Category: Education Today

Samuel’s father – a young Kenyan portrayed in Pascal Plisson documentary “On the Way to School” (see my blog) – says it all: do we need technology in the classroom or a pencil is enough?

A group of french teachers launched a movement against digital devices in schools: “appel de Beauchastel contre l’école numérique” available in a digital format (!) here

Beyond the usual rethoric against commodification of education and the Silicon Valley duplicity promoting technology in the classroom while sending their kids to non digital schools (see my blog), these teachers refuse to be simple intermediaries between students and their devices.

A similar movement started in the UK a couple of years ago. In a letter (paywall) to The Times, 198 academics and children’s authors accused the new national education policies “of taking enormous risk with the quality of children’s lives and learning”.

What these teachers don’t say is that technology will never be the solution if it is not accompanied by a change in pedagogy.

In 2015, an OECD report concluded that “school systems need to find more effective ways to integrate | technology into teaching and learning  to provide educators with learning environments that support 21st century pedagogies and provide children with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world”. In other words, a tablet won’t solve it all (but a tablet is not useless). Another OECD report takes the debate a step further introducing the need for students to work independently, co-operatively and in projects with little teacher intervention. Would our French teachers accept to let students lead the learning process?

It is one thing to believe that technology can make learning more effective in certain conditions but it is another to believe that putting computers in the hands of all students can make all schools more effective. Examples abound in favour or against the role of digital.

The Bolton school – Essa Academy – became the first in Britain to buy touchscreen devices for all its students and went from being a failing school to be judged ‘good’ by Ofsted and a reference on how to teach with technology. On the contrary a report, based on research in 17 US states with online charter schools, has found “significantly weaker academic performance” in maths and reading in these virtual schools compared with the conventional school system.

Teachers are the cornerstone of change in education. We need more innovative teachers (let’s have a look again at an inspiring portrait of a young teacher who wants to change his class… and the world. Let’s go back to Frank Damour’s article entitled “Comment Internet m’a ré-appris pourquoi j’enseigne”.

Education will be better off with the committed children in the center and the committed teachers not left aside (especially on their own initiative!).

At the end of the day, one must decide whether education needs more plaintive letters or more innovative practices?

The famous tryptic: “anyone, anywhere, anytime” is often used to characterize the changes in the learning process. Innovative learning experiences will get rid of the constraints of space and time and be much more inclusive and personalized.

The education systems are mostly defined by their learning spaces. Schools all over the world still reproduce the teacher-students top down relationship and are directly produced by an industrial approach to education. Ken Robinson gives three of these industrial principles— conformity, compliance and linearity – that still define our learning spaces. Our universities’ amphitheaters tell the same story of unilateral and linear relationship under which a teacher tells the truth to a large group of often passive students.

A literature review on classrooms’ design made at Princeton University concluded that “the traditional transference model of education, in which a professor delivers information to students, is no longer effective at preparing engaged 21st-century citizens. This model is being replaced by constructivist educational pedagogy that emphasizes the role students play in making connections and developing ideas, solutions, and questions”.

Our new schools, our new universities will be characterized by the design of new learning spaces. Part of the problem we are facing with this new situation is that new spaces are not always made by those with recent experience of teaching or studying in classrooms. Architects and promotors have not fully realized that learning ultimately belongs to learners (and teachers). In a recent work done for one of the leading French universities, I addressed the need for new learning spaces as part of a global reflection on the future of learning and teaching. It takes a lot of effort and imagination to go beyond the clichés that characterize the “digital era”. Which are the genuine expectations of both learners and teachers? How can they overcome the dictatorship of spaces? Even though we are clear about the need to change our learning and teaching practices, we are still thinking in terms of traditional spaces. Even though our classrooms or amphitheaters will be smaller or more flexible, they will still be there.

Can’t we think learning and teaching without thinking of classrooms (large or small)? If a learning experience can take place anywhere, why should we bother about the space? Shouldn’t we insist more on the capacities and skills required by our students – and teachers – to recognize any space as a potential learning space?

In her book on learning spaces, Diana G. Oblinger reminds us that “there is value from bumping into someone and having a casual conversation, there is value from hands-on, active learning as well as from discussion and reflection, there is value in being able to receive immediate support when needed…”

Bumping into someone can take place anywhere. Learning is no longer or not only about technology. Learning has to do with the way we occupy the space, with the way we live together, we engage into conversation together.

