My best practices are better than yours ...

I've been sitting on this post for a while now.  A few weeks ago, I lurked an #edchat twitter chat on defining best practices in education.  I had to stop halfway through as I think I was close to having a coronary.  I will attempt to summarize the general flow of the conversation:

1. Best practices are awesome.
2. Umm, what are best practices exactly?
3. We should find a way of sharing best practices so we all can benefit from each others ideas.
4. Maybe best practices are not global, instead there are best practices for each teacher-learner-classroom combination.
5. The moment you say a practice is best it constrains the learning.
6. We should find a way of sharing best practices so we all can benefit from each others ideas.
7. The very idea of best practices is silly as all of our practices are best, it's all relative.
8. Head asplode ....

So, I have decided to lay out my ideas on best practices in education.  I recently finished reading Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape in which he attempts to define a scientific basis for human morality (which in itself is a fascinating idea).  In it, he defines the goal of morality as maximizing the well-being of the greatest number of people possible.  He defines a spectrum that ranges from the worst possible suffering to everyone (at the bad end in case you weren't following along) and the greatest possible well-being for everyone at the top.  He then posits that we can investigate moral choices that move us either towards the worst suffering or away from it.  This can then be analysed scientifically.  

I propose a similar model for defining best practices in education.  One in which have a spectrum from the worst possible education for everyone to the best possible education.  Of course, this requires that we decide what the goal of education is (one of my largest complaints about #edchat discussions is the lack of focus towards achieving a salient goal).  If we take Dewey's stated aim of education as the 'development of reflective, creative, responsible thought' as our goal we have a starting point.  Of course we would now all need to agree as to what that meant.  However, as Harris notes we are able to work towards a goal of improving health without having a clear definition of what health is (although the seeming popularity of pseudo-medicine may show that the lack of a clear definition is fundamentally unstable).

Once we have defined a goal, we can start to measure the results of various practices and if they move us towards or away from that stated goal.  In this regard we can measure the effectiveness of practices and therefore can isolate practices that cause the greatest progress and encourage those practices while stifling the practices that are detrimental.

Note that nowhere in this exposition did I state or imply that there is only one possible best practice.  As Harris states his moral landscape can have multiple peaks on it where being on top of that peak would be the greatest possible well-being; as would being on an alternate peak.  My ideas for best practices is similar, there could be multiple peaks where we achieve the maximum possible education for all people just as there could be multiple means of scaling those peaks.

To summarize, the idea of a best practice is moot without a clear statement of purpose for education.  We need to know what the end point is to define something as being best.  A best practice would then therefore be an approach that maximizes our movement towards this goal.  Although best practices may only exist in theory, they can still exist.  As I have argued before, it all comes back to the purpose, the goal of education.

Gender: It's all in your head you know ....

I just finished reading Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender and highly recommend it.  In fact I think it should be required reading for all teachers and parents.  Anyway, I wanted to write about a few highlights from an educational standpoint.

One of the greatest challenges facing science (and computer science) is the lack of female students (and non-white students).  In fact, it is such an issue that many believe it is more data that woman are not capable of mathematics and science due to their brain structure.  In fact, one educational consultant even gave a number of talks to this very topic.  He spoke about a region of the brain known as the 'crockus' -- a region that is four times larger in girls than in boys.  Due to this, girls see the details but not the whole picture whereas the reverse is true for boys.  This is great news from an educational standpoint as it could help us tailor our teaching methods to how the brain is geared for learning.  Great news ... if it was even remotely true.  There is no region known as the crockus, let along having it be at least 4 times the size in girls.  However, sadly, the fact that a consultant is spouting this garbage is true (see here and here).

Sadly, this misinformation is impacting our approach to education and most of it is as much of a crock as the idea of the crockus (I did not make that name up, but couldn't resist the last sentence).

