Diversity, power and the mess in the middle.

DISCLAIMER: I want to be clear that I am not talking about anyone in particular, but rather that I am talking about things that I have seen and heard many, many times. 

My first teaching job was in a very poor socio-economic area in England. You can read more about the school during the time I worked there in The Guardian article that was written at the time. However, just to help you set the scene, the article talks about the the small stature of the children at the school: "One of the most striking things about the children is their stature. Many of them – the boys in particular – seem small for their age, and underweight. It's something other visitors, and even Ofsted, have commented on, Black tells me, and it is undoubtedly down to poor nutrition." It also talks about "the disproportionate number of looked-after children", the school has large numbers of students in foster care. I remember my first day (first day ever as a teacher by myself in the classroom) where a year eleven student picked up another much smaller one and shook him by the collar with a look off pure rage on his face. I later learnt that the angry boy was a refugee who had experienced his own father's execution. The young man he was shaking had insulted his mother. The article talks about this too, saying "An increasing number of pupils, particularly Afghan boys, are arriving at the school illiterate in their own language. "We have children arriving with no teeth, with horrific injuries sustained on their journeys to the UK. They often suffer emotional difficulties as a result."

From here, I continued on to New Zealand schools. The schools that I have worked at in New Zealand were considered to be of high socio-economic status (decile ten). Yet, the issues that I saw in my school in England, plagued these schools too. In all the schools, there have been hoards of disengaged students. Often, because there was no connection between what they are supposed to learn in school, and what is often a brutal fight for survival outside of school. There are kids everywhere dealing with abusive situations as a result of the adults in their lives. Those are just the parents and family situations. It does not even begin to talk about the adults in schools. Just recently in the news there have again been articles of teachers having inappropriate relationships and sexually abusing students. And then, we haven't even talked about the adults who stood by and did not speak up...

The above are more extreme situations of the adults in children's' lives, in my opinion, failing the children they should be taking care of. As an adult, leaving an abusive relationship can be extremely difficult. Years of abuse often leads people to feel too disempowered to break out of their difficult situation. What then of the children with no knowledge of how the world works, not old enough to get a job, etc? It frustrates, angers and terrifies me that so many of the students who are in abusive situations, are both emotionally and physically stuck.

Often, for students who are unhappy, stuck, being emotionally and physically abused, we do not intervene until things are really bad. When a story breaks in the paper, we ask about why more wasn't done? Why didn't anyone notice? Why didn't anyone do anything? I know I have asked those questions many times. Increasingly though, I have realised that to some extent, almost all of us are guilty of propagating the culture that leads to the situations above. I better explain...

Reading Keri Facer's Learning Futures book, this particular section really struck me:

"New stories were told about childhood as a time of vulnerability, a time of innocence, a time of a new generational contract dependence. And reciprocally, these stories about childhood also produced particular stories about adulthood as a time of labour, of secure identity and of expertise. In this story, adulthood became the ‘end point’ to which childhood aspired. The institutions and the narratives of childhood therefore became mutually reinforcing. Such a model of adult–child relations brings risks to children – their rights can be overlooked as they are seen as less than fully formed humans; but also benefits – children are invested in, protected, cared for." - Page 30

I have increasingly noticed in schools situations that may be interpreted as the embodiment of children being treated as "less than fully formed humans". And I worry that I am guilty of them all...

• There are and have been many students that have been unhappy with their relationship with a particular teacher. It may be as as simple as they feel that the teacher does not help them when they ask. It may be as complex as they feel that the teacher picks on them. They may dislike the way the teacher teaches. When the student speaks up about this, we often expect them to just tough it out. We ask them how they are to blame for the situation. How often do we automatically side with the teacher? If this is our reflex, then how often do we continue to feed into a culture where students who speak up with concerns that may well be very serious, are not heard? And to what extent might we be contributing to a culture in this way where the we blame the victims?
  



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• When talking about what students should learn at school, we assume that we, the adults, with all our worldly experience, degrees and other qualifications know what is best for the student to learn. We say things like "you don't know what you don't know" and use this as an excuse to make students learn subjects that they do not show interest in. For this one, it is easy to say 'yes, but...' and you could make some great arguments. The problem remains that as adults we often assume that we know what is best for the students and then act accordingly. However, by assuming, concluding, inferring, whatever you want to call it that we know best, are we again proliferating the attitude that adult's have more say, more opinion, and that their opinions matter more? I do not question that as an adult, we often have powerful experiences and knowledge that our students do not have. The question however, is whether when we engage with our students in those situations, do we approach them as equals with different perspectives and knowledge, or, do we inadvertently suggest that our opinions, perspectives and knowledge matters more? How different would these conversations be if students were automatically treated as equals, rather than the less informed party?
  
