Ok, this one is low-hanging fruit on my "War on Words" but a series of posts on words and phrases in education that have lost their meaning today would be incomplete without it. I am talking about "21st Century __________" (fill in the blank with whichever you like: classroom, pedagogy, learning, etc.).
I have written before about how troublesome this term is so I won't go to the trouble of repeating myself. The troublesomeness of the term has been enough to spawn an exhaustive list of articles, speeches, talks, and blog posts on the subject by others. Here are just a few of them:
I am especially fond of Alfie Kohn's faux proposal to start an initiative called the "Partnership for 22nd Century Skills."
Problem with this term primarily, for those of you who wish not to follow any of these links, is at least two-fold. First, it no longer is used as a term to describe our present, recent past, and near future but for those who use and understand the buzz-word connotation, the term is used to describe a learning environment that values hands-on activities, authentic assessment, critical thinking, and problem solving. I have no problem with any of these connotations, in fact I openly promote all of them. The problem is, what the "Partnership for 21st Century Skills" has done to the phrase "21st Century" has shifted it's meaning and in that shift many people have not been briefed about the change. So, the result is that you have educators (especially grant writers, administrators, and board members) using the term in an attempt to sound progressive and applying it to things that are anything but progressive. Interactive whiteboard initiatives are just one example but there are countless others.
So, I have to include "21st Century" as a term to avoid and one that has lost it's meaning. It is probably best to just use the language you would use to explain what you mean by "21st Century" instead of using the term itself because at this point no one will know what you really mean.
Today teachers across the United States were treated to a new issue of American Educator which seems to have some rather scathing looks at "21st Century" skills, student-centered learning, differentiated instruction, technology integration, active learning, & other school reform movements. Of particular note is an article titled "The Most Daring Education Reform of All" by Diana Senechal.
Senechal clearly has a bias for "traditional" models of curriculum & instruction and it is clear from her article that while she may possess some knowledge of the newer movements in education she obviously has little understanding of them. I am embarrassed that a union I belong to has included this article in their publications. It is regressive, presents no substantial ideas that move our profession along a path of improvement, and relies on many unsubstantiated claims and false statements as a foundation for her arguments. What follows are my notes:
"They partake in an American tradition without heeding history or tradition; they glorify the new because it is new, while disparaging the old because it is old."
-I don't think any reformer ever disparages the old for being old, it is always something about the old that they find fault with. This statement is unsubstantiated, misleading, & false.
"this leads to situations where teachers must use technology in class, whether or not it serves the lesson well." ¶3
-No, it often leads to this but this statement is a broad generalization. What it leads to is teachers reacting to the existence of the technology and the effect technologies have on aspects of the classroom including but not limited to curriculum, student behavior, cognition, and pedagogy.
"They forget that content is not simply dry matter; it has shape and meaning; it is the result of centuries of critical thought and the basis for future critical thought." ¶7
-The content she speaks of here that is "the result of centuries of critical thought" is also the result of centuries of bias. This content (and the pedagogy that has developed around it) highly favors and supports the concrete sequential learner and reinforces cultural and socioeconomic structures of white Western society. This system has largely oppressed everyone else and has often in our past been a deliberate tool of oppression.
"To neglect to teach our intellectual and cultural traditions is to limit the kind of thinking that students will be able to do throughout their lives." ¶7
-Adversely, to emphasize them is to reinforce the biases infused into these traditions. Also, who is she referring to by "our?" It is my understanding that different nonwestern cultures have intellectual and cultural traditions that can differ substantially. Does she include those traditions when she uses the word "our?"
"If teachers must ceaselessly change their curriculum to match what is happening in society (or, more narrowly, the workplace), neither they nor their students will have the opportunity to step back and reflect." ¶11
-I fail to see any truth in this argument. I have the ability to reflect on my own life as I live it, why can't a teacher reflect on their curriculum as they modify it. Curriculum is not static, it is dynamic and ought to be consistently modified. If a major game-changing discovery is made in the field of science should we ignore it or alter our curriculum according to the new findings? Adopting the relationship with curriculum this author advocates results in equating curriculum with textbooks. The result of which is everyone ends up learning curriculum written for Texas placating to Texas ideals and political sensibilities.