Innovative learning has something to do with casual learning, transforming any space in a learning space: a waiting room at a doctor’s practice that creates new opportunities for patients to exchange and learn from peers, a fast food restaurant where wifi connection enables customers to take an online course, a park…

In a park or in a fast food… Anywehere. Everywhere…

Michael Kelly and Mary Barker from the University of Cambridge and the University of Southampton have just published a fantastic article in the Journal of Public Health – “Why is changing health-related behaviour so difficult?” – that conceptualizes in a very accessible way why changing health-related behaviour is so difficult and what we do wrong in no acknowledging it.

This article – is compulsory reading for all those who for years have been researching effective health strategies to prevent the rise in obesity, tobacco o alcohol consumption or promote physical exercise. It is worth reading for all those outside the public health field who are trying to design new change strategies for instance against climate change or for the introduction of new technologies in the classroom.

We are all convinced that changing behaviours is essential to respond to the health epidemics (type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease…) affecting hundreds of millions and also puzzled by the fact that we are having a hard way achieving it (and bringing evidence)

The authors draw attention to six errors policy makers (and often we as education specialists) apply to health-related behaviour change in non-communicable disease prevention;

error 1. It is just common sense

“It is obvious what needs to be done, so let us just get on and do it”.

If changing behaviour was simply about making common sense simple changes and good choices then we would all be able to make whatever changes we wanted to whenever we wanted, but we do not.

Just because something appears to be obvious and simple does not mean that we should not bother to study it

error 2. It is about getting the message across

“If we could only get the message out there in some form which people could understand and identify with, then they would change in response”.

The investment in social marketing campaigns which borrow heavily from the commercial analogy and their lack of tangible success suggests that the commercial analogy is flawed if applied simplistically to public health matters. Campaigns can have an important role and can be effective, but they are but one part of a total strategy and behaviour change is not just about simple messaging.

error 3. Knowledge and information drive behaviour

“If we tell people the negative consequences of eating too much or exercising too little, they will change their behaviour accordingly.”

This is clearly not true and every front-line clinician and practitioner knows it is not true.

error 4. People act rationally

“If you tell people what is good for them and what they need to do to protect their health, they will do it”.

Most diets fail, not because people do not know what is supposedly good for them, but because knowledge and its rational assessment alone do not drive behaviour.

error 5. People act irrationally

“People have their own reasons for doing things”.

When someone with asthma refuses to stop smoking, we might regard them as very foolish or addicted or both. But what we tend not to see is that this may not be so irrational a decision after all given their lives and experiences.

error 6. It is possible to predict accurately

“We can say with certainty how individual people will behave in any given situation”.

While we can patterns of health inequalities, tobacco and alcohol consumption and trends in these over time and place in great detail, however, none of this has provided sharp-edged tools with which to tackle health inequalities, the obesity epidemic or the rising tide of alcohol consumption.

As a conclusion, the authors advocate to rethink the way health professionals work with the public. They insist on the need to steer away from information giving and towards empowering and motivating individuals to generate their own solutions to their problems.

At P.A.U. Education with the Avall project, jointly with Bjarne Bruun Jensen from the Steno Health Promotion Research (Denmark) and Esteve Llargues – the project’s designer and coordinator – from the Granollers General Hospital (Spain), we designed an educational intervention during childhood viewing children and schools as catalysts for health-promotion actions at community level and that could provide a key prevention strategy, with education on dietary habits and physical activity for children and their families being considered the foundation for healthy lifestyles in adulthood. Two years after the study completed, the intervention group showed a lower increase in BMI and the trend consolidated after 6 years.

Mark Hanson’s recent research from the University of Southampton has revealed the importance of healthy lifestyle in parents in the period before they conceive a child. This time in the life course offers a window of opportunity to reduce the risk of later NCDs as well as childhood obesity in two or more generations simultaneously – in parents and in their future children and possibly their grandchildren.

These examples help envision new effective intervention strategies that can only work with the active support and conviction of policymakers…

Back to school! A full school year is ahead of us and many countries experienced “innovative” school reforms. Does it make sense to change again and again our school programs, school standards…?

Educative systems are accustomed to change. Some would say that they are in a state of constant change. Over the past 30 years, all European countries for instance have been continuously engaged in a deep reflection regarding the future of their educative systems. The rhythm of these organizational and curricular reforms during this period more than doubles that experienced since the turn of the 20^th century. Are we simply facing yet another cycle of change that will yield to a set of new reforms? Will it constitute a “controlled” change to adapt schools to new technological, social and economic conditions? Or are we on the edge of a true revolution?

Over 20 years ago, Seymour Papert argued that: “children will (no longer) sit quietly in school and listen to a teacher give them predigested knowledge. They will revolt.” The revolt didn’t take place at the time and our schools didn’t change (much).