• How often have teachers yelled at students but will lose their marbles if a student yells at them? This is holding the students to a different standard, saying that what applies for the adults does not apply for the students. We do not always hold children and adults to the same standards. How might we contributing to a culture of prioritising the adult's rights over that of the child's in this situation? 

An Auckland high school recently informed some of their female students that their skirts were too short. The news website reports that a "female teacher explained their skirts were a distraction for both boy students and that the school needed to create a good work environment for male teachers." I wonder, what kind of message does this send? Female sexuality is not okay but males sexuality is? Is this promoting a culture of "slut shaming"? Or even worse, rape culture with the all too familiar phrase "she was asking for it"? It isn't too much of stretch of the imagination to see how the males and females are not held to an equal standard here. In fact, pop star Ariana Grande recently made the news for calling out a fan on exactly this sort of behaviour.

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The teacher who explained that the skirts were a distraction for the boys, the adults who abuse children, the teachers who are not held to the same standard as the students... They all have a common thread for me - power imbalance. When we are charged with the care of someone, how often do we act from a position of power rather than care? How often does the way we communicate suggest that the opinions, views or feelings of others are more important, simply because they are adult/male/female/the boss/the teacher? When we are dealing with diversity, how often do we act in such a way to establish power rather than understanding, even as we pay lip service to equality and equity?

I wonder why adults make so many decisions for students, even when they are able to think for themselves far better than the adults? I wonder why ill informed, corrupt, ignorant adults can vote, but thoughtful, empathetic seventeen year olds can not? I wonder why sexuality is a public debate? I wonder why we still have racism, sexism and all the other isms... And I wonder how we inadvertently promote racism, sexism, ageism, elitism without even realising it?

Where there is an age difference, culture difference, gender difference, it seems that we are still struggling to really treat 'other' as 'equal'... It seems to me that more often than not, we treat difference as a power struggle, rather than a collaboration. Perhaps, if we got better at engaging with diversity, with difference, we might get better at dealing with the abuse and inequality in society? Perhaps the real question is why it is that we still struggle with diversity so much?

Why I'm breaking up with SMART goals

SMART goals are: source 

I'm breaking up with SMART goals. Over time, our relationship has become increasingly strained, officially reaching breaking point over the past week. Let me explain...

Specific: Ask a room of professional adults whether their job has become increasingly complex over the past fifteen years and the majority will put up their hands. Many academics, consultants and more agree that this is the case - Jennifer Garvey Burger, Ziauddin Sardar, Dave Snowden are just some of my favourites. The thing about complexity though, is that it is unpredictable, what worked today will not necessarily work tomorrow, and there is no linear cause and effect (if you haven't yet, I highly recommend digging into complexity theory and thinking). Sean Snyder captures the idea of complexity with some simple examples in his OECD paper - The Simple, the Complicated, and the Complex: Educational Reform Through the Lens of Complexity Theory.

Comparing the simple, complicated and complex: source

So then, if my goal falls in the complex realm where expertise is neither necessary nor sufficient for success, where there is no linear cause and effect, where unpredictability is the status quo, then how am I supposed to set a 'specific' goal? It seems to me that the specific goals should be reserved for the realm of the technical challenge, not for the lofty aspiration I have have for myself. Because as we can probably all agree, the really big goals in our life ignore our plans, change their focus and more often than not evolve and morph past the original goal posts we set.

Cynefin Framework: source

Measurable: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts" - William Bruce Cameron. Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured, should. The thing about measurement is that it first requires a standardised measure. For distance it might be centimetres or kilometre. For economics, it's money, GDP. For education, it's usually achievement data - national standards and NCEA targets. And of course, we measure so that we can determine growth, in fact, we live in a world obsessed with growth, despite it's limitations as Martin Kirk explains in his article for Aeon; "The problem is, GDP doesn’t care about the environment or human suffering; they are irrelevant ‘externalities’. In fact, GDP actively rewards destruction of the environment, which by short extensions produces, rather than eliminates, poverty, especially for those already impoverished or at risk of so being"

What might my goals look like if I stopped thinking in terms of growth, but rather thought about transformation? Can I even think my way out of the the mindset where everything is about growth? After all, I've been socialised into this growth mindset...

Attainable: If we only set out to achieve 'attainable' goals, what does that do for those people in the world who are already disempowered? Will they continue to have low expectations of themselves? But also, if we only ever set attainable goals, would Steve Jobs have set out to "make a dent in the universe"? Would we have Richard Bransons, Bill Gates, Martin Luther King? To quote Nelson Madela - “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

In setting goals, we often filter out, intentionally and unintentionally, those things that do not help us attain our goals. But, how many opportunities pass us by because we have set our filters too small? What if opportunity allows us to surpass our attainable goal but we don't see that opportunity because our filters are set on what we perceive as attainable?

