Again the thoughtful and thought-provoking Ken Robinson talking about the nature of learning. http://embed.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley.html
Learning or compliance? Teaching or testing? I won’t comment much more, but it does tie in to some extent with last night’s post about my position as an HE lecturer; what he says about teaching children also applies, mutatis mutandis to many University classes, too.
Maybe that Latin tag is ill-advised?
I was asked today for the meaning of this word.
I have absolutely no problem supplying a definition – and equally no problem in being asked by a student to provide it. This is not a moan.
What I’m trying to ponder is two-fold: the possible complexity of my language and why a student whom I have known for two and a bit years should seek to ask me for a definition now.
I made a joke about how perhaps a two-hour class after lunch was itself likely to encourage sleep, and asked them to note the use of the word in The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. But I was still nagged by the asking.
I don’t think I have changed my vocabulary, although I do know how to use words in different circumstances and with different audiences. It is more than possible that I am pretentiously latinate (I know both of these are pretentiously latinate words), especially when cornered, although today was a very pleasant discussion with ten of the keenest of our students, those who had braved the rollercoaster of timetabling and stuck with our new module on reading.
Ah. There’s the key. These were students in a quiet, small group, who felt confident in expressing themselves, in asking questions, in asking for definitions. We talked about attitudes to reading, about phonemes and graphemes, Jolly Phonics and an article on under-ones and reading – and the meaning and use of the word soporific. We also looked at a number of research reports from NFER to PIRLS and an odd report on the latest stuff from Save the Children via the Guardian. And then one short excerpt from the PIRLS publication (Ch 6 on School Climate, linked here) struck me:
The PIRLS 2011 School Emphasis on Academic Success scale characterizes five aspects of academic optimism:
Teachers’ understanding of the school’s curricular goals;
Teachers’ degree of success in implementing the school’s curriculum;
Teachers’ expectations for student achievement;
Parental support for student achievement; and
Students’ desire to do well in school.
Do I have well-matched expectations for my students’ achievement? Do my students desire to do well? Or do I parade a faux-scholarship so that students can only ask me what the Hell I’m talking about in their penultimate semester, and in a small seminar group?
…instead of Moves like Jagger?
This is again to provide links to some ideas people may find useful.
The upsurge in interest – and the rising intake – in undergraduate education programmes here at Brookes naturally gives me a bit to think about, not least about staff deployment. I was, therefore, interested – maybe dismayed – to find this model of the academic as a unit in the workforce described here by Pat Thomson.
I hate newspaper reports that talk about “research shows,” and “today’s research”, so I apologise for this link to the Telegraph on reading for pleasure, but I need some time to find the original report.
And at its worst (or maybe as its norm?) this blog – along with so many other blogs – is just opinions blurted onto the Internet. The debates about the Big Questions are also being enacted elsewhere. The Great Education Debate is one place. Go and have a look.
Three little links, to follow on from my post on Gwynne.
The first, a link to a wonderful programme on rhetoric from Stephen Fry.
The second, a link to the Justtomakeclear blog on Helen Sword’s thoughts on clarity of writing.
The last, a tweet from Lisa Jardine on time management.
If it isn’t yet the time, it will shortly be that time of year when Amazon wish lists shift their focus, when Blackwells and other booksellers either rub their hands in glee or (I suspect, more often these days) look anxiously at the takings: the time when reading lists assume an importance.
Even if the parental start-up package (assuming there is such a thing, to pay for duvet covers and a kettle) stretches to books, where do you start? The Bible and Shakespeare? A student cookbook (I was going to recommend the Guardian online version, but it is accompanied, in the most breathlessly idiotic sexism I’ve seen for a while, by adverts for tampons, thereby telling us who should cook at University – thanks, beloved Guardian!) or financial survival guide? Well, yes, there’s part of the problem: how do you afford them? How do you know what to get? Or should we (tutors) suggest course books?
Ah. Pause for thought.
Of course, the ever-useful Upgrade service at Brookes provides enlightenment on what reading entails at HE, and links to sites from other Universities (including v good advice on reading from Reading, which I am childish enough to find amusing), but faced with a bill of £100 or more (maybe lots more!), what is a new HE student to do? And what should we, as tutors, be thinking about when we suggest pre-course reading?
The approach by our Ed Studies team has been slightly different this year: rather than going for study skills books (Stella Cottrell, for example, whose excellent handbook appears to be available from Palgrave as a sample pdf and the linked site is available here) or a pile of books from Year 1 Modules, the team have opted for a reading of an historically important text. Dave Aldridge has suggested Rousseau’s Emile.
