Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

Retrospect and prospect: there must be a better way!

 

 

‘Prepare your learners for their future, not our past!’
(Lane Clark, Canadian educator)

The above is the title of a series of professional development seminars presented to teachers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom by inspirational education consultant, Lane Clark, of Ontario, Canada.

In retrospect

Fifty years of experience in education began for me with entry to a teachers college in Victoria, Australia, following some years as an executive trainee in the commercial world. Teacher training was to be completed in a one-year ‘crash’ course. Each of us, as mature age trainee teachers, were able to cover nine or 10 subjects listed in the ‘course of study’ for primary schools and, as well, engage in a study of educational psychology and periods of practical school experience. Even so, in that one year we developed fairly effective skills in the teaching of literacy, numeracy, science (nature study) and social studies, as well as physical education, music, art and crafts. At the end of the college year, we were released into the world.

Later, teacher ‘training’ was taken over from the Victorian government education department by university-type institutions. Trainees entering primary education were subjected to two years, later three years, of initial teacher preparation. By that time, I had gained responsibility for implementing the teaching field-experience program in each of my schools, which gave me the opportunity to see at first-hand how effective, or otherwise, the preparation for teaching had been. Although the course had expanded to three years, comparing it with my own period of initial training, one thing stood out: there was a qualitative shift of emphasis – much more theory and much less teaching practice.

With the setting up of the Australian Schools Commission by the Federal Government in the 1970s, money was released for increased professional development activities for teachers in schools. New opportunities were given to individual teachers to gain graduate and postgraduate qualifications in a wide range of studies.

In the 1980s, as a university teacher, I taught an after-hours postgraduate program called ‘classroom processes’ to a group of teachers in mid-career. During a tutorial session, I was often asked by my postgraduate students why it was that they had not been offered the content of such a program in initial preparation for teaching. It was obvious from the questioning that a realisation had dawned upon them that they were undergoing a change in perceptions about teaching and their own school performance, something that could lead to a transformation of classroom practice at whatever school level they were working at.

Questions in a similar vein were asked at school professional development workshops, apparently arising from the exposure of teachers to the new thinking about learning and teaching.

About the same period, in the 1980s, teachers and schools in Victoria, Australia, came under increasing pressure from central administration to incorporate new curriculum approaches into their programs, adopt new evaluative and reporting procedures, adapt to statewide testing and live with the uncertainty generated by new school structures and changes in promotional opportunities.

As early as 1974, the situation facing teachers had been well characterised as ‘innovation fatigue’, in the annual Tait Memorial Lecture in Melbourne, by Professor John Nisbet, of Edinborough University. To quote Nisbet:

‘It may already be too late. There are signs that the attitude of the public and profession may be beginning to change. Too many ill-considered experiments have drained away good will. There are symptoms in the UK and the US that teachers are suffering from “innovation fatigue”. Constant attacks on conventional procedures have undermined teachers’ confidence in their capacity to teach and may even have weakened public confidence in the teachers . . .  the additional burden of constant changes may prove the last straw in breaking the back of an overstrained and under-supported teaching profession’.

Nisbet concluded his lecture with the comments: ‘Compared with an airlines operation, with a sophisticated infrastructure to support the small flight crew, a school staff is provided with little support’. ‘We must develop structures to promote innovations, so that the system can become self-renewing’, he added.

Discussion

Even though my one-year program of initial ‘training’ 50 years ago seemed reasonably successful, I do not recommend a return to such strategies for the 21st century. On reflection, it seems that one of the major benefits of the crash course was that it had been offered to students who already had some experience in the adult work force. And this might be a pointer to be considered in the selection of educators for a new role in the 21st century.
The traditional view has been that teaching is a process of transmitting knowledge, the extent of such knowledge being measured by its product: student achievement. However, the outcome of research over the past 20 years suggests that it is the student him or herself who mediates the message coming from the teacher, the influences affecting that mediation being student behaviour, the capacity for mental or cognitive processing and the level of prior learning. It is not possible for any person to perceive the total quality of the activity taking place in the mind of the student. An observer is restricted to reading certain of the signals (which may or may not be behavioural) transmitted by the student in the teaching-learning exchange.
Technology in recent years has changed the face of education. However, our teaching methods and our beliefs about learning are proving to be sorely pressed in trying to keep up with the changes.

Across all education sectors, the computer is already a ubiquitous instrument. With the convergence of information and communications technologies, the computer, in combination with other communication devices, has become central to the delivery of learning across the curriculum.

At the leading edge of educational re-thinking, educational theorists have been attracted to the ‘constructivist’ theory of knowledge acquisition, with its many implications for learning and teaching at all levels. It is of interest that constructivist theory has also driven the development of new information technology software. If applied to both disciplines, the situation of convergence promises a powerful new synergy, with benefit to all learners.