Realistic and sometimes Relevant: I think we have established how I feel about realistic... But lets tackle relevant. Relevant is often associated with questions such as whether a goal ties into my key responsibilities, whether it ties in with my long term plans, or whether a goal is consistent with my other goals. Frankly, I feel that relevant seems to take all the play, and hence all the fun, out of goals. And then, as if the fun hasn't been squished enough, we then throw in that 'responsibilities' word! Why must my goals be tied to my responsibilities only? I suspect Google's 20% time laughs in the face of the relevant - sometimes a project starts as irrelevant and becomes relevant as we learn more.

Of course, we could also add the complexity lens to this. What if I work in a space where the future is genuinely unknown? How can I know what my long term goals might be? Or where my responsibilities are not clear, either because I'm in one of those 'evolving' roles, because I'm starting a new role from scratch, or because I have decided, even though it's not officially my responsibility, to take on an objective? Having KiwiFoo at the top of my mind from last weekend, I think about all those people tackling immense problems in the world, outside of their job/work, not because it is their responsibility, but simply because they care.

Time bound: Well... Obviously we have a problem here. How often has life gotten in the way of your plans? How often have you had to extend the timeline on a goal? By setting a goal that is time bound, does that set us up to fail from the word go? And also, further to my point about play and fun, time bound suggests that I need a schedule, and that doesn't do a whole lot of good to the fun sucking image of the SMART goal.

Of course, a truly aspirational, ambitious goal might also have a timeline that dwindles into the complex space of the unknown. I wonder if Ghandi set a goal like on this date, by this year, we will have... Of course, there is also the idea of the Red Queen to throw in here; "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" - Lewis Caroll. If we have a goal like future focussed education, we can not just have a deadline, because as soon as we have arrived, we will have been left behind.

So what? 

Forbes magazine suggests that only 8% of people achieve their new years resolutions. Perhaps, it is the way that we set our goals that makes them unattainable? Perhaps, because we drain the play, the spontaneity, the pie in the sky dreams out of them, that we lose interest and motivation? If we teach children to have SMART goals, what beliefs about goals take shape as a result? That they have to be attainable? That they need a timeline? That they have to be measured? Are we socialising our children to think in attainable, measurable steps? Where are we teaching our children in as explicit a means that we need to dream big, and pursue those big dreams?

Perhaps I have made some faulty assumptions about SMART. Perhaps SMART goals are for managing technical difficulties in life, things that are specific, do work within the cause and effect realms of the world. Those things in the simple and even the complicated space. Perhaps SMART goals, much like many other buzz words in society, have exploded beyond it's original context, and have turned into a ghost of its former self. Perhaps, SMART goals were only ever intended for the technical challenges in our lives, rather than the adaptive or emergent. Maybe there is a key critical distinction to make; SMART goals are for the simple, maybe even complicated problems. They are not however for the complex. 

I wanted to say that it's official, I am breaking up with SMART goals, however, it seems that our relationship has headed into the complicated. The space of best practice, and expertise, where I draw on the SMART goal with careful consideration of both it's strengths and limitations.  All in all, a much more comfortable place to be.

Why have an online home for your class?

In an effort to remind myself why I believe in e-learning tools, as we as to encourage others to do the same, I have created a summary that might be useful. Feel free to share and distribute. You can access the Google Drive drawing here for editing and easy sharing purposes.


I would love your feedback on this, as always!

Draft goals for 2016

Don't just own your learning, write your own story!

Reflections are often one of those words that are touted around as a good thing for students and teachers to do. But why? Although I am sure that there are likely many great psychological, scientific and other reasons, my own experience has led me to believe that without deep critical reflection, one keeps making the same mistakes. Without deep reflection, we can not hope to challenge our assumptions, perspectives and hidden commitments. Without reflection, we can not take ownership of our lives and its direction.

The reality however, despite my love of reflections, student (and sometimes teacher) reflections are often shallow, and as a result, have little benefit. So when does reflecting have the greatest value? At what point does it actually become worth the investment in both effort and time?

With the above in mind, I have been doing some reading about adult cognitive development (the things one has time for over the holidays...). Using the ideas from experts such as Robert Kegan and Marcia Baxter Macgolda, I then set about developing some sort of a guide that might help me to generate deeper, more purposeful reflections - and hopefully my students too! The idea is to move through increased levels of complexity towards greater ownership of my experiences, perspectives, assumptions, commitments, relationships etc. in order to make better decisions around the course of action I will take in being the author of my life story. So basically, I'm hoping to take the "learner agency" buzzword to the next level - don't just own your learning, write your own story!

