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Education ‘reform’ another wrong diagnosis: union protectionism and the conventional wisdom

January 2, 2015

 I found this article in Washington Post, 12-17-09 but I omitted to save the authors name so my apologies to that person. It remains pertinent in 2015 especially here in Australia as our politicians and bureaucrats are hellbent on following one bad example after another in the name of ‘reform’. I think the article represents the opinion of many good and committed teachers. I am a committed teacher union activist however my criticisms of our unions are similar to those of the author.

The standards and accountability fad is an intellect-gutting, society-destroying myth

“Good teachers are the key to good schools. A major obstacle to staffing America’s school with good teachers is union protectionism.” So goes the conventional wisdom. I’m no fan of education unions. I fault them for not taking the lead in education reform, for misplaced priorities, and for a willingness to support bad legislation just to keep a seat at the federal education reform table. I was hammering union leadership on those issues decades before I could do it with the click of a mouse. That said, when it comes to education reform, teacher unions get an undeserved bad rap. No way are they the major obstacle to school improvement. Mark that problem up to institutional inertia, innovation-stifling bureaucracy, and misguided state and federal policy. Trace union bad press back to its origins and it’s clear that much of it comes from ideologues and organizations less interested in improving education than in destroying union political clout and privatizing public schools.

No, the main opposition to the education reform effort set in motion about twenty years ago by corporate heads and Congress isn’t coming from go-along-to-get-along unions. The sustained and blistering attacks come from professional educators like Alfie Kohn, Susan Ohanian, Stephen Krashen, Ken and Yetta Goodman, and dozens of others I could name. And me. Retired or otherwise independent, we can say what we think without fear of retribution or being accused of being self-serving. Most importantly, unlike the architects of No Child Left Behind and its gestating offspring, the Race to the Top, we’ve spent thousands of hours in real classrooms working directly with real students.

What do we think about Washington-dictated education reforms? We think they’re sufficiently abusive, counterproductive, and downright stupid to warrant a massive class action suit by parents and grandparents against those responsible. What explains the radically different views of experienced teachers and the suits in corporate suites and Congress who’re now running the education show? A sign that hung in Albert Einstein’s Princeton University office sums it up: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Data-enamoured, spreadsheet-studying, educationally clueless policymakers think Einstein was wrong. What is it, exactly, that can’t be counted? Most people think babies are born with minds like blank paper. Parents, teachers, and others, “write” on that paper, filling it with advice, information, explanations, and interpretations. Schools organize and compress the process with textbooks and teacher talk, and tests check how much kids can remember long enough to pencil in the “right” oval on a standardized test. It’s that simple. Except it isn’t. Not even close. Kids’ minds are never, ever, like blank pages. To matters they consider important, they attach explanatory theories. When a teacher or other explainer dumps information on them that doesn’t match their theories, they reject it. They may play the school game-may store the explainer’s theory in short-term memory until the test is over and the pressure is off-but rarely do they adopt it.

Kids don’t change their theories because doing so would be too traumatic. Their beliefs-about themselves, about others, about how the world works-are their most valued possessions (just as they are for the rest of us). Their theories are “who they are.” Casually exchanging them for someone else’s ideas would undermine their identities, their individuality, their confidence in their ability to make sense of experience. I learned the hard way-from thousands of adolescents-that I couldn’t teach them anything important. All I could do was try to get them to think about a particular matter, then ask them a question or give them something to do that their theories couldn’t handle and let them struggle to work it out. Changing their minds had to be their doing, not mine. Bottom line: It’s impossible to count how much kids really know. Period. Standardized tests are an appalling, monumental waste of time, money, and brains. Especially brains.

To the “standards and accountability” cheerleaders-the Business Roundtable, the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Governors Association, the US Department of Education, newspaper editorial boards, syndicated columnists, and so on-the complex, counterintuitive, kid-controlled, impossible-to-measure learning process I’m describing is alien. But that process lies at the very heart of teaching and learning. Trying to shield it from destruction is why older, experienced teachers are the most vocal, determined opponents of the present reform fiasco. They know the “blank paper,” count-the-right-answers theory propelling the standards and accountability fad is an intellect-gutting, society-destroying myth. And they know that adopting national standards and tests will lock that myth in place far, far into the future.