Fine demolishes much of the current tripe that amounts for gender based (perhaps biased is a better choice) neuroscience on the market, instead exploring the socio-cultural roots of our ideas of gender.  For example, the very act of marking your sex on a test (a common occurrence on standardized tests) caused European American women to feel more confident about their verbal abilities (a trait commonly thought of as 'female') and less confident with their math abilities (a skill associated with maleness).  For men, the results were reversed.  The simple act of checking a box can change performance.  As educators we need to be aware of these sociological effects so that we can mitigate them in our classrooms.  For example, if gender must be recorded (to appease the powers that be), place the question at the end of the test.  Or have a proctor track gender by seating plan (which could be correlated with the tests afterwards).

I highly recommend the book and would consider it to be mandatory reading for all educators and parents.  Make it your first New Year's resolution.

The Damon Supremacy

I thought I would jump on the bandwagon about this clip of Matt Damon trouncing a reporter after his keynote address:



This put a huge smile on my face. His rebuttal of the inane question from the reporter was not only accurate but had enough snark to cause wincing. At approximately 10 seconds you can see his face go transition from polite question answering mode to ass kicking Jason Bourne mode.

I want to focus on the camerman's question about "Aren't 10 percent of teacher's bad". Anytime someone throws out 10% you want to be careful as it tends to indicate a made-up statistic (approximately 10% of the time). Even if 10% of teachers were bad (which I am not arguing, it could well be true) it has no bearing on punishing the teachers that are good. All professions have people that perhaps would be better doing something else; that does not imply that the skilled, productive members should be penalized. This is an example of a straw man which Damon handles beautifully by attacking the cameraman directly.

I was curious about the reporter's affiliation. Her mic indicates reason.tv so I looked them up and discovered ... libertarians ....

Teachers, Technology, Skillz, and Bieberfever: Reflections from #edchat

After participating in #edchat tonight I felt I needed to get a few things out. The topic for tonight's episode was "What amount of tech should be a requirement for every teacher to know? Are there any specific core applications for teachers?".

My first concern stems from the topic itself; its wording tacitly implies that technology is necessary to be a good teacher and therefore teachers that do not use technology cannot be good teachers. It also implies as a corollary that we must be utilizing technology in teaching. I don't think I have ever heard a solid argument as to why that must be the case. The most common arguments I hear are that "Students use technology so we must use it as well", "It makes education relevant to the student", and "It is required for a 21st century education".

The first argument is fallacious and is known as the argument from popularity (Argumentum ad populum). The basic idea is that many students use technology therefore technology should be used in education. It is a false premise because mere belief in something does not indicate it is true. Many students like listening to Justin Bieber*, it does not mean his music is worth listening to.

The second argument is also fallacious as it assumes that the combination of technology and education will maintain the relevancy that the technology provides alone:

A. Technology is relevant to students.
B. Students like things that are relevant.
C. Therefore teachers should use technology so students like education.

By accepting this argument you tacitly accept that anything that is relevant to students should improve education. Many students find Justin Bieber relevant, but it doesn't mean I am going to get Bieberfever in my science classroom*. Many students find exploring the outdoors and nature to be relevant until you require they learn about it in class. Obviously the way the lesson is taught has a great bearing on how the students will react, but that is an issue of pedagogy not technology.

The final argument implies that in the 21st century we use technology so therefore to exist in the 21st century you must know how to use technology. Once again it implies a causal relationship where there may not actually be one (and employs the logically fallacy known as affirming the consequent). The additional aspect to this argument I hear is that we must prepare students for jobs in the 21st century; jobs that do not exist yet that arise from problems we haven't stated yet. They then argue that teaching knowledge is ineffective because it will have changed by the time the students obtain these future jobs. However, the same can be said regarding the technology: it will be entirely different when the student leaves school and begins working/seeks higher education. The argument can be made that learning how to use today's technology provides a base for learning tomorrows; which I would agree with. However, that implies that learning today's knowledge provides a base for learning tomorrow's knowledge as well, which puts us back at square one. The argument also implies a teaching of technology for the sake of technology which leads me into my next concern: the lack of a clearly stated goal for teaching with technology.