Click here to download

I have been grappling with how to scaffold students towards more depth in their thinking for some time. Below is a resource I produced last year. Students were asked to draw two cards from the pile. They would have to address the question in their reflection. I have also used these cards in discussions to generate more depth. During the discussion, you have to 'play' your card by asking the question at a relevant moment. This is great for a staff discussion to move beyond the day to day! I've also made two levels of cards to provide reflectees (see what I did there?) a choice as to their level of challenge.

Level 1 questions: Click here to download

Level 2 questions: Click here to download

Digital Citizenship for Adults

There are lots of things out there for kids right now regarding digital citizenship. But I bet sometimes your colleagues' digital etiquette leaves much to be desired too. I've put together a very basic guide with a hint of humour. Feel free to share this office etiquette guide with your colleagues - or print a copy for the office wall. 

How do you know if you are a fruit loop or a lone nut?

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Fruit loop: "A mad or a crazy person"Lone nut: "The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire. The 2nd follower is a turning point: it's proof the first has done well. Now it's not a lone nut, and it's not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news." 

There are many great TED talks, but the Derek Sivers: How to start a movement talk remains one of my favourites. It speaks to my inner aspirational innovator, leader and dreamer. And as I have come to learn over the past four years on Twitter, I am not alone. Across the country, and across the world, there are many teachers testing and trying new things in their practice to better meet the needs of their learners. Yet, these same teachers, despite their passionate investment in their learners, are often left feeling isolated, rebellious or disillusioned. They remain lone nuts in their contexts.

Yet, in the online Twitter world many of us have found our tribe.

"Connecting with people who share our same passions and commitment helps in developing our Element. This is our tribe. “Often we need other people to help us recognise our real talents. Often we can help other people to discover theirs.” - Ken Robinson source

It is in the online world of Twitter chats and Google+ communities that many of us have found validation for our ideas, transforming us from lone nuts in our contexts, to be part of a movement, a community. And what a phenomenal feeling this can be! It speaks to our ancient human need for connection. I know that moving from a lone nut interested in and experimenting with project based learning to being part of #PBLchat was a huge turning point in my career, as was finding and leading #edchatNZ.

However lately I have been wondering... How do I know that I am a lone nut, an innovator, a leader, rather than a fruit loop? The internet in its epic democratic nature allows equal air time to the lone nuts and the fruit loops, I am equally likely to find a tribe of nuts or loops. On the internet, the Pope, Kim Kardashian, Obama and David Attenborough all have a voice, and democracy determines the reach. And on top of this, there is the fact that we become socialised into the groups we are part of, thinking, without realising, that they way we act, and the things we think, are the norm.

As I experiment alongside educators across the globe in our classrooms with design thinking, modern learning practice, maker education, robotics, coding, 3D printing, project based learning, literacy and numeracy interventions, STEM, STEAM, collaboration, bring your own technology, Google Apps for Education and Office 365, and whatever else you can think of, I am left wondering, how do I judge the merit of my ideas? I no longer subscribe to standard measures of success, they are too often Eurocentric, anti-feminist, outdated, disillusioned, depersonalised, etc. As a result, I need to find validation and measures of success for my ideas and my questions in new ways, because I do not think exams results alone are a measure of success.

So, if I can't count on my internet tribe, despite the genuine appreciation I have for their unrelenting support, and I can't count on exams, how do I know that I am not a fruit loop?

"...the only definite outcome is uncertainty"

The only thing we do know about the future is that is is uncertain. It surprises us. In our own lives and society, we know that unexpected challenges, problems and opportunities arrive. People and society is faced with everything from poverty and abuse to ISIS, climate change and natural disasters such as earthquakes and tornados. This doesn't even begin to talk about the uncertainty that we have about where technology will take us next. If for just one day, you were not allowed to use any technology that was invented in the last 15 years, what would your day look like? There would be no Facebook, no iPhone, so I would actually have to take a GPS with me. There would be no Netflix. Wait, there would be no YouTube. There would be no Wikipedia. Things are getting serious now. I would probably have to listen to a CD - oh the limitations to my playlist size! Scrutinise any part of your day, and you will notice the enormous influence that technology has had on our lives. Would we have been able to predict twenty years ago just how great the role of technology in our lives would be? You could try and argue with me, but if you just think about how many power outlet points there are in any given room in a house built this year compared to a house built twenty years ago...