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Towards an expression of the spiritual in a secular curriculum by Monica Bini

January 1, 2015

Dealing with the issue of ‘spirituality’ is a very current concern for many people. The concerns raised and the difficulties identified still make this article worth reading today.

This article was written as a contribution to the now extant Australian Curriculum. However the author tackles the question of spirituality and what that might mean in a school curriculum. “The curriculum must allow for the kind of delivery that will support its intentions. The awakening and development of the spiritual is often going to be something that is difficult to plan for, and teachers need to be free to capture the teaching moment and be given flexibility to work with individual student needs. And it is an area which is an investment in students’ life journeys, where seeds planted during experiences at school may for some, only really begin to bear fruit at an unexpected time in the future. But with the support of this particular quality of education students may be lucky enough to have a relatively greater proportion of their lives that is fulfilling.”

Monica Bini – Curriculum Manager (Humanities), Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. July 2009.

Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008)

The Melbourne Declaration claims a place for spiritual wellbeing in education for all Australianswhen it declares that “confident and creative individuals have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing”. How can the development and management of spiritual wellbeing be expressed in curriculum beyond faith based settings, so that it is indeed supported for all Australians? This paper outlines and then uses a way of articulating the spiritual that is independent of adherence to religious tradition or belief in the divine, to inform themes of secular spirituality that could be manifested in secular curriculum, and the skills and capacities that can be brought to these themes. In doing so, it aims to capture what is distinctive about the spiritual in the context of curriculum.

The Melbourne Declaration goes some way to articulating a secular spirituality when it links spiritual wellbeing to self worth, self awareness and personal identity. It takes a position that there is something distinct from the emotional, mental and physical in what it is to be human. If secular curriculum wants to claim education of the whole person, then the curriculum needs to address this aspect of being human.

Developing the themes of secular spirituality

Stating what might be further said about the spiritual in a secular sense will inform how curriculum can give expression to this goal. Some of the literature avoids defining the spiritual, as it is not only complex, but partly an experience and therefore partly ineffable. However for the secular to stake a claim in the spiritual it is necessary to show how it can be conceived without an appeal to religion or the divine. For educators, it gives them the language needed to understand the thinking behind any spiritual themes in the curriculum and to support them in engaging in discourse on the spiritual.

The spiritual is something that is perhaps better experienced than explained. It is a particular quality of consciousness that responds to the awesome in nature and the awesome in human creation or expression, where paradoxically in the experience we are drawn out of ourselves and yet deeper within ourselves. It is that part of ourselves that we are not happy with characterizing as emotion. It is, at times, linked rather with a deep sense of satisfaction or fulfillment. This sense of satisfaction is often linked to goals that are in fact unattainable, for example perfect wisdom. And yet it responds to meaning and purpose and can create meaning and purpose. The spiritual is associated with a detachment, that is, a separation from the egotistical aspects of the self, rather than the world or the other.

The Melbourne goal speaks of having a sense of self that enables management of wellbeing, including spiritual. The term ‘management’ suggests cultivating a certain kind of discrimination or discernment that in the first instance begins to recognize the spiritual in the self, in response to particular kinds of experiences and then is ultimately used to make choices that support wellbeing and in turn refine the self. One of the most important contributions that curriculum can make is to assist students as they develop and attend to this faculty or key skill, in what is for most, a lifelong journey.

What follows links the broad conception of spirituality introduced above with ways that this may be manifest in the curriculum. It should be recognized that many of the areas overlap and that somewhat artificial distinctions have been made to draw out distinguishing characteristics of each area.

Themes of secular spirituality that could be manifested in the curriculum:

Awe and wonder:

– providing for engagement with the beautiful in nature and human endeavour, including the bigger or more profound stories, that may resonate, inspire or allow for moments of gratitude and appreciation.