"For students to engage in inquiry, they must have a strong foundation of knowledge." ¶17
-My 2 & 4 year old daughters are very inquisitive, it is how they learn. They engage in inquiry every day (almost all day). It is through this inquiry that they gain knowledge and understanding.
"But true engagement is not entertainment; it is involvement, which my be invisible at times." ¶19
-Isn't this what 21st Century pedagogy is all about? What is she criticizing here?
"Or they reach a point where they cannot take their peers any more and beak into fights." ¶20
-Let me get this straight, active learning leads students into conflict with each other while traditional classrooms don't? This statement is so far from being rational it is almost laughable. Traditional "sit and get" classrooms limit the teacher's ability to build relationships with students which leads to worse classroom behavior. In a learner-centered classroom classroom management is far easier because there is built into the instruction community building as an integral component. Statements like this are almost laughable and do not deserve serious consideration and should by no means have ever appeared in a respectable teacher journal.
"Deeper engagement is sacrificed for a more trivial kind, and quiet, independent thought has little place."
-Again, where is she getting this view of learner-centered classrooms? This seems more true of "traditional" classrooms than "21st century" ones.
I stopped reading here, couldn't take any more of it......
Rather than give you a self-produced tech tip video this week I would like to turn your attention to a keynote address by Clay Burell from this fall's Learning Technologies Conference in Australia. I think this is a must-see for all educators. In his keynote, Clay takes us on a four year journey from self-described technology illiterate to internationally known edublogger. Clay has come to be know in the edublogosphere for both his deeply insightful reflective writing on teaching, policy, learning, and schools as well as his mastery of the social web and it's impact on his students (both in and out of his classroom). Enjoy! Weekly Tech Tip:
We often hear of school districts heralding an initiative as promoting 21st Century Learning and we often hear people talk about needing to have 21st Century Classrooms or adopting a 21st Century pedagogy. However, as near as I can tell most of the time "21st Century _____" is used it lacks a concrete definition or consensual understanding of what it means. Instead, it becomes a handy buzz word or phrase that can be used to beef up public relations. While everyone talks about it, no one ever defines it. On close inspection, most of the times it is used one can discern that the party using it to describe or promote something doesn't have a firm grasp of what it means either. I propose that this has reached a point where the nebulous nature of this idea is potentially harmful and potentially corrupting of the major decisions our teachers, school administrators, schools, districts, and universities make. If we are going to continue making important and expensive decisions based on the notion of 21st Century Learning we need to have no more than two or three possible definitions of what it means (preferably one definition).
Back in August Wesley Fryer posted an article to his blog that set off a lively debate about electronic whiteboard use. That topic was recently brought up again on the Learning in Maine blog but put into the context of whether electronic whiteboards support 21st Century Education. I highly recommend both of these articles and the comment streams that follow them as they begin to seriously address this question of defining 21st Century Education.
So, what is 21st Century Education and how does it differ from 20th Century Education? How far from the trees do we need to look to see this forest? In August of 2007 I put together a video called Why We Need to Teach Technology in School which attempts to make people think about how technology might be changing education. The video offers no solution, nor does it offer any definition of what 21st Century Education looks like. In many ways I was not sure I could answer those questions at that time. This blog post is an attempt of mine to take this discussion to the next step and try and work out these big ideas.
21st Century Education is defined by what technologies available to us today make possible and what they render obsolete. The technology that effects education the most is networked digital electronics such as computers, the internet, cell phones, portable media players, digital cameras, digital camcorders, etc. and the software developed to use with them. Daniel Pink says that in our new economy everything that can either be outsourced or automated will be. I don't think this is anything new. We have seen this story again and again throughout history. When photography was invented in the 1800s much of the work previously done by painters was automated by the camera. Nearly every time an invention comes along that can get something done more efficiently an industry suffers. This idea has been well explained and detailed by Clayton Christensen and his theory of disruptive innovation.