"When contradictions, complexity and chaos
 combine with accelerating change the only
definite outcome is uncertainty"

Ziauddin Sardar sums up the ideas of uncertainty and complexity in today's day and age beautifully in his must read article, Welcome to the postnormal times; "When contradictions, complexity and chaos combine with accelerating change the only definite outcome is uncertainty"

It seems strange that the only thing we really do know about the future, is that it is riddled with uncertainty. Yet, in schools we seem to do little about preparing students for uncertainty. Instead, we give students timetables to tell them where to be every minute of their day. We tell them the learning objective at the start of the lesson so that they know what to expect and what to learn. We teach to a test or assessments, and we get upset if the questions surprise us. As teachers, we prepare our lessons, plan them out. In fact, how many schools and departments have the planning for the whole year ahead laid out, bit by bit? We are available to help students out when they get stuck. We tell student which strategies to use, what books to read and what thoughts to think. Before students learn to think about uncertain student finances, babies and children, political instability, we ask them what they want to be when they grow up. Then we ask them to make enormous investments in degrees that may or may not be useful as the market is too uncertain to know what will actually be useful. We help students believe that they just need to stick to the plan, and the all will be OK. There is no shortage of articles and research available about the disjoints between education and the workforce, both at a school and higher education level. Is it just me, or are the things that we teach, the ways we teach, actually doing the complete opposite of preparing students for coping with the unexpected and uncertain? And that's without getting me started on the helicopter parents!

I often hear teachers and parents talk about preparing students for the future. However I wonder if we have really thought about what this means. Does it mean teaching and learning of Shakespeare and Pythagoras as we have always done? But much like the economic ideas of continuous growth, that we perhaps try to do it better? Does it mean that we teach students coding and robotics? Perhaps it means that our schools should teach with devices, type those essays on Google Docs? Perhaps even collaborating on a Google Doc? Does it mean that we focus on things such as collaboration, problem solving, creativity, innovation?

So what then does teaching for and with uncertainty look like? It seems fitting that I am uncertain! However, my current approach to uncertainty involves rapid iteration and deep reflection. Hence, here are some of the things that I have tested and tried with various levels of success over the past year:

• Design Thinking, the Scientific Method and PPDAC: You might wonder what these two have in common... As I see it, Design Thinking, the Scientific Method and PPDAC are problem solving approaches. Where Design Thinking uses empathy to solve problems, science and maths uses objectivity to solve problems. By teaching using these (and other) approaches side by side, I hope that my students begin to understand processes of problem solving, rather than simply looking for an answer. I hope that they learn to distinguish between the pros and cons of problem solving approaches, and learn to apply each approach accordingly. Or perhaps even to mix approaches when the moment is right.  In class, we explicitly discuss problems together and talk about what the best problem solving approach might be. 
• When teaching maths in particular, sometimes I give impossible problems. Problems that can not be solved because I did not give enough information. Or sometimes I give problems with too much information. Sometimes I give problems that I have not yet taught the skills for. These problems are usually followed by reflections where we discuss our responses to uncertainty. Some of us get defensive, some of us act like we know when in fact we don't (and then sound very ignorant!), some of us simply give up, get distracted or even get angry. We talk about what might have been a better approach. We talk about what we could have done, alternative approaches. 
• For some time now, I have also been an a fan of programmes such as Art Costa's Habits of Mind. This approach gives students strategies for 'knowing what to do when you don't know what to do'. It enables students to coach themselves through challenges by having strategies to draw on when they don't know what to do. 
• Simulations: This year I was fortunate enough to co-teach with Steve Mouldey. Together, we ran an alien planet invasion simulation in class where students had to make decisions for themselves in a highly complex environment. This meant that students had to deal with real uncertainty and complexity on the fly. Without a doubt, this was some of the most powerful learning I have ever seen for a group of students. You can read more about this simulation here. 

Of course, as most of my experiments in the classroom goes, they only raise more questions...

• If schools valued the ability to cope and thrive in uncertainty, would they want to measure it? How would it be measured?
• What other approaches could I try to help my students cope and thrive in uncertainty? What does best practice for teaching and learning with uncertainty look like? Can there even be best practice for uncertainty?
• How do my students feel about uncertainty? Do they feel as uncomfortable 'not knowing' as the adults?
• Are teachers able and willing to work in a space where they don't 'know', a space where they too are uncertain? Are teachers able to challenge and redefine their identity as the one who 'knows' the answer? 
• Why is uncertainty so uncomfortable? Why is uncertainty often associated with the negative rather than the positive? 
• Is it foolish to be/act certain about the future?