– giving permission to wonder, not only intellectually but a deeper, reflective wonder.

Meaning and purpose:

– providing opportunities to serve something larger than oneself. By isolating such service from material gain, students have a chance to notice a different kind of satisfaction.

– enabling the development and expression of vision.

– engaging students with concepts such as truth, courage, including moral courage, honour and so on, and recognizing their contentious nature yet central role in human endeavour .

– allowing for meaningful self expression. In a wider sense this may be personal meaning realized in public contexts.

Being and Knowing:

– providing opportunities for students to integrate knowledge with action; to ethically bring both considered rational judgment and intuitive insight to bear on practical problems.

– engaging with concepts such as justice, compassion and other areas of ethics.

– assisting students to be aware of and attune the quality of their consciousness in action and thought, for example the level of integrity.

– supporting human dignity by for example valuing the welfare, learning journeys and stories of the students and giving them a voice in their education.

Developing the skills or capacities that can be brought to these themes

What the student brings to the opportunities for awe and wonder, meaning and purpose and exploring being and knowing is important. For example, being presented with the beautiful is enriched with a capacity to notice and attend to the response of the self. Students can build skills to assist in the interpretation of experience. The key skill here is a kind of discernment or discrimination. Developing the ability to discern or discriminate in the context of secular spirituality is particularly related to the following elements of the curriculum:

– building the capacity to notice and attend to the self and how it engages with and responds to certain experiences. For example, noticing different levels of fulfillment. This can occur not only through quiet reflection and silence but through dialogue.

– developing students’ capacity to engage with and express the ineffable, for example in powerful literary and visual metaphors and other non-verbal means of expression such as dance, or design and creative process.

– assisting students in developing the language to express to others and themselves what can be said about secular spiritual experiences.

– allowing the creation and expression of what is deeply satisfying for the student, for example in athletics, woodwork or social activism. Here the student can practice and test their developing discrimination. This may ultimately impact on their choice of life pursuits as well as in a more generic way.

Disciplinary or Interdisciplinary?

Spirituality can be triggered and nurtured by different things for different people and in this sense is interdisciplinary, where students are given the chance to widely explore and test where spiritual wellbeing may lie for them. Students can be invited to engage with facets of the spiritual in the context of a discipline or learning area. For example, service learning in Civics, aesthetics in Mathematics, ethics in Philosophy, or vision in History or Science. Key skills can also be developed in this way, for example through the study of poetry in English or participating in the design process in Technology. The extent to which the spiritual is brought in will be linked closely to pedagogy.

Bringing spirituality into the curriculum in this sense need not be so much about an addition to the curriculum but rather involves considering the disciplines through a particular qualitative lens. The nature of this qualitative lens does need separate documentation however, and this paper attempts to go some way towards supporting educators in this.

Early years learning framework (2009)

The themes of secular spirituality in this paper were used to inform the definition of spirituality in the national Early Years Learning Framework. The framework is built around the concepts of Being, Belonging and Becoming, recognizing that life is more than transactional. A range of groups gave strong feedback that spiritual aspects of young children’s lives should be recognized. In particular it was thought that the play experience for a child had a spiritual dimension. The groups identified a need to capture in a secular way the spiritual dimension of what it is to be human.

Recognition of the spiritual is not unusual at a higher policy level – for example both the 2008 Melbourne and the 1999 Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling, or the 1957 NSW Wyndham Report (naming spiritual values as one of eight key aims for the education of the individual). These high level statements aim at all sectors including faith based, but this aspect of the goals of schooling has not traditionally been picked up by the government sector in particular. One significant gap has been the lack of translation of this part of the goals into formal curriculum structures. This is a necessary part of the mechanism by which high level documents ultimately get delivered in the classroom. Creating a key definition of spirituality began to close the gap.