It appears to me that we are integrating technology because it is there. Many mention the importance of ensuring the technology is used in accordance with proper pedagogy, a statement I couldn't agree more with. But there is so much more talk regarding how to use tech and very little regarding pedagogy that I worry that last statement is lip service to a degree. So to rectify this I will attempt to take the arguments I have listed and synthesize a goal for the integration of technology.

The main argument is preparing students for the future, so we will start there. The question that must be answered is what will the future look like. The only assumption I can start with, is that there will be people (because if there are no people, this argument is moot). So, what can we deduce if we assume that there will be people (in brackets I list the skills I believe are needed to accomplish the task/goal):

1. People will wish to communicate with each other (communication skills)
2. The communication will cause ideas to be generated and problems to be discovered (creativity and problem solving skills)
3. The problems will require solutions (creativity)
4. The solutions will require the application of new/unknown knowledge (research methodologies)
5. The solutions will require analysis (skepticism and rationality)

To me this is what needs to be taught to be ready for the future. I group these fives items (communication skills, creativity, problem solving skills, research methodologies, and skepticism and rationality) and entitle them critical thinking skills (although you could as easily call them learning skills).

Now no where in my listing I have noted technology. This implies to me (and I am biased as I created the excellent listing above) that technology is not a skill per se but a tool to be used to facilitate the execution of the skills. For example, if you needed to nail two pieces of wood together you could use a hammer or a nail gun. However, to use the tool properly I need to know why I am nailing the wood together and what the final product should look like; the technology will not show me that.

To bring the analogy to education, we can't know what tech to use until we understand the problem we are attempting to solve with our teaching. By assuming the solution will require technology we limit the number of possible solutions and stifle our creativity. The solution we arrive at may not be the most optimal or even a valid solution. Instead we need to add technology to our toolbox and utilize when the problem indicates it is required.

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* Shameless SEO plug
* I promise to stop now, that should be enough to get this post on page one of Google.

On Jack Johnson, Trains and Curriculum ...

I was listening to Jack Johnson's excellent album In Between Dreams today when his song Breakdown came on. Here is an except of the lyrics for those who have not heard this song (which ranks as one of my favourite songs of all time):

I hope this old train breaks down
Then I could take a walk around
And, see what there is to see
And time is just a melody
All the people in the street
Walk as fast as their feet can take them
I just roll through town
And though my windows got a view
The frame I'm looking through
Seems to have no concern for now

When I first heard this album I was living in Cape Town, South Africa working as a waiter at a Mexican Restaurant (I know, it makes no sense). I listened to this song a lot as I was backpacking around Southern Africa and it resonated with my wish to get out of the bus I was in to explore everything that was rushing by me. But the bus kept going ...

Today, it hit me an entirely different way. I was thinking about all the times in school when we are exploring a curriculum mandated topic and the students and teacher would love to stop the curriculum train to explore the current topic. But the train keeps going ...

It seems to me that our current model of education views curriculum as the train; it drives education. This model may be preferred by some as it removes much of the control from the individual teachers, who may choose to teach different topics. However, what it fails to do is to allow for exploration, to permit creativity and to generate passion about the topics. We have a set time to explore a topic, and whether or not we want to move on, we must when the time is up (or we need to dredge through 3 more weeks on a topic no one cares about).

What if we instead switched our model and made the curriculum the track and allowed the teachers to control the train. We would all have a set path to follow, but we would be allowed to stop and gawk when it was appropriate. Or to speed on through when the scenery wasn't to the groups liking. We could even stop the train in the station for a day or so and go on a walkabout; exploring that stop in more detail because our students wanted to.

Imagine that, no longer needing to view the curriculum just through our window frame which, according to Jack Johnson, "seems to have no concern for now", but instead getting out of the train and seeing things unobstructed, freely, and without restraint.

Where are the Students?

While wandering through the woods today:

I saw the deer and thought this is Biology.
I saw the different biomes and thought this is Geography.
I saw the roots of the upturned trees and thought this is History.
I saw chickadees flying through the air and thought this is Physics.
I heard the animals chattering around me and thought this is Music.
I saw the marsh grasses purifying the water and thought this is Chemistry.
I felt the perfection of nature and thought this is Math.
I saw the beauty around me and thought this is Art.
I felt connections to everything around me and thought this is Philosophy.
I felt these words flow through me and thought this is English.

