this blog post, not least the suggestion that the list of words to be taken from the Junior Dictionary can be seen as a “prose-poetry supplement to be administered like a multivitamin as a defense against lexical malnutrition” – a neat turn of phrase. It’s neat because of the word “need.” What words do children need, and why?

They need words to talk about things – ivy, a starling, catkins. They might need a dictionary to help them understand something on the edge of their current world – the stream that gives its name to Boundary Brook Road, the kingfisher in Kingfisher School. They might also want – and this is where a dictionary helps immensely – to inform when a reader meets something new and unexpected – minnow, newt, porpoise.

This has limits, of course: the Landreader project has a glossary which introduces the visitor to words beyond usual use: sleech, or drumble, or twitten. Intriguing though they are, they are not really for the Junior Dictionary. But are we really to think that heron and poppy are becoming part of the same world? That the comic linguistic vagaries of Rambling Syd Rumpo might also now include conker and stoat?

Attention sp

William Pooley raises some interesting questions here about attention span. Should we be “so willing to assume that every individual has a fixed ‘span’ (which can be stretched, or curtailed, perhaps, but still exists as a kind of objective measure)”? The notion of us needing to maintain or enhance our focus is something Jason Elsom raised earlier this week in his tweet “How to focus in the age of… SQUIRREL!!!” (@JasonElsom). In both cases there are undertones of the now well-disseminated TED talk by Ken Robinson in which he claims too much of education is anaesthetising children.

I’d like, however, just to take an anecdotal sideways look at this.

Boys, we all know (because we are told we all know) have poor fine motor control, poor attention span., &c., &c. While William P is right that a serious study needs to be done on attention (I once found some interesting evidence of English monks in the Middle Ages muttering about long, rambling sermons, and attention during prayer has long been the focus of spiritual writers, but that’s even more of a digression), he is also right that this discourse of attention itself needs sustained enquiry. What follows is merely a snapshot.

Evan was having a good time – on and off – with the cars one week. Evan was four. One day he found that smashing trucks down a plank meant that the car crash was more spectacular than brumming them together. He built a ramp with planks and bricks to stop the trucks from falling off the sides. So far, an hour has passed. Group time, tidy-up time. Home time.

The next day he returns to the play, builds up the ramp, asks for some technical help about stopping the planks from sliding off the bricks (masking tape) and returns to his exploration of car crashes. He spends half and hour on this, goes to the loo, comes back – you can see where this is going. His key worker comes and sits with him from time to time, asking questions, finding masking tape, suggesting better cars – and by now fetching them from down the classroom where Evan is by now getting them to zip to. Two hours pass that day.

By the end of the third day, Evan has, in effect, devised an experiment to see whether how steep the ramp is affects how far the cars go. His key worker’s job on his Foundation Stage Profile is nearly done – if that’s a factor here.

My point is that the ‘discourse of attention span,’ when it hits the early years needs to take account of motivation: “Can concentrate on a self-chosen task” is a different thing (almost) entirely from “Can do as s/he is told for at least five minutes without wandering off.” Confusing the two risks misunderstanding the nature of self-motivated learning.

Innocence and Childhood – thoughts for St Agnes’ Day

Some random thoughts here. Not sure I can bring them all together but here goes.

The monk, peace activist and writer Thomas Merton wrote a couple of poems on the child-martyr Agnes. The one here is in some ways the less accessible, with its interplay between English and Latin, and the references to liturgical practice, but does nonetheless have some things I want to explore.
St. Agnes: A Responsory

Cujus pulchritudinem
Sol et luna mirantur. . .
Hear with joy this child of God
Plays in the perfect garden of her martyrdom,
Ipsi soli servo fidem.

Spending the silver of her little life
To bring her Bridegroom these bright flowers
Of which her arms are full.

Cujus pulchritudinem. . .
With what white smiles
She buys the Popes their palliums,
And lavishes upon our souls the lambs of her confession!
Sol et luna mirantur,
Ipsi soli servo fidem.

Her virtues, with their simple strings,
Play to the Lover hidden in the universe,
Cujus pulchritudinem. . .
Who smiles into the sun His looking-glass,
And fills it with his glorious face:
Who utters the round moon’s recurring O
And drowns our dusks in peace.
Ipsi soli servo fidem!

The Roman captain’s work is done:
Now he may tear his temples down—
Her charity has flown to four horizons, like the swiftest doves,

Where all towns sing like springtime, with their newborn bells
Pouring her golden name out of their crucibles.