With so many more questions, it would appear the the only thing I am certain about is that uncertainty is a key to thinking about Education Futures. Perhaps you are more certain than I? How do you think we might prepare students for a society fundamentally different than ours, so different that we can not know what to prepare them for? How do you think we might prepare students for uncertainty? Or perhaps, you think we shouldn't? 

I think, therefore I am - That time my Teaching as Inquiry went a little wonky.

The school year is drawing to a close so it seems appropriate that I wrap up my Teaching as Inquiry project for the year.

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Focussing Inquiry: "In the focusing inquiry, teachers identify the outcomes they want their students to achieve. They consider how their students are doing in relation to those outcomes, and they ask what their students need to learn next in order to achieve them."

Although I did my teacher training in New Zealand, my first teaching role was in Ramsgate, England. From there I went on to Albany Junior High School where we had students from year seven to year ten. In 2013 I joined Hobsonville Point Secondary School as a foundation staff member where we started with only year nine students and have gradually grown from there. What all of this leads up to is the fact that I have never taught at NCEA level. Although I am a mega professional learning junkie, doing copious amounts of professional reading, attending conferences and even doing some more formal university study, this does of course not guarantee that my practice will allow my students academic success at NCEA. As passionate as I am about authentic learning experiences, creativity, problem finding and solving, diversity, sustainability, how do I know that these values, my philosophical approach to teaching and learning, will also lead my students to have success within the qualifications systems? I am a huge advocate for teaching with dispositions, in particular Art Costa's Habits of Mind, and our very own Hobsonville Habits. In my opinion, this provides students with the means to become life long learners, to build growth mindsets. It provides students with a toolset for managing their own learning, for finding and solving problems, but also to become more thoughtful in their actions.

In my practice, I am also constantly seeking to increase student engagement, to move from a covering content approach, to helping my students become curious, eager to learn more, keen to question, to think deeper. I want my students to keep learning without me, I would rather be the spark to their fire than the fuel. I want my students to want to learn. I want my students to have, hopes, dreams, ambitions, and to pursue these with their hearts and minds aligned. I want my students to have authentic learning experiences so that they feel empowered to contribute and make a difference in their world, so that they know that they can build the futures they want, both for themselves and the world. Over this year, I have also increasingly realised that I want my students to embrace diversity, able to collaborate, able to build and draw on the strengths of others. I want my students to have empathy, for the world and community, for perspectives different than their own.
As great as these goals and aspirations might be, my students still need to gain qualifications. They need these to move on to their careers of choice, to universities and more. Qualifications in today's world are usually the entrance ticket, even though once you get in they may not necessarily provide much value (this is a blog post for another day...). Hence, one of my professional goals for this year, but also the focus for my Teaching as Inquiry project became:
How might I ensure that I am deeply challenging my learners to promote further learning that leads to pathways for academic success?

Teaching Inquiry: "In this teaching inquiry, the teacher uses evidence from research and from their own past practice and that of colleagues to plan teaching and learning opportunities aimed at achieving the outcomes prioritised in the focusing inquiry."

Many educators around New Zealand will undoubtedly talk about their love for SOLO Taxonomy as a way to help students towards success in their qualifications. This thinking Taxonomy scaffolds deeper thinking in a clear, easy to understand way. Pam Hook has a phenomenal amount of resources, books, Pinterest boards and more. My colleagues here at Hobsonville Point Secondary also bring an enormous amount of expertise in this area, in particular Cindy Wynn and Megan Peterson. There are also those colleagues across the country such as Matt Nicoll and Mel Moore whom I have watched carefully over the years in regards to their use of SOLO Taxonomy. In the context of this inquiry, SOLO Taxonomy could be used as a tool to scaffold students towards speaking the 'assessment language', as well as the assessment for learning tool that it was intended to be.

As well as SOLO taxonomy and the associated assessment for learning practices, we also know from John Hattie's work that feedback has a huge impact on student achievement. "Self reported grades comes out at the top of all influences. Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform. In a video Hattie explains that if he could write his book Visible Learning for Teachers again, he would re-name this learning strategy “Student Expectations” to express more clearly that this strategy involves the teacher finding out what are the student’s expectations and pushing the learner to exceed these expectations. Once a student has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, he or she gains confidence in his or her learning ability." - source.

Of course, if academic success with the the NCEA framework was my goal, it was also important that I familiarise myself with the standards, the clarification documents and assessment conditions. It was important that I had a go at writing my own tasks, and completing the assessments myself. Of course the NCEA workshops also contributed here.