When the camera was invented it set the art world into a century long identity crisis known as Modernism. Since painting could not primarily be about creating images it had to be about something else. Modernism was all about defining what art is minus the prior dominant attribute of image rendering. This time was marked by many artistic movements, all with their own philosophies, definitions, and manifestos. Examples of this include Impressionism, Expressionsim, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. All radically different but share the same absence of image rendering being their primary attribute. This is where I think we are with 21st Century Schools.
21st Century Schools are in the middle of an identity crisis. New technologies render unnecessary some major elements of pedagogy that have, since the inception of the industrial revolution, become indoctrinated and so ingrained into what we think of as school that the absence of such pedagogical constructs throws into question whether what we are talking about is school at all. For example, with online digital video and open courseware there is no longer a need for teachers to lecture. In fact, we can take the very best lecturers on a subject, record their presentations, and upload them to YouTube where students can view them at any time. In many ways this is better because if they miss something they can rewind or if they are not ready to watch and listen now they can wait until they are ready. Also, through digital quiz or survey tools students can be pretested to identify what their learning needs are before they take a course. These same digital tools can be used to automate some forms of assessment. So, essentially we can outsource lectures and automate objective assessment. With these learning resources available anytime anywhere there eliminates a need to move all students along at the same pace. There also eliminates the need for all students to learn in the same way or even be physically present with the teacher and other students in the same classroom at the same time.
Online schools have been described by many as being "21st Century." While this is in part true because the school would not be possible without 21st Century technology there are as many learning theories applied to online schools as are applied in traditional classrooms. Many online schools simply take what would have been done in a traditional classroom and put it online so students can attend remotely. I would not use online schools as being the single exemplar of "21st Century Schools." Rather the terms "Online Learning" and "Online Schools" refer to a medium, not a pedagogy. If we use the medium to define 21st Century ______ as most of us have been then that definition will keep changing at a rate that we will not be able to keep up with. An online school can be "21st Century" but not all are.
One thing our pre-digital schools were not very good at was differentiated instruction. Another thing they did not have the proper resources to fully implement was authentic assessment. Research studies done by Caine and Caine (1991), Brooks and Brooks (1993), and many others exploring the effect of constructivist teaching strategies have overwhelmingly illustrated the power constructivist approaches like project-based learning have to promote both achievement and incite intrinsic motivation to learning objectives. Outsourcing and automating things that in the traditional classroom take a lot of time and energy frees the teacher up to be able to facilitate a true project-based, authentic learning, constructivist classroom. It is the pedagogy made possible by 21st century technology that is what defines a 21st Century School or 21st Century Learning. Right now the EdVisions schools like New Country School and Avalon are more pure examples of 21st Century schools.
So, this changes the question to whether 21 Century Education necessitates a replacement of prior models of schooling. I argue no. While Dan Willingham might disagree, I believe there is a kernel of truth behind learning style theories. Most specifically I believe the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner is important and valid. I believe that students have different learning needs depending upon what subject they are studying. These needs are different for each student. One student may benefit more from a traditional class in Math while learning more in Social Studies by a constructivist approach. Another student may learn Social Studies better in a traditional class and math with project-based learning. It really depends for each individual on what kind of motivation they need and what kind of social environment the individual needs to study a subject.
What I advocate for is blend of the traditional and the 21st Century. I would like to see schools opperate in dual fashion. Think of it as two schools in one (not necessarily a school within a school). Students learning needs and interests can be identified and students can be placed either in a traditional classroom or work indepenedently with the help of an advisor based on whichever learning modality is optimal for each student in each subject.
Two years ago, when my art teacher position at an alternative high school was looking like it was slated for the budget cut slating block, I started to grow concerned about the financial future of public education and what it means for the realities of the classroom. We have seen the cost of educating a child rise every year faster than the rate of funding for schools. As a result every year we see class sizes increase, more programs cut, and less money for classroom budgets. It was about that time that I was turned on to the concept of disruptive innovation in education made popular by the Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen.