Two themes here, then: the martyrdom of eleven-year old Agnes moved the early Church partly because a child – and a girl-child at that – demonstrated her free acceptance of the consequences of her beliefs, in a way that ran contrary to the established views of childhood, in which subordinacy, docility perhaps, is key. Agnes is independent, willing to go to her death, and unafraid. It is a poignant picture, whatever you make of her decision. It is also touched by the tradition of the virgin martyrs (Cecilia, Anastasia – there is a list [in itself an odd document, if you don’t consider the context] on this site) many of whom chose Christian martyrdom rather than the “easy escape” of being married off. You might say that a child-virgin-martyr ticks a great number of boxes for Catholic Christianity, certainly in the early days.

Thus, Thomas Merton plays with the image of “the silver of her little life,” in the “garden of her martyrdom” (echoed in the penultimate line with “springtime” and “newborn bells”) to emphasise her childhood, but also depicts her briefly as playing a stringed instrument to her “Lover hidden in the universe.” Merton addresses a contradiction – as he does in his other, much darker poem on the subject.

The feast of St Agnes (21st January) challenges me to think about innocence and independence as I watch my granddaughters grow – but it also reminds me (as I prepare for the module on Children’s Spirituality this semester) of how important childhood is (or at least can be) in the formulation of Christian spirituality. Hans Urs von Baltasar (a theologian more or less contemporary with Merton) puts it like this:

The backward glance to lost childhood – as cultivated by Christian poets – is no longer just a romantic dream, but a longing for a lost innocence and intimacy with God that Jesus and Mary never lost… (Die Ganze im Fragment, cited in John Saward’s The Way of the Lamb).

I’d suggest that the early reflections on St Agnes are much the same kind of longing for innocence and intimacy, and that these are present in Merton’s poem. Both Baltasar and Merton, of course, might had had much to say about the scandals of abuse that now indelibly scar that vision.

Christian spirituality has had to grapple in various ways with the childhood and maturity of a God made flesh, and in orthodox Christian theology (East and West), the child fed by his mother is key. However, whether that child is a “mere” baby, or something more, visual and poetic depictions have often found hard to some to terms with: this is a child, but more than a child; a “silly tender babe” and “Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.”

And perhaps this tension is itself creative, propelling Christianity to think about children as people – innocent but independent, people of many possibilities, and resilient. This is a vision that should, to my mind fly “to four horizons like the swiftest doves.”

Thoughts on Leadership, Management and Ethos

A colleague of mine, an expert in how groups and professionals communicate, once asked me what I felt makes a good leader. I gave her a copy of the Rule of St Benedict. Oxford Brookes, as I write, is searching for a new Vice-Chancellor; schools continue to face crises as they interview over and over for suitable candidates for headships; ‘my’ PGCE students are gathering their reflections of themselves as they prepare for the step into job applications, as they present themselves, even if only in an initial, local stage, as leaders in education. I still feel Benedict (and the tradition he gives impetus to) have a lot to offer in terms of insights on leadership.

Three things come together this week all (perhaps it’s unsurprising) from Catholic Christian tradition. The first is just part of the publicity, if you like, around Pope Francis’ latest visits. It’s not explicitly Benedictine, but does have a lot in common with the Benedictine rule. Francis is praised for his “Humanity, Humility and Humour,” a “bridge-builder (the first meaning of Pontifex),” a “shepherd who smells like his sheep.”

The second is today’s minor feast of St Placid, the boy monk who almost drowned, and his rescuer, St Maurus, whose obedience to St Benedict (according to St Gregory) effects a miracle. The miracle story might be seen as a message of how important unquestioning obedience is; it might also be seen as a parable of how a leader perceives need, delegates – and (at the end of the story) is unwilling to grab the glory for themselves.

The last was the feast of St Aelred on Monday, whose success in building up the community of Rievaulx was matched by his own penitence (life was not easy in the monastery for a Refusenik of the luxuria of the Scottish court) and his wish to be gentle, kind to his brothers. A short reflection from the ever-busy nuns of Holy Trinity can be found here; a Dominican reflection is here.

Leadership, in these cases, all seem summed up for me in St Aelred’s reflection on being an Abbot. Aelred’s prayer, the Oratio Pastoralis, is poorly represented on the internet. Here is a taste of it, in my own very wobbly précis/translation.

Teach me, sweet Lord, to bring back trouble-makers, encourage the faint-hearted and support the weak. Let me adapt to the unique qualities of each person, to their character, their likes, their strengths, to their capacity to receive… and since (either because of my physical and spiritual limits or some deep-seated shortcoming) I cannot really help them develop through the example of my late nights or my penitence, grant me by your mercy to be able to edify them by my humility, love, patience and mercy.

And again, the message comes out clearly, even if through the stained glass of the Middle Ages: humility, humanity… Humour, perhaps, springs from the previous two: if it is a human function, perhaps it could be seen as a prerequisite of a human manager. There is an element of inclusivity here, a willingness to forgive, to develop people, to see them as individuals. How you might put all this in a job description for a leader, or to be specific an educational leader, I am not at all sure – but they are the essential qualities, I think.