There are several good reasons to think that times are now riper for a “revolt” of great magnitude. In countries like Spain or Portugal, more than 30% of early school leavers and more than 40% of unemployed youth aged over 18 throw the very meaning of school education into question. In the USA, we have just witnessed the first cases of higher education students filing a lawsuit against their law school for creating false expectations with regards to their future employability.

In this context, does it make sense to make school reforms as if we were trying to make up for some problems without changing the whole picture? Have we still time to adapt our school education systems in order to prevent resounding failure? Or should we totally rethink school education in a much deeper way?

The failure of our societies to provide work to youth and to fully integrate them into society may mark the end of school education as we know it until now: a continued process that should lead children and youth to progressively gear up for their futures as successful professionals and responsible citizens.

Policymakers that keep changing the schools without changing the life perspectives for young people may listen again to Bob Dylan:

“There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows”

Tomorrow…

How can we reinvent education? Better said, how could we reinvent the world with education? A tremendous question raised by the best selling documentary “Demain” and a disappointing solution: Finland. Not that Finland is disappointing (see one of my past blog entry) but after nearly two hours of film talking about innovative solutions for the energy, the economy, the agriculture, the democracy, you could have expected something more than the so famous Finnish case. Being a reference for the OECD is not necessarily a guarantee of deep transformation. Democratic schools, escuelas nuevas, green schools… and hundreds of teachers that reinvent education every day out of passion and commitment could have been featured in the documentary. Tomorrow’s education is much more than giving more autonomy to principals and teachers. Education is a promise for tomorrow.

Years ago, I was asked by UNESCO to prepare a street chidren educator’s handbook. I asked whether UNESCO and the educators really needed one more manual that was likely to end up unused in the basement of ministries. What could it mean to educate street children? How come could street children engage into education when their lives were about daily survival.? If your main concern is what you will eat and where you will sleep the same evening, how can you prioritize education?

Learners require a vision of the future, not the immediate future but a long term perspective. The objective was then changed. We launched a project to give street children an understanding of the future so that they could understand what education could do for them and their future.

I started working with street children educators designing a project entitled: the white book of our future. The idea was simple: enable street children to write and publish a book about their future. After 9 months of participatory work with street children in Mali, Honduras or Egypt, books were published. Children “with no name” were credited as “authors”. Invisible children gained recognition and a presence they never had until then. In Mali a law acknowledging their rights was passed.

Education is a promise of a better tomorrow but children needs to be guided to understand what tomorrow could mean for them. This is what innovation in education is about.

Tomorrow… Demain… Now!

“Anywhere, anytime, anyone”: what type of learning spaces do we need to make the dream of an ubiquitous and accesible education come true?

Technology apparently is the answer. Instead of building schools and universities that will take ages and consume millions, let’s use screens and microchips. Billions will enroll in MOOCs and the future of learning will be written in the endless memory of powerful learning management systems. But the “no more school” temptation won’t solve the problem of learning places. It will only displace it. “Where do we learn” remains as important as “how do we learn” or “what do we learn”. More than ever we need learning spaces where students come together and share.

As education is continuously reinventing itself, we are about to (re)discover the importance of learning in the street. Colin Ward and Roger Hart always believed in the importance of children social capital built outside of school through play, games and sports and activities with peers where children learn to govern their own activities.

A recent educative project – the Beit project – pushes the paradigm of learning spaces to new limits. A mobile installation simply made of a set of wooden desks and chairs covered by a roof is installed temporarily in public places in order to transform them into sites of dialogue and reflection, engaging students and schools of different socio-cultural backgrounds, which together will build a common experience. No wonder maybe that this innovation is due to an architect, David Stoleru.

Two chairs, one desk, two students, one common vision, a significant place full of contents and you have designed a learning space! No need for fancy colors or furnitures: walls are abolished and learning can take place everywhere at -almost- no cost and with no technology at all.

Let’s now extrapolate this example to other places: a fast food restaurant for instance where young people spend endless hours connected to their smartphones can be transformed into a learning space with a simple interactive wall giving access to a collection of MOOCs, just as in any public library. Any city can nowadays afford a “MOOC academy”, i.e. a civic center connected to the best MOOCs platforms in the world on a 24×7 basis. A coffee machine, a microwave oven, chairs, tables and couches: this is everything we need to build a new learning space.
 

Students are back to school. New MOOCs are about to be launched. Exams are around the corner. All learners have resumed their journey along the learning path.