Throwing Year 1 students in medias res with a book from eighteenth century France is a bold move, I know, but I come back to my earlier question: when we suggest books to incoming students, maybe not-so-fresh men and women in a post A-level fug, do we do so to make their lives easier on the course? To make our lives easier when they get here? To set the scene for the discipline of degree-level study: reading, as we used to say, for a degree? Or (as Dave is doing here, I think), to give them more of a sense of purpose in their studies?
So what am I trying to get at when I say a “sense of purpose”? I suppose it’s about the Big Questions, again and again. Links to elsewhere in this blog would be tedious; the big questions are what this blog is really about.
Why study education? What is the place of theory in all of this? Where does reading fit in anyway? Where does learning start in institutions? And what about in the family?
I hope I don’t sound too Mr Hector if I end by saying “Emile vous appelle.”
Michael Gove, “the most important person in education,” (according to Nevile Gwynne), likes and promulgates Gwynne’s grammar, and for a while the grammarian himself is available in a brief conversation on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. This is the link that works for now. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01c98k1.
In a very short piece on R4 it isn’t possible to explore Gwynne’s arguments very easily, any more than it was when he appeared on Saturday Live; sweeping statements go unchallenged, and this four or so minutes certainly isn’t a scholarly defence of grammar, still less the teaching of grammar in schools, but as a test of current government thinking has some interesting points to ponder. Was an understanding of grammar acquired “effortlessly” before the age of nine? I wonder whether Gwynne’s defence of corporal punishment on his website suggests otherwise. Here, as part of a class he is running, he suggests looking at the arguments around the subject:
The days of “six of the best” are now over, almost everywhere in every country in the Western world. But… will someone please, after reading the following (a) extract from a newspaper article and (b) letter responding to it, be so kind as to let me know what possible alternative there is to corporal punishment that is sufficient to do the essential job – both for the indicidual and society — that “the cane” had done everywhere throughout the whole of recorded history up to the 1960s and after?
Given the accuracy of my typing, it would be churlish to mock the typo, and in any case the pedant in me likes the fact that there is no apostrophe in 1960s.
Here, Neville Gwynne simply raises the question for others to respond to.
However, I feel torn when reading some of his articles. I seriously disagree with some of his ideas, and might well question some of his sources or approaches, but I must admit that when I mark the work of some of my students, from the generation that grammar forgot, I want to say with him that “A very great deal of our knowledge comes from argument, which is our most important means of checking and making sure that what we believe is true.” Similarly, when he states with obvious passion that “Real philosophy is simply the overall science of “getting it right” in all our activities, from deciding what time to get up in the morning to choosing the right religious or anti-religious position. We are all philosophers whether we like it or not,” I find myself nodding in (at least partial) agreement.
My daughter Rosa is all but through the last school assessments she will ever have to do, the last of our children to have to do this. A levels done, one last BTEC assessment point to go. Whatever she chooses next, exams in sixth form will not return. There will, I guess, be no more attentive sixth-form teachers to coax her from a panic, but equally no school worrying about grades and profiles either. For a brief time (maybe), she has no academic ties. She has “made it.” She is sitting in the garden in the sunshine this evening. I am glad, proud to look out at her, and it prompts this reflection.
Today, by a sort of coincidentia oppositorum I sat in three meetings today considering at University level the marks for semester 2. So many stories passed by, some as numbers only to most of us, a brief window into someone’s difficulties and then on. I raise a couple of questions, and we move on; the meeting is attentive but businesslike. Brookes will have processed about 3000 graduates today, maybe 10,000 undergraduate marks in all, according to John Raftery, the pro-VC. No mean feat. And in some other rooms in a few week’s time, Rosa will appear – a name no-one knows, or maybe “just” a number? – and be processed and then disappear. The computers will reassert themselves, the stuff will go to schools, et voila c’est fini pour la petite Antigone. She becomes a “past pupil.”
It never is impersonal, not really; tutors know the names they are dealing with, understand the cases, in some cases have handed tissues to distraught students, or answered worried emails, or made a judiciously timed cuppa for someone. Tonight, though, I feel the weight of it. I just wouldn’t want anyone – least of all the students who will get their results and be happy or sad or relieved or irritated on Monday, or the students at the end of sixth-form crowding round school doors and opening envelopes in mid-August who may see new possibilities arising and sometimes big plans slip out the picture – to think that these complex and somewhat paper-heavy processes are undertaken by heartless bureaucrats. We do know. We are acutely aware of what our decisions will do, or might do. A mark here, a grade there. We know what they mean.