That spring my art teacher position indeed was cut due to no fault of my own. When I started looking for work, uneasy about the future of our traditional public schools and unsure about the long-term stability of online or virtual schools I decided the most intelligent option was to diversify my professional activities. I took a full-time job as a technology integration specialist for a traditional brick and mortar school and a part-time position with an online charter school.
Over the past year I heard the same old budget issues raised at my full-time day job. There are warnings that programs might be cut and "extras" will need to be examined scrupulously before we spend the money on them. At the same time my online position was thriving. By the end of the year, evidently, my class numbers for the virtual school had grown to where my position was nearly full-time there as well. By fall of this year the virtual school had to split my position, giving a full-time position to the person they hired to take over my bustling classes. Then, just last week I saw that the Oregon branch of Connections Academy became the single largest high school in that state. What is going on here?
The cost of educating a child in an online setting is exponentially less than that of educating a child in a brick and mortar school. With a virtual school you don't have to pay for building expenses, one teacher can manage a lot more students because they don't have the same classroom management issues to deal with and most mundane tasks can be aggregated. Personalization of learning is much easier to do in the online school as well.
Now, not every student is equally suited for online learning. I strongly believe there is still a place for the consistent face to face interaction that brick and mortar school provide. To be successful online, a student must have the self-motivation to work through assignments and lessons without a teacher present and must have a positive support structure at home. Students who lack one or both of these things would benefit more from a learning environment where this kind of motivation can be provided.
My growing concern:
In every scenario I see, especially with the current economic crisis, doom is spelled for the fate of traditional educational settings. If we keep going the way we have been going students are going to leave to enroll in virtual schools and class sizes, programs deemed "non-essential" in the traditional school will be cut and those who teach "essential" courses will see enormous class sizes. Why don't we see a stronger push against virtual learning from our traditional schools? I think teachers are tired of fighting for increased funding, they don't see a solution to fight for, and many see the benefits virtual learning bring. The only argument against virtual schools that I hear over and over again is over a concern for lack of social interaction. But we need to examine and ask ourselves, "What are schools for?" There is the Jeffersonian idea that schools are supposed to prepare students to be members of our society and then there is the Hamiltonian idea that schools are to prepare students for their careers. Neither aim is greatly addressed with the issue of social interaction. And to address this issue, my online students know each other, they have friends, and their social groups outside of school more positively fulfill this role than brick and mortar schools ever did. So what about the fate of traditional schools?
Doomsday Scenario:
We are seeing more and more foreclosures on homes, taxes on which are the source of public school funding.
Housing crisis, coupled with the subsequent economic meltdown means very little money for schools.
Only Language Arts, Science, Math, and Social Studies are left after cut backs.
Class sizes are in the 50+ students per teacher.
Schools forced into 4 day week to save on transportation and heating.
Students have to supply their own textbooks.
No extra curricular activities.
No field trips.
Teachers have to work more years before they can retire.
With 50+ students in one class, the only manageable teaching strategy is lecture hall style direct instruction.
Meanwhile, while class sizes are still at 50+ in the virtual school, each student's lessons are personalized and easy for the teacher to manage.
With fewer costs associated with online education there is money for extras such as field trips and extra curricular activities.
So, what is the answer:
Let virtual schools grow and become the new mainstream schools.
Traditional public schools need to transform and become more like our alternative schools or area learning centers.
We need to abandon the bell schedule and view our teachers not as people who teach classes but as expert resources within the organization.
Student learning needs to be personalized. This can be done by assigning students an adviser who works with the student to develop a learning plan.
Part of this plan could be taking core, specialty, or advanced classes online.
Invest in face to face course offerings that are done better in person than online (art, theater, dance, music, physical education, industrial technology, etc.).
Teachers who do not teach courses described in #6 split their time between advising and teaching online.
Only probationary students (those who fall behind) need to show up every day. For the rest, school is a place they go for some classes or to use the school's resources.
By cutting the arts, physical education, industrial technology, and extra curricular programs we are eliminating from our brick and mortar schools what they do best! All other content areas are better served by virtual schools.