Then I saw that I was alone,

And I thought, where are the students?

What did you learn in school today?

I learned that knowledge is static.
I learned that I have no hope of learning on my own, knowledge must come from my teacher.
I learned that learning is best done quietly and in rows.
I learned that fun has no place in life.
I learned that I am not smart enough to learn on my own.
I learned that conformity is valued more than creativity.
I learned that my opinion and ideas are worthless.
I learned that my greatest achievement will be a test score.

What did you teach your students today?

Can Creativity Exist in School?

One of students (thanks Paul) recently sent me the link to the excellent TED video by Sir Ken Robinson as he discusses his view that school kills creativity.



This is a fantastic video and an excellent analysis of creativity and schooling. I have pondered on this video since I was introduced to it in Teacher's College. How do we spark creativity in education? How do we stop the bludgeoning of creativity that happens in school every day.

I just finished my second in-class course at Conestoga. We finished up with informal presentations where each student demonstrated their final project. The project was to create a first-person shooter game (it was a Game Development course). When I laid out the assignment description I stressed the importance of creating a project that suited them. The result was 5 very distinct, very unique final projects. I had one remake of the classic NES Duck Hunt game; one zombie-box shooter; one maze game; one helicopter shooter; and one game for those of us who apparently hate tetrahedrons. All distinct submissions that met the loose criteria I specified. In all of the projects, the students learned what was deemed to be important. But perhaps more importantly, they went beyond the assignment description to include features and functionality that I never dreamed would be added. The other interesting side effect was the ownership that each student showed over their project while they presented it. That and the pride they had in their work. Now, I do work in adult education and adults may be better suited to creating their own ideas on projects. But, I don't feel that they are more apt to this form of learning than our younger learners. Adults may embrace it more, because they have had more experience with self-directed learning because they have had to learn those skills ... outside of school. The interesting thing I noted was that with each new assignment, the submissions became more and more unique; more and more creative.

At the end of the day does it matter than one student forgot to add sound effects because they got caught up building 3D models? Not at all, because they learned something more important than knowledge. They learned how to learn. Because at the end of the day, according to this educational researcher, they probably won't remember what was taught anyway ...

Reply to Katie Stoynoff's Article

I recently read Katie Stoynoff's article in the Huffington Post entitled To Strength Education, Strengthen Teacher Education Programs. It is an excellent article with many sentiments that I agree with. Now, being Canadian, we have a different teacher education program but ours is not without many of the same faults as our peers across the border.

There are problems with our current educational model, that can not be denied. It seems that everyone has an idea as to the source of the problem and how to fix it. Many people push technology as the panacea that will cure all of our ills. Many look to a lack of funding or a lack of standards or a lack of standardized testing. Some blame the students whereas others blame the parents. Teachers of course are never left out of the equation (see Bill Maher' rant for more on that).

When a system is failing, there are no easy answers. However, many of the so called causes are not causes but effects. When you want to change a system, it must be done from the top down. And that is were I completely agree with Stoynoff; let's change Teacher Education to better prepare new teachers.

Where I don't agree is her insistence that we raise the GPA admission standard. Teachers who did well in the current school model will be more likely to propagate that model indefinitely. In Ontario, you must have a university degree to teach; this denies many potentially excellent teachers who chose to go to college instead. It also propagates the hegemony of public schools being feeding grounds for universities, thereby further alienating those students who do not wish to attend university.

Her point of Mr. Shank mixing fun with instruction is one that is not made enough. When did we decide to separate fun and learning? But, that is for another posting ...

What do you think about this article?

Can We Build a Better Teacher?

I recently read an article from the NYTimes.com entitled Building a Better Teacher. It has been making its way around the net and seems to be garnering positive reviews. I wanted to take a second to offer my opinion on the matter.