Constructivism goes beyond the behaviorism which dominated the practice of education for several generations. Many teachers, although claiming to be constructivist, prove in practice to display the principles of the former behaviorist approaches to learning, being more focused on measuring student progress by changes in measurable (behavioural) outcomes, rather than in levels of understanding achieved.

Simplistically stated; constructivist theory suggests that the learner constructs his or her own world picture (reality) from individual experience. The experience can be direct or indirect or vicarious (as informed by others, books, films, the internet, and so on):

• a limited experience results in a limited world picture. An expanded experience results in an expanded (elaborated) world picture
• meaning is given through the connections that are made with prior experiences.

For years, literacy has been the focus of public and political concern in school education. However, the notion of ‘literacy’ needs to be expanded beyond traditional applications and to take account of developments in communications technology that are now universally available to schools. The expanded view, now referred to as ‘information literacy’, includes both the traditional skills of ‘read’n and writ’n’ and the skills required to make the most of developments in communication technology. The promotion of ‘information literacy’ will need to become a major function of educators in the 21st century, so their students can more easily discern ‘signal’ from ‘noise’ and make more sense of the mass of data and information available to them by way of the convergent information and communication technologies. ‘Deep learning’, as promoted by Hargreaves, depends on being able to apply the skills gained for ‘information literacy’.

Also in relation to learning, there has been an acceptance in recent years to consider the results of research by brain scientists to have important implications for education.

MRIs and CT scans provide much for medical diagnosis, but so far have been unable to inform us of what happens within the brain/mind that constitutes sensation, perception, consciousness, thinking, that is, learning. Perhaps we need to turn to ‘mind science’ for answers.

If knowledge continues to expand at an exponential rate, there could be a time when no amount of subject study will keep teachers up-to-date with the latest developments in their chosen fields. Teachers in the future may have to focus more upon the process skills, becoming in fact ‘experts’ in the processes that optimise learning.
From such a position of competency, teachers would then become more effectively ‘facilitators’ of learning and be prepared to explore new subject content alongside their students.

Implications for the selection and preparation of educators for the 21st century

The attributes of a 21st century educator, as proposed by David Hargreaves, are personal characteristics that would be desirable in a teacher of any generation. Although similar attributes to those listed could be recognised in some teachers with whom I have worked, it is important that the development of such teacher attributes should become a major focus in professional development programs for 21st century educators, whether in initial studies for teaching or in programs for continuing professional development.

Although it was an innovation introduced in 1973, the Australian Schools Commission mentioned earlier in this paper provides a model worthy of consideration for application in the 21st century. As well as releasing a veritable flood of money for education, its design allowed bypassing the States and directing funds into areas of disadvantage and immediate need in schools. Decisions on what needs were to be met, and where, were made through educational regional committees with representation of professionals and parent groups. Innovative approaches were generated to suit a school’s needs, as determined by its own community. As a result, facilities were provided for such needs as libraries, literacy and numeracy development, science and social education materials, minor redesign of buildings. It was a time of the emergence of change agents, both external to, and internal within, schools.

A fundamental function of the commission was to promote teacher professional development, both for groups and for individuals. As an example, a project titled ‘Teacher-Communicators’, proposed and approved through a regional committee, collapsed when the founding teacher was refused leave from his school by the director of the schools division – a state administrator. The project eventually re-surfaced as the highly successful Institute of Educational Administration (IEA), which took promising young educators into month-long leadership residential programs.

Experience of that time with the IEA provided convincing proof that it will take time, and periods of serious reflection, together with a certain degree of professional maturity, before the characteristics as enumerated by Hargreaves can be fully achieved.

Although no longer in operation, the IEA, with its flexible non-collegiate structure, provides another model worth pursuing for the promotion of educator attributes desirable for the 21st century.

If education is to be transformed, there will need to be a re-think by current practitioners and those charged with administering programs to bring about that transformation, reaching into the institutes and to the individuals providing professional development programs to teachers.

In a country where universal schooling has, for more than a century, been compulsory, it can reasonably be claimed that all Australians have been to school. Unless educators reach out to parents, as partners, in a collaborative attempt to bring about a transformation, parents will likely draw on their own experiences of school and extrapolate them to fit the experiences of their offspring. Therein lies part of the reason why we educators face difficulty in bringing the whole community to an awareness of the need for change. Transformation will depend not only on professional preparation of educators, but will only succeed if communities can summon up the political will to engage in, and drive, the change. Of course, student voices should be heard, but the needs we see for preparing educators for a new role in the 21st century are not likely to be fulfilled unless the whole community is brought into the partnership.

Schools, as corporate entities, have sometimes tended to constitute an inertial force preventing change. The easy way is for teachers to adopt a stance that they will continue to support the status quo, in spite of being exposed to new ideas. This is likely to mean that they will continue to teach, much as they themselves were taught. Teacher training institutes and academics have tended to react in a similar manner. Innovation is seen as a threat. Change is accepted only if imposed by an edict from ‘above’. One might refer to this inertia as a negative school culture, a negative teacher training institute culture and a negative community culture.