The survival of our traditional schools depends on a merger between the virtual school and the traditional school and an investment in the very programs everyone is cutting.
What needs to happen:
State Education policy has to be revised either to state that all students can be served by an ALC or traditional schools can offer classes as project-based so they are not held down by seat-time requirements that are outdated and tied to the antiquated notion that we need to prepare students to punch a clock.
Training in distance learning pedagogy needs to be required of all pre-service teachers and all teachers whose license is up for renewal.
I have been frustrated lately. Part of my contract states that I will offer weekly morning technology mini workshop sessions for teachers in our district. I have been planning these and offering them every Thursday morning all year long. Unfortunately I am lucky if I get just one or two people in attendance. I know it is not that teachers don't want or feel they need this training, it is a time issue. If you are strapped for time you are going to cut out everything that is not essential. Attending an optional training session is usually viewed as something that can be cut out if there is no time unless what is being offered is crucial to what is happening in your classroom today. I find my position is far more effective as an on demand resource that teachers can call in when they need something NOW or if they have specific projects they want to work on and need advice.
I am going to try a new approach. Instead of always planning a session, showing up, and having all that planning time and energy wasted I am going to make these sessions available in small snippits that can be viewed when teachers have time or when they are at home. Hopefully this will help. For this I am going to use a combination of Screencast-o-matic and Ustreamtv. I have set up a training blog that I will post these to for our district teachers.
I believe this approach to professional development is in keeping with what we are trying to accomplish with these new 21st century tools and is a step toward developing a new 21st century pedagogy. If teachers are going to alter their teaching methods they need to experience alternatives from the learner's perspective. Hopefully this method of content delivery will be more effective, reach more of our staff, and in turn have an effect on how these tools are utilized in the classroom.
Tonight I attended a school board meeting. Not by choice mind you but because members of our local teachers union take turns taking notes at these things. There were plenty of places I could think of where I would rather have been: at a movie, shopping, online reading by RSS feeds, at home playing with my toddler, etc. However, even though I was dragged to this event I must say that witnessing the process was riveting as it always is. Sitting in on a school board reminds me of just how insure our profession is and how resistant it is to change.
School boards were created originally in our country to ensure that major education decisions were made at a local level by elected officials that supposedly have the best interest of the taxpayers and local community at heart. If you look at how things are financed and how they are governed in this country it all follows this structure. Federal funding for education is minimal and to tap into those funds they do dictate certain criteria be met. The vast majority of school funding the fed leaves up to individual states. If you look at individual state budgets the majority of taxpayer money always goes to education. Then, if you are lucky enough to live in an economically well off school district a large chunk of school funding comes from the taxpayers (thus the gap in education provided by public schools in wealthy areas as opposed to poor areas). The people then elect a school board that has final say in how these funds get dispersed and often get their fingers into nitty gritty school policy issues. The boards then appoint Superintendents who are in charge of hiring administrators and teachers to carry out the policies of the school.
The scary thing about this whole process is that a school board member doesn't necessarily have to be a supporter of education. Often school board members are elected to the board feeling they are there to represent those who have little vested interest in public education. This might mean they want to make sure their taxes are low or want to derail the public system to make room for private options such as private schools or home schooling. Or they feel they are put there by a portion of the constituency who want them to impose some sort of moral value or moral code on the school such is the case with issues like creationism vs. evolution. This is always the dilemma of those who push for change in education. Those who have ultimate say are not always in their positions because they put the welfare of our children first or value the education of our children first. There is far more at work when making decisions than that. Now, I don't think anyone is ever elected to a school board with the intent of doing harm but often their values do not match those that statistics show are best for our kids education. Often these school boards become deadlocked on issues because of this and deadlock means nothing is done.
