Zombies

My main idea – there aren’t many – for tomorrow (Thurs 30th, School of Education Hallowe’en Seminar) is to look at the notion of the oath suggested by practice in Singapore and by Tristram Hunt on his return from his visit there. There is plenty to look at in the history and folklore of transgression and retribution, and I hope I have the balance of fun and reflection right.

I will also note that Hunt seems to have “rowed back” from his original, rather bullish statements about an oath and a compass (see my previous post) and is now quoted as saying:

“Taking such an oath would be voluntary and would reinforce the teacher’s commitment to professional development, a symbol of their continued willingness to seek out learning opportunities to make them a better teacher for their students.”

It is, of course, possible that the original reportage was a misrepresentation of his views*.

What I would now have liked to add in (and since the presentation is already written and would require a lot of work today in time I don’t have), would be to reflect on quite what, in this largely unobjectionable vow from Singapore, exercised us all so much – and to do so by looking at what is, in effect, a plea from James Mannion in his blog that we should look at the big questions. We do tend to look at the smaller stuff, the changeable and annoying bits that politicians present as panaeceas, when what James asks us to do is explore question such as:

Where lie the boundaries of current discourses around education?
How does this differ from educational discourses throughout history?
What paths in the current discourse are well-worn – and are there areas where we no longer dare tread?

He is quite right. The notion of moaning at Tristram Hunt’s proposed oath instead of asking (as James does) “If you could design an education system from the ground up – to what extent would it resemble the one we have?” maybe just reduces us to the role I am saying we dread: moaning zombies.

*NB: this quotation has been edited by me for grammar and clarity.

Pedagogy

This posting from me is just a jumped-up tweet, but what’s behind it is worth sharing, I feel. Steve Wheeler (whose blog is always a good read) has an insightful view of pedagogy here in his latest post.

Good pedagogy is about guiding students to learning. It’s about posing challenges, asking the right questions, and presenting relevant problems for learners to explore, answer and solve. True pedagogy is where educators transport their students to a place where they will be amazed by the wonders of the world they live within.

Yes, well worth a look.

Resistance or debate?

A selection from Saturday’s conversation on BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03tqx9x) between David Blunkett and Nick Gibb:

NG: …He [Michael Gove] doesn’t set out to be non-consensual, but what can happen is that if you’re determined to ensure that the reforms are implemented which he is they will ruffle the feathers of those people who are resistant to that reform.

DB: Well I’m not sure about calling the teaching profession The Blob is actually all that consensual…

NG: No, well, the Blob isn’t the teaching profession, the Blob is not the teaching profession…

DB: Well, who the devil is it then?

NG: The Blob, I’ll tell you who the Blob is, the Blob are the academics in the education faculties of the Universities and the Local Authority advisers and they have a particular orthodoxy that they impose on the teaching profession….

[A discussion on who has power continues]

NG: …. Now, well, now they have less power because automony has been given to the professionals and at the expense of the education faculties and at the expense of the local authorities and that is why there is this anger by those people about what Michael Gove is doing

DB: Nick, Nick, you’re fighting a past battle, you’re fighting a past battle begun twenty-five years ago in 1988 by Ken Baker and you’re still fighting it now [….] That battle’s over; the battle for the highest standards in every school, the life chance of every child whatever their background, that battle will continue…

NG: There is still an intellectual battle to be won about child initiated learning, about mixed ability teaching, about how you teach arithmetic…

I can’t spare the time to challenge the logic in the first section about consensuality and resistance (or to hark back in any detail to David Blunkett’s phrase about people being “cynical”), so here are just a couple of thoughts from the Blob, if that is who I am (quite apart from the insult, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the pigeonhole; I am in no way knee-jerk resistant, for example): if there is an intellectual battle to be fought over child-initiated learning, then perhaps the research done by the Universities might be useful evidence – or is an intellectual engagement really not about weighing evidence, but about who can shout the loudest, be the rudest (and I know some HE and school colleagues who have not held back here)? And on the side-swipe on child-initiated learning, do we discern how The Foundation Stage might be further dismantled, with insights from psychology and sociology – not to mention the everyday pedagogy of the nursery I brought with me into teacher education – swept aside in the kind of rhetoric I have commented on before?

Suffering from Childhood

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?

New National Curriculum

“…the most important thing is to make sure that we understand when children arrive in school how well they’re performing so that we can then ensure that those children who are bright are really stretched…”

Just to make a start on the documents and comments, here is the SoS on Daytime TV [sic] and on the BBC website – but here’s the consultation report on the National Curriculum and, as a sideline, the new report on cultural education, from the DfE website . Watch this space.

Ever wishing to present both sides of an argument, here is an interesting site, if only for the ways in which evidence is now used by education policy-makers. Gove versus Reality is clearly a site as polemic as Michael Rosen’s blog -which means that they need to be read as voices in the political debate. Rosen’s latest (9th July) entry, for example, is entitled Educational League Table Lies and looks at the SoS’s ideas about league tables nationally and internationally. It is lengthy, well-argued, but polemic. It has a short line here which I will end with, since it’s a warning to me as much as to policy makers:

Gassing on about ‘world-class education’ sounds like busy-work: ‘Look what we’re doing to make things better.’ This is a con.

Gwynne

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.

Early Years Teacher Standards

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?

Grumbling

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.

Sense of Purpose

Liz Truss has made some comments which, if accurately reported in this morning’s Guardian, suggest that she and I sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of views of how children learn best. “Free-flow play is not compulsory,” she states in the Mail. I will be addressing this as a key theme in my class tomorrow morning – a gift ( as is Toby Young’s rather sideways defence in the Telegraph) for my summative class on Play and Pedagogy of the semester!

But we do need to look behind the rhetoric and the snarling with which the Guardian message boards are filling up. The bile is extraordinary, a tap turned on to release a slurry pit of anger. Maybe that was her intention; it certainly doesn’t help a reasoned voice to be heard in response. Giving children a sense of purpose is important, and I worry that this sort of statement is liable to drown out a lot of good work that thoughtful people do with their own children and as paid professionals or volunteers. Few parents (or grandparents) want a bear pit at home, any more than a nursery worker wants a block play corner wrecked or Lord of The Flies in the garden – but that’s not what actually happens; by building on children’s interests that grow from adult stimuli (a book, a song, some colour in the water tray) children are encouraged to develop a sense of purpose. This is autonomous learning: satnav politeness isn’t the aim, and in any case politeness is best modelled rather than instructed, which requires, for one thing, warm, genuine interest from the adults around the child.

And here is part of my chapter from our book Themes and Debates, blogged last summer. I note an increase recently in people finding my longer extract on Academia.edu by searching for “Formal and informal curricula,” too.

Gambia – Rewarding?

“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.

Crocs 2013

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.

Bakau dawn 2013

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.