Teaching and Learning:

Rubrics:

I used many rubrics throughout the past year. The one above was inspired by Austin Kleon's Show Your Work and the ongoing maths teacher frustration around students showing their working. This allowed students to self assess their working for problems, independent of whether their answer was correct or not. This saw a marked improvement in students communicating their thinking. I even went as far as designing a task where each question already had the answer directly underneath and the students simply had to give the working. It was a great activity to see where students were in their thinking. You can see the task here.You can also see a range of rubrics that I have constructed over the year here.

SOLO Taxonomy tools:

One of my favourite SOLO Taxonomy tools are the hexagons. Each hexagon has one key concept and students are asked to find connections between the hexagons. This is a great tool to help students consider how concepts, key words or ideas relate. 

Another SOLO Taxonomy Tool that I have used extensively are SOLO Hot Maps. Pam Hook Shares the templates and rubrics for these on her Wiki. These are great tools for helping students to build a more comprehensive understanding of concepts. It also helps student to go deeper in their thinking.


Developing my own SOLO Taxonomy inspired tools:

Throughout the year I also developed some of my own tools using the thinking behind SOLO and Hattie's work around feedback and reflection, and marrying them up with some other ideas that I had encountered over the year. Some of these include developing a Describe++ Rose Bud Thorn Thinking Map inspired by design thinking and a Data Feelings Impact thinking map inspired by a Complexity Theory leadership book called Simple Habits for Complex Times. Other tools I developed include the Super-gons and the Reflexagons. While Super-gons were an expanded version of the SOLO Hexagons where students had to write a PEEL paragraph about key words/ideas and then write explanations for the links, Reflexagons were aimed to help students gain a more comprehensive understanding of a large topic or idea. 

Students constructing their Super-gons

Learning Inquiry: "In this learning inquiry, the teacher investigates the success of the teaching in terms of the prioritised outcomes, using a range of assessment approaches. They do this both while learning activities are in progress and also as longer-term sequences or units of work come to an end. They then analyse and interpret the information to consider what they should do next."

Although I have undoubtedly increased my repertoire of teaching tools and strategies, and improved my understanding of NCEA, I felt that more often than not, I was not actually making much progress towards my goal. In fact, I frequently felt that I was doing something 'wrong' in my Inquiry because I still felt little confidence in my ability to help students achieve academic success. Being incredibly stubborn however, means that I could just not let it go. I kept banging my head against the goal that I had set for myself, trying to break through whatever was leading to my lack of confidence. It was not until the last few weeks that things really clicked into place as to 'why' I have felt this way.
Over the past year, I have had the privilege of working with Jane Gilbert in the area of Education Futures, as well as working at Hobsonville Point Secondary where I am actually able to test these academic ideas in practice. This has meant that I have grappled with the purpose of education, what knowledge is in a schooling context, and how knowledge is changing. This has meant that I have had more than a few existential crises this year. I feel real empathy for Descartes and his thoughts around whether anything is real! Once I started really questioning 'why' we teach things, and why we teaching things in certain ways, things really started unraveling. 

I increasingly found myself struggling to consolidate what I felt was important with what was required for success within the assessment criteria of NCEA tasks. What if students showed some powerful, deep and meaningful learning however there were no standards to recognise this? Where are the standards that recognise a student who can recognise and apply the unique approaches of learning areas (disciplines), can negotiate between what each learning area offers and then bring them together to consider problems and concepts in a new way? You know, the way Climate Change as a fields transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries and requires climatologists, mathematicians, sociologists, and more to make sense of ideas together?
More and more questions arose... Why are things like knowing about the carbon cycle assessed, but collaboration is not? Why did I feel that little if no understanding of the Nature of Science was needed for achieving at NCEA when this was the compulsory aspect of the science curriculum? You may have read my recent blog post about my issues with exams too.

Even just the word 'standard' started to annoy me. Although I appreciate that we need some measure of success, I feel increasingly conflicted with the idea that all students should 'know' the same things. Our students are so diverse, so talented and interested in areas outside of these 'standards' that I struggle to ask them to fit in within the standards. I am far more interested in developing my students' capacity to explore, make sense, think deeply and broadly, find and solve problems, make the world a better place than to ensure that my students meet a standard.
As it turns out, I think my personal philosophies clash with the approach that I sometimes need to help my students succeed academically. It took most of this year and feeling incompetent multiple times to come to this realisation. Often, I felt that it was simply because I was incompetent. I don't think this is the case... I am pretty sure that I could just teach to a standard, but why on earth would I want to do that?

I have to give a huge shoutout to Jill MacDonald here. Jill is the Learning Area Leader for Maths at Hobsonville Point and she has done a huge amount of thinking around how maths might look different. She has been relentless in her support this year as I worked through making sense of this NCEA business. It is thanks to Jill that I feel that I can somehow consolidate my personal philosophies with NCEA. It was Jill that helped me to recognise how easily the mathematics standards could map to the learning my students were doing. As for science, I am still working on reconciling. However, some little high flying birds told me that I was not alone in my feelings that some of the science standards do not necessarily map to the intent of the curriculum. No wonder it made me feel so frustrated! 