In this particular school board meeting I observed the main point of debate was all day every day kindergarten. This year has been a trial year for this program in our district. We have gone to great lengths to document the impact this has had on this year's kindergarten students. We measured last years students at various points in the year and applied the same rubrics to this years students. The result was that while last years students started the year slightly ahead of this years students academically and cognitively after having them in the all day every day program they measured ahead of last years students when measured mid year. In fact, the level they collectively reached mid year was higher than last years students at the end of the year. I have personally observed these students mastering complex concepts such as fractions and probability that would never have been possible in a half day or every other day program. There have also been tons of parents come before the school board to sing all day every day's praises. Still, despite overwhelming evidence that this program is good for our kids, the board remains unable to make a decision about what to do next year. I have to conclude that this has to be attributed to board members who feel they do not represent the families of next year's kindergarten students (or any future kindergarten student for that matter) but rather represent families who would rather see their kids at home or their tax money in their pockets.
I think from looking at this debate a few things are clear about the nature of public schools and how they are governed. First, should something come up that would require immediate action traditional public schools would not be able to handle it because the process is not designed to handle major change. Second, the more attention is paid on an issue the more in jeopardy it is (whether it is good or bad) and the more something is allowed to go unnoticed the more it will thrive in this system (in other words, don't stand out, don't do things radically different, and don't do things that will attract attention because no matter how good it is there will be someone opposed and ready to make it an issue). This I believe is true of any organization. Look at The Apprentice. On that show there is always a contestant who rises to the top four because they kept a low profile in the beginning. Third, statistics don't always matter and some people will never change their minds. Statistics are great if we are clear that what we are measuring is of value to all. If we want school achievement and the statistics look great fine, but what don't the statistics show. Statistics can be twisted by anyone and are always viewed by the reader differently based on their own bias before they are presented to them. It is almost impossible to shake someone with strong convictions. If they show something positive there is likely to be someone who says they don't measure what I care about so I am going to dismiss them.
This is at the heart of a problem that will soon become a crisis in this country. Every year the cost of educating a child rises at a rate greater than the money states can provide. We have to make great changes to counter this. Second, statistics show that in the next five years our nation will loose the majority of it's teachers either to retirement or to career changes. Last year alone South Carolina only graduated one Chemistry teacher and that statistic is pretty common across the states. We are also facing a national fiscal crisis. Multiple sources are telling us we are headed into a recession. What are the statistics on levys and referendums in times of economic recession? I am sure they are not good. Recessions mean fewer dollars for schools. How is today's school board equipped to handle such a problem?
I moonlight as a teacher for an online public charter school. This is a very part time job for me. In fact, I probably only spend 6-10 hours a week working for them. Still, I have 375 students in 2 states enrolled in one or more of 10 classes I offer. In such a system I can be more productive than I could be in a traditional face to face setting. Many people in the distance learning community are looking at these kinds of statistics and saying that this is a solution to our looming crisis in education. How is this public school structure equipped to deal with this? I could very easily add students in other states if I had the licensure but to do so I have to go through the process of getting licensed in each individual state and to some degree have to go through local channels to work with students. I believe there is a better way to handle this.
I used to live in an old house. One nice thing about this house was it was amendable. I could change the color of the walls, I could add or remove walls if I wanted, I could update the decor. After many years of previous owners doing just that the paint got so thick that it began to peal off in thick chunks leaving a large areas of the wall that had noticeable texture issues. The non load bearing walls had been moved so many times there was evidence of where they had been previously. All these additions over the years had resulted in a house that was difficult to restore. This winter my wife and I bought a new house. This house still needs work, the basement is not finished, the yard needs landscaping, and the walls are all battleship gray. The difference is with the new house change is easy. We have an open canvas with which we can do anything we want with relative ease where with the old house we were constantly trying to deal with the structure we got.
We are living in an increasingly more globalized world where things that happen in other people's neighborhoods are more and more relevant to us and what happens in places other than the local community has greater and greater importance to us. Technology is changing fast and allowing this to happen. The television brought news of other places and ideas from outside the community into our homes in the 1950s and web 2.0 is now making everyone a publisher/producer/broadcaster. With the ability to be connected in such a way shaping the way information is shared and having a trickle down effect across every aspect of our culture does it make sense to maintain the education system controlled by a locally elected school board? or do we need to build a new house that addresses concerns of contemporary life?
In the meantime, lay low, try not to be noticed, and don't do anything too extraordinary.