I look at Rosa in the garden and wonder, just sometimes, how we dare.
A slightly worrying post from Julian Grenier (how does he find the time?) about the difference between consultation and decision with regards to Early Years Teachers’ standards. His argument appears in his blog, linked here. The Best Practice Network site has the consultation/not-a-consultation standards on this page.
This is not to say that the Best Practice Network standards are wrong. I rather like the idea of teachers having
secure knowledge of early childhood development and how that leads to successful learning and development at school
Who wouldn’t?
Similarly, I really enjoy seeing teaching students when they
plan balanced and flexible activities and educational programmes that take into account the stage of development, circumstances and interests of children
But Julian is quite right: Does this mean that the Standards are now in place regardless of the analysis of the consultation?
HE colleagues know that, as in any institution, politics (and specifically the politics of grumbling and Schadenfreude) are the bread-and-butter of daily contact. St Benedict is acutely aware of this and warns in his Rule that acts of obedience should be carried out
non trepide, non tarde, non tepide, aut cum murmurio
The English translation doesn’t have the same ring to it:
without hesitation, delay, lukewarmness, grumbling
But you get the idea. Benedict is not a fan.
However, there does come a point, for example when ITE engages with policy, where grumbling can become protest, and there are probably occasions where this is right and proper.
Two examples are linked below, for anyone to contemplate: one, a satire on Michael Gove’s latest dig at history teaching, the other links to the the continuing campaign against Liz Truss’ vision for Early Years, which I have written about twice already.
Here is the Mr Men satire from Paul Bernal’s blog. Enjoy if you like, critique, consider. It is worth reading the Gove speech in full, of course – and again, “enjoy, critique, consider” (in whatever measure you can) are the watchwords.
And here and here are voices about Graduates and ratios in the EY workforce, and a report from the Telegraph on Liz Truss’ latest defence of her proposals.
While the Mr Gove satire raises a smile, and the to-ing and fro-ing around More Great Childcare is interesting (if not illuminating ), I thought I’d finish with a link to Julian Grenier’s piece on his Inside the Secret Garden blog. With these names in the frame, the battle is more serious.
“So, how was Gambia?” The Gambia was what it always is when I go: an opportunity to learn, hot, a bit stressy, and that oddly fuzzy phrase rewarding. What does that really mean? I’m writing from the perspective that I come back, of course, happy to be back, relieved that the organisational difficulties (more or less) resolved themselves, and that the Health and Safety issues were (more or less) OK. Using Gambia-Extra certainly made the organisation go more smoothly. Alan and Tony were brilliant. Relief at how well it went is certainly part of it – and the enjoyment I took while there is in no little measure due to their thoughtful, hard work.
So it went OK.
What did I learn? Is the “reward” about what I now know about myself, about the Gambia?
Well, the inservice course teaches me a lot every time: enthusiastic and committed Gambian professionals make this a wonderful opportunity for me, and I’ve mentioned this before. The challenge of teaching without as much tech support hones my skills no end, makes me think differently about my pedagogy, and the debate this time around how to organise for play and for observation with a ratio of one adult to 40+ children told me a lot about how deep my own assumptions about early learning go. I really like the photo I’m including here because it shows me really enjoying what I’m doing – not easy sessions, but teaching, listening, interacting.
Interacting. Hmmm. There’s an interesting idea. A lot of other assumptions go out of the window too: how students relate to tutors; how language changes; how the immediate challenge of relating session by session to students becomes a different thing when it runs from before breakfast to after-dinner drinks.
But are these what make this trip rewarding? I know more about the students that come, more about myself, more about the Gambia. This time I also got a bit of a sun tan, saw the dawn rising, and the grey stretch of the Atlantic, and travelled more independently than on any of my previous trips. Is this what made it rewarding? What does rewarding mean?
Enjoyment is part of it, in immediate pleasure (a cold Julbrew by the pool at the end of a journey on several bush taxis) and also in some longer-term contentment. Feeling good because I know I was learning is also part of it. Feeling good that a project has gone well enough, that people are already thinking about Gambia 2014, that there are writing and research opportunities that have grown from the discussions in the evenings…
So, this is even woollier. Feeling good. Perhaps the best approach is simply to look at where I see this nebulous “reward” coming from: I think it comes from the change I see – in me, and in the students. More confidence, change in perspective, change in skills.
And maybe that’s some of what the other course participants felt too. I hope so.
nicktomjoe 