Before I delve into the article, I feel I need to expound upon my own theories a bit (to only be fair). Continuing with one of my previous posts where I elaborated on my views of technology. According to Franklin, there are prescriptive and there are holistic technologies. Prescriptive technologies attempt to reduce problems down to a set of discrete, independent steps. These steps can be completed with no idea of the final product, no investment in the process and with no connection to the subsequent step. Whereas holistic technologies give control of the entire process to the worker; these are the technologies utilized by artisans for example. I feel that true teaching falls into this category, as a holistic technology.

For me, teaching is both art and science. Art is the appreciation of the beautiful in abstract, holistic terms. Whereas science is the appreciation of the beautiful in logical, ordered terms. To me they are not two sides of the same coin, or at different ends of the spectrum. In my mind, they are each a lens in the glasses we view the world through. When we focus too much through the science lens we lose perspective on the abstractness and chaos that exists around us. If we insted choose to only view through the artistic lens, we lack an understanding of the order that exists in the world. This may sound contradictory or oxymoronic, but order can not exist without chaos.

True teachers are able to balance between these two lenses. They apply the skills and knowledge they need to impart the lessons they have decided need to be taught. The means of dissemination can appear to be random to an outside observer, because the true teacher is teaching to many people; many minds; many views.

The work being performed by Lemov as reported in this article attempts to reduce teaching down to its science side only. He is working on creating a series of discrete, independent steps that anyone (or anything) could take to 'teach' a class. To me, this is no different to watching Kenneth Branagh play Hamlet versus watching me play Hamlet. His performance is a nuanced act of beauty, mine would be a focused repetition of a series of memorized steps. It would appear forced and unnatural.

I always have two initial thoughts when I read of an 'educational researcher' attempting to quantify the act of teaching to help 'build better teachers'. My first thought is that if they are successful, why don't we just program a robot to perform these steps. With the proper logic, it is a fully possible feat. Why would we need people to teach anymore, if all those people are doing is performing a series of quantifiable, discrete, programmable steps.

My second thought stems from the 'build a better teacher' idea. Why not build a better student instead? What would a better student look like? If you assume we need better teachers, and the proof that better teachers have been produced is the attainment of better grades, then in essence you imply that we need better students.

I would like to examine a few quotes from the article:

This was neither pure content knowledge nor what educators call pedagogical knowledge, a set of facts independent of subject matter, like Lemov’s techniques. (p7)

I don't feel that what Lemov is touting is pedagogical knowledge. It is a series of classroom management techniques. My view of pedagogy relates to methods of sharing knowledge in the classroom, not the methods of controlling the learners. Effective pedagogy negates the need for classroom management techniques (in all but the most extreme cases).

“But I feel like it’s insufficient. . . . It doesn’t matter what questions you’re asking if the kids are running the classroom.” (p8)

I'm not sure if this is meant in a positive light (i.e. democratic classroom) or in a negative light (i.e. the kids are running rampant). If it is the former, then I don't understand how it wouldn't matter what questions you ask. So, I lean towards it being the latter. This to me is the most telling aspect of Lemov's own personal pedagogy: children need to be controlled while in school. I don't subscribe to this so I can't subscribe to his 'manifesto'.

For these kinds of challenges, Bellucci leans on Kramer’s seven years of experience teaching math, plus her own applied math degree from nearby Union College. She also improvises. (p9)

She also improvises? But, that can't be reduced to a prescription? It must be implied that this improvisation is negative by Lemov's own hypothesis.

While study after study shows that teachers who once boosted student test scores are very likely to do so in the future, no research he can think of has shown a teacher-training program to boost student achievement. (p9)

Thank you.

And while Lemov has faith in his taxonomy because he chose his champions based on their students’ test scores (p9)

Really? Well, I guess I can prove anything with that application of the scientific method.

“You could change the world with a first-year teacher like that,” he said. (p9 Lemov)

If that is so, why has the world not changed? A statement like that is only made if the premise is untrue (i.e. the world is unchanged, needs changing and can be changed). I don't understand his need for this statement, it is pure rhetoric.

For an interesting counter-point by Malcolm Gladwell (who I just learned was born in the city I now live in ... cool), I would encourage you to read Most Likely to Succeed.