Work in a Chill Month

There is the story that someone is admitted to Hell and is allowed their choice – one choice, and for ever – of punishment. It’s all very Hieronymous Bosch until the man finds a room in which everyone is sitting around drinking tea. The only drawback seems to be that the residents of this particular circle of the Inferno are knee deep in the worst floods of human waste. The stench is appalling but they are sitting about drinking tea.
“Well,” thinks this man, ” of all the punishments I have seen, this one seems the least horrendous.” And he opts for it.
“Are you sure?” he is asked. The man nods. He is ushered in, the door is shut, he is given a cup of tea to drink.
He takes only one sip, when a klaxon sounds, and a demonic voice calls out, “OK, everyone, back on your heads.”

And here we are, all back on our heads (if you like), back to it, with marking and staffing and curriculum design taking up all our time, and brain space being picked at by God-awful news from the wider world. We know it’s the same with schools, where colleagues are beleaguered, over-worked, victims of the “can you just?” request (as in “can you just write the governors a paper on…” “could I ask you just to set up meetings with the parents?” &c., &c.). It is therefore something of a joy to come across Miss Smith’s clever and positive blog post: Teaching is Wonderful. Read it. Enjoy it. Warm up January.

Father Christmas: an apology

In Private Eye there is a running gag in which news media retract a statement about a celebrity and change it to the opposite: David Cameron is not a rich idiot but the saviour of the nation; David Beckham is not a great sports star but an over-paid underwear salesman – &c. You get the idea. In doing so they expose the volte-face of a shallow reporting. Here comes one of my own.

I have long been seen as a Scrooge-like figure in my own family, and this…erm.. ambiguity around late December festivities has extended to Father Christmas. I have often cast doubt on the usefulness of Fr C in proposing an authentic Christmas narrative. I am sure that, however I dress this up, part of it is the upset of ten-year-old me discovering, probably a couple of years after his peers, what the adult world made of Father Christmas.

But the difficulties of current Santa culture seem particularly sharp this year, and not because of typhoons, or food banks, or the Middle East, or anything grand. It’s just that two examples from this Christmas seem especially naff: the illogical stance of this campaign in which a child writes to Santa saying she is “too old for fairy tales” (or is this simply ironic?); the bizarre “Catholics Come Home” video which has Santa at the stable. Even if I wielded an autocratic power to ban such things, I have no objection to people who do not believe in the Incarnation having a December festival, even if its name is nicked (let’s face it, Christianity probably stole the feast off the Romans), and I am not seeking to ban Santa from the celebration of Christmas. There is, however, a blind spot here. It is as if we can have a Christmas without Christ, but that the festival must have “Santa.” Not St Nicholas, of course, not the fiery , Orthodox bishop who stands as a symbol for children, for travellers, against exploitation; we must have Clement Moore’s jolliness, a penchant for overeating and comedy, and gift-giving. We must have that by-now-ingrained picture of a red suit and a white beard. He must receive the petitions of children not to have to go to Church; he must be corralled into Church-going himself. It is as if the myth has to trump both the religious belief and the negation of that belief. Santa, the jolly Winter King, rules. To my mind the glutinous “Santa at the Stable” advert is just as empty-headed as the “Dear Santa” letter.

Calm. Calm. Calm. Here comes the retraction.

With my white beard, and a (provided) red suit, I will be in a local Nursery in a fortnight’s time, ho-ho-ho-ing about and eating pies – both the mince and humble varieties. The prancing and pawing on the roof will be my feebly held values, anxious to fly away like the down of a thistle.

Where does that put me as cynic and hard-line Santa-doubter? I’m really not sure. But I will throw myself into Santadom with abandon and I fully expect to love it.

Safer to stay at home

The Teddy Bears’ Picnic is an odd mix of cuteness – bears gaily gadding about &c – and danger. From a sweet picture of playing and shouting, the text and the key move (2 mins 13 sec) to a more sombre tone:

“You’d better not go alone.”

“Lovely – but safer to stay at home.”

It’s as if the Teddy Bears are involved in the scene from the Bacchae that King Pentheus is lured into watching. A pastoral scene: a little valley, shaded by pines, a very rural scene where Pentheus watches the ritual abandon of the Bacchae who are “unawares” – until Dionysos reveals the watching king and the terrible tragedy unfolds.

What would the Teddy Bears have done if we, the watchers hadn’t stayed at home? They would have torn us, as Agave does her son, limb from limb – because they are not Teddies; they are bears.

The Teddy Bears’ Picnic is perhaps the last gasp of this understanding, arising from the event in 1902 when “Teddy” Roosevelt encountered a bear – a real bear – on a hunting trip. Bears (until the Teddy) sat alongside wolves as dangerous; the tension of wild and dangerous versus tame and cuddly is evident in the change of tone in the song.

And with this tension comes the greater dilemma: how safe it is Out There?