This has been a particularly tough Teaching as Inquiry project, however on reflection, I am very proud of it. How often do we really challenge our own assumptions and thinking in our Teaching as Inquiries? How often do we simply modify our practice without actually revealing or thinking about our hidden commitments? How often do we really examine our theory-in-use? I really appreciate those people that have helped me to do this, in particular Jill MacDonald for her leadership and support at school to make sense of NCEA related things, Matt Nicoll for blogging his rethink of the year eleven science programme, and Megan Peterson for her expertise both with NCEA and Assessment for Learning. Of course, my supervisory Jane Gilbert who regularly turns my brains to scrambled eggs with different ways of thinking. There are of course many others too!

Where to next you might ask? 

Well, the way I see it, I have on of two options. Option one is to investigate the use of e-portfolios as a means of assessing student learning more holistically. Option two is to show evidence of student learning that completely knocks the socks right of NZQA and the Ministry of Education. I guess 2016 will be another interesting year!

Are exams an anachronism?

As exam season for schools and universities around the country draws to a close, I find myself (again) reflecting on the purpose, point and goals of exams. Hence, I have a few questions for Mr Exam. I would appreciate if someone could pass the questions on. Or at least speculate on what his answers might be.

• Why should students attempt to 'prove' their understanding in an artificial context? What is the point of recalling facts and skills in an artificial environment? Would you go into a meeting or a presentation at work without your notes? You can take notes into a job interview. When solving complex problems at work you are certainly not expected to solve them from memory! We do careful research, we collaborate, we seek feedback, we refine. When I have struggled with particular aspects of a role, I often make notes for myself. I check over them to help me complete the task. I struggle to understand why students should be expected to recall without notes, without their peers, without context and without an authentic purpose? When you have to use recall for your drivers licence test, there is a purpose. What is the point of recall in exams?
  
  
• Do exams value recall or deep thinking? All of the most profound moments of realisation, understanding, application in my life, and I am betting yours, did not happen in exams. It involved deeply thinking in light of new experiences, information, discussion and so forth. Does this mean that exams are not about thinking? Perhaps they are about regurgitating and recalling your thinking? Although, I suspect it might also be about recalling someone else's thinking and not your own.
  
• Do exams value efficiency or efficacy, quality? When students are given contrived time limits to recall and apply facts, skills, etc. are we suggesting that it is how fast you are able to do things, not how well? Are we suggesting that learning, Knowledge, skills, capabilities can be packaged into two and three hour blocks?
  
• How can we possibly allow for diversity when we are expecting a whole country to sit the same exams? There are piles of research about the euro-centric approach in education, and piles about Maori and Pacifica frequently not 'achieving' at the same rate off pakeha (New Zealand European). This phenomenon is evident in other countries with indigenous peoples too. By making a whole country, district, class, year level sit the same exam, by standardising, are we ignoring cultural capital? Are we suggesting that cultural capital does not matter in academia? Why should all students know and think the same things? Does standardisation ignore and devalue diversity? 
  
  
  
•  Are exams about equity or equality? All students are expected to write the external 'English exam' or 'Maths exam' at the same time, regardless of what is going on for them in their life. +Ros MacEachern gives a great example from her last school where students were leaving exams early because they were hungry. How many other factors like this is going on? Is that fair?
  
• Are we assessing their writing or their understanding? All students, regardless of their strengths, preferences, cultural traditions, personal experiences, family situations and so forth at expected to 'write' exams. They have to give written explanations of their understanding. All teachers know students who can give incredible verbal explanations but struggle to do so in writing. We all learn differently, communicate differently yet exams seem to ignore this? Where do exams make space for different modes of thinking, learning and communicating?

• How do exams help to build a better future? The value that we attach to exams, explicitly, implicitly and tacitly, are they actually making the world a better place? What values are they instilling in students? What are they teaching students, the community and families to value? What are they teaching about how we assess and individual? What are they teaching about what matters about an individual? Or about a group?

As far as I can tell, exams are not about learning, not about thinking and not about Knowledge. So what is the point? Are they just an an anachronism? A tool from a past age where standardisation was more valued than diversity? Where Knowlege was confined to the pages of linear books rather than the multi-dimensional reality of the real world? If the purpose of exams were about learning and thinking, how would they be different? Are we still making kids and students write exams because coming up with something better has simply been lumped into the too hard basket?