In all that has been addressed, it remains that computers and instruments of information technology, such as the internet, search engines, CD-ROMs, PowerPoint displays, pod casts and memory sticks are but tools. Teachers, as facilitators of learning, will have to adopt lifelong learning as a way of life if they are to prove themselves as ‘knowledge workers’ in the new information age.

Lane Clark, in her multimedia teacher seminars, focuses on the skills required for promoting thinking, risk-taking, self-direction, independence, interdependence, inter/intra personal skills experimenting, problem-solving, decision-making and idea generation – all skills desirable for educators to handle new roles, in a new millennium. Maybe there should be more emphasis given in professional development programs to the contribution that can be made to global education by such skilled communicators.

The way to the future is from an understanding of the past, and an awareness of the present. Having looked into the past, and considered the present, I am left with the firm conclusion that, to retain effective teachers, and to select and prepare educators for a new role in the 21st century, there must be a better way.

Further reading

Biggs, John B (editor), (1991). Teaching for learning. ACER, Hawthorn, Melbourne.
Blackmore, Susan (1999). The meme machine. Oxford University Press.
Blakemore, Colin (1988). The mind machine. BBC Books, London.
Brockman, John (ed.), (2002). The next fifty years: science in the first half of the twenty-first century. Weidenfield & Nicolson, London.
Caine, Renate N, Caine, Geoffrey (1991). Teaching and the human brain: making connections. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia.
Candy, Philip et al. (1994). Developing lifelong learners through undergraduate education (the Candy Report).Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Clark, Lane (2007). Where thinking and learning meet, in press, Hawker Brownlow, Melbourne.
Clark, Lane (2006). Preparing learners for their future NOT our Past. Seminar handbook (self-published and distributed at workshops).
Dennett, D (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea. London, Penguin.
Deakin University, Open Campus Program, ETL 821, (1981). The nature of teaching and learning (course materials). Deakin University.
Dewey, John (1967). Experience and education, Kappa Delta Pi, 1938. Collier Books, New York, Seventh Printing.
Dinham, Stephen. ‘Educational research and the ‘three Rs’. In Education review. Vol. 17, No. 2, 14 March 2007.
Greenfield, Susan A (ed.) (1996). ‘The human mind explained’. In Reader’s digest. Montreal, Sydney.
Nisbet, John (1974). ‘Innovation – Bandwagon or Hearse’, Frank Tait Memorial Lecture, Melbourne (unpublished, but reported and circulated).
O'Brien, Les, Hay, Trevor & Tinkler, Don (1984). 'About learning: a proposal for a seven-program television series'. Report to the National Education Committee of UNICEF Australia, Sydney, Australia, November 1984 (unpublished).
Pearce, Joseph Chilton (1992). Evolution’s end: claiming the potential of our intelligence, Harper San Francisco.
Pinker, Steven (2002). The blank slate, Penguin Books, London.
Resnick, Lauren (1983). 'Toward a cognitive theory of instruction'. In Learning and motivation in the classroom. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
Scaruffi, Piero (2003). Thinking about thought: a primer on the new science of mind.  iUniverse, Inc., Lincoln, NE, USA.
Sousa, David A (1995). How the brain learns. National Association of Secondary School Principals, Reston, Virginia.
‘Technologies for enhanced learning’. Report of the Victorian Government Working Party on the Use of Technology as an Education and Communications Facility in Schools (Ross Smith Report) Directorate of School Education, Victoria, 1994.
Tinkler, Don, et al, Education and Technology Convergence, NBEET Commissioned Report No 43, AGPS, 1996.
Tinkler, Don, (2000). Constructivism, Computers and Information Literacy. See: www.hotkey.net.au/~tinkler/index.html
Tinkler, Don. ‘Ockham’s Razor’ science broadcasts on Australian Radio National:
‘Education as a futures enterprise’: August 1987.
‘No limits to learning’: October 1989.
‘Information literacy’: September 1996.
‘Genes, memes, the mind and learning’: June 2004.
UNESCO, (1998). Learning: the treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty First Century. UNESCO Publishing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Don Tinkler has had a long involvement in education as a primary school teacher, researcher, theorist, policy analyst, futurist, activist and commentator. He has co-authored projects for the Commission for the Future, the University of Melbourne, the Queensland Department of Education and the Australian Committee of UNICEF. As a pioneer of the theory, he has applied constructivism in the development of an innovative curriculum for kindergarten to year 6, and to the design of the CD-ROM One Destiny!, telling the story of the federation of Australia’s six colonies. He has also authored or co-authored four reports for state and federal governments on the future application of information and communications technologies to education.

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