Learning is a transformation experience, changing oneself for better. Cheryl Strayed once described this experience in her book “Wild” taking us on the Pacific Crest Trail for a 1800 km hike. Not all of us will have the courage, the need, the time to embark on a similar journey. But all of us have the possibility to take the learning path.

2016 may be – at last – the year of “education for all”. It may also be “the year of the learning path”, when everyone will be able to start anew and learn.

Learning is infinite but there is only one learning path with clear marks so that no one can get lost.

It all starts with attention and passion; the attention we need to realize that we need to learn and the passion that will keep us committed during the trail.

Once the decision is taken, once we are on the path and can’t go back, we will then walk through information and knowledge. A textbook, an exam, a video… are only parts of the learning path.

Accumulating “learning miles”, wearing off our “learning boots” will enable us to take actions for change. “Learnin’ is a changin’”. A learner shouldn’t be allowed to exit the path unchanged. Too often, students walk the path without noticing it. They are in the back seats, not paying attention to the teacher. They keep silent and are soon forgotten. They make as if they are on the learning path but they have already left and no one noticed it. These “early path leavers” may have another chance to join the path but they will have to start again from day one.

Those who stay on the path not only take actions but change their habits.

Changing habits is only the penultimate stage on the learning path. The learner will exit the path thinking upon his/her identity, questionning the change that was experienced and already planning the next trail.

The learning path is one and all learners should walk on it again and again, all year round.

(see a short video animation)

the learning path

Great technology and computers alone cannot substitute poor teaching: This conclusion taken from the latest OECD report on the role of technology in the classroom is a very unconvenient truth, especially for someone that writes periodically on the subject…

“There is no substitute for teachers” is a widely agreed “truth”; the fact there is no substitute even for bad teachers is another “truth” in most of our schools. And there will also be an agreement on the fact that technology alone can’t improve bad teaching.

Remediating bad teaching is therefore a key issue for the future of our school systems. How would you define bad teaching? There is no common definition and it will vary when you ask students, fellow teachers or parents. What an education inspector will define as bad teaching may distort the reality as the focus may be put only on curriculum instructions compliance.

Bad teaching may be not taking into account students’ diversity, not paying attention to students’ skills even if they can’t be evaluated in an academic way. Bad teaching may be a boring teaching. In one of my blog entries, I even mentioned a study  that shows that brain activity in class was less than brain activity during sleep (see below)!

But what if technology can indeed have a positive role on teaching? Technology alone is not the magic solution as it often comes as an imposition to the teacher. So what about having the teacher designing the way technology will be used in the classroom.

The OECD report also says that  “it is vital that teachers become active agents for change, not just in implementing technological innovations, but in designing them too”. Learning design may very well be one strategy towards sustainable innovation in the classroom as it can only be achieved with the teacher’s active involvement in figuring out what type of change is desirable and feasible. Instead of passively training teachers into the use of technology in the classroom, we should have them entered a learning design studio, as described by Yishay Mor.

There are ways to go beyond this unconvenient truth revealed by the OECD report. But which truth – if any – can be more convenient?

The Open Education Europa portal, that plays a vital role to opening up minds towards greater innovation in the classroom, recently gave “Eight Teacher Truths in the Digital Era“.

1. Learning aims, not tech dreams

2. Create conditions for risk-taking

3. Effect a change in teacher attitudes

4. Ensure the tech works flawlessly

5. Save teachers time

6. Find new ways to share knowledge

7. Meet teachers and use influencers

8. Create spaces for experimentation

Whatever you chose, remember that there is not a single truth for good (and bad) teaching!

On Friday in Paris, hundreds of people that were just having dinner or a drink at a restaurant, or listening to music in a concert hall, died. They died suddenly, unexpectedly, brutally, shot in the back, or lying on the ground, unarmed. Some of them tried to run away, to escape the bullets. Many didn’t, they had no time. Their murderers behaved without mercy, as they always do. They killed in cold blood. Our sons and daughters, our families and friends were there, could have been there, may be there tomorrow. They will still go out for dinner, have a drink and listen to music.

In the coming days we will learn that the murderers attended school in France, may have even sat in the same classroom as some of their victims, former school mates or teachers. We are all ready to go to war and fight the enemy, even if we don’t know who the enemy is. An invisible, faceless, merciless enemy is hiding somewhere in the buildings we live in, in the classrooms we go to. This enemy has a name: ignorance!

While many will ask for more police, more armies, more bullets and more weapons, we will also need more teachers and more classrooms to fight the same enemy.

All those who died in Paris and those who killed them were born to learn.