A definition of spirituality was proposed and welcomed :   “Spirituality refers to a range of human experiences including a sense of awe and wonder, a search for purpose and meaning, and the exploration of being and knowing.” A paper underpinning this definition was a valuable part of the process as it supported decision-makers in understanding that an interpretation of the definition compatible with the secular was possible. At the same time the definition does not exclude the faith based sector, while acknowledging that these settings may bring elements of their different religious traditions into how they interpret it.

Challenges

National Curriculum

The national curriculum will be accountable to the goals for schooling. ACARA’s Curriculum Design paper states at 4.2b that “the national curriculum documents will indicate how much learning in each area contributes to the national goals.” Articulating themes of secular spirituality may assist in the mapping of this aspect of the goals to the curriculum. Curriculum writers have been given some discretion beyond literacy, numeracy, creativity and ICT in how other general capabilities and indigenous, sustainability and Asia related cross curriculum perspectives will be embedded into the curriculum.

The spiritual is a qualitative aspect of the curriculum that cuts across disciplines, general capabilities and cross curriculum perspectives. In this sense it is likely to be more clearly expressed in content elaboration rather than content description, although content description sets the framework that allows particular teaching and learning activities to be developed. For example if students will learn to analyse indigenous history in Australia (as a content descriptor) then content elaboration could include learning about vision and Aboriginal people of vision in this context. In Science a content description derived from the content organizer of science as a human endeavour could be something like ‘students will learn to analyse and evaluate the role of science in human endeavour’ which in turn could lead to content elaboration regarding discussion of meaning and purpose within science or what concepts like moral courage might mean in scientific contexts. The curriculum has many demands placed upon it and selection of more overtly spiritual aspects needs to be not only well informed but judicious.

Spirituality is a personal journey and teachers must be given the flexibility to work with student needs and to allow time for and response to the student voice. A curriculum dense with prescriptive content would work against this.

Assessment

The question of the assessment of spiritual development in students is more broadly related to the question of assessment of those aspects of the curriculum concerned with dispositions, values and attitudes. Curriculum is tending more towards the provision of a holistic education while at the same time there is a growing assessment culture. Are there limits to what a teacher can confidently assess? Dr. Ruth Deakin Crick identifies four stations in the learning journey that are useful to consider:

“Using the metaphor of ‘learning as a journey’ there are four ‘stations’ which learners and their mentors attend to in the process of learning. The first is the learning self, with its particular identity, nested sets of relationships, stories and aspirations. The second is the personal qualities, values, attitudes and dispositions for learning….The third is the acquisition of publicly assessed knowledge, skills and understanding. The fourth is the achievement of publicly assessed and valued competence in a particular domain – such as being a competent citizen, or artisan, or carer.” (Deakin Crick, 2009, p.78)

The spiritual is clearly related to the first and second stations but there is interplay with the third and fourth as spiritual development occurs and is expressed. Deakin Crick has developed a self assessment tool of values, dispositions and attitudes of effective lifelong learners. The rationale for this being a self assessment tool is relevant to spiritual development too:

“the first two stations are personal and unique to the learner, and although formed in the context of community and participation, and thus not necessarily private, the authority to create and make judgments in these domains rests with the learners themselves.”(Deakin Crick, 2009, p. 78)

Assessment of learning belongs in the 3rd and 4th stations of the learning journey where authority to make judgments lies outside the self. This kind of learning is accountable in a public way that spirituality is not. It is fair to set achievement standards for these stations of the learning journey but somehow unfair, if not absurd, to grade students on their spiritual development. The difficulty in gathering direct evidence would also make this attempt invalid and unreliable and could indeed be counterproductive. It would be more coherent to undertake assessment of the educator’s provision of opportunities for deep learning and expression.

A partnership is necessary between all the stages of the learning journey to result in a holistic education. Deep engagement with learning is not guaranteed and neither should it be demanded, but rather invited. But it is important that the educator at least present the opportunity not only through good curriculum but also good pedagogy. Spiritual development is thus a well supported ‘hope’ of the curriculum rather than a demand. (Rossiter, 2006).

Conclusion

The curriculum must allow for the kind of delivery that will support its intentions. The awakening and development of the spiritual is often going to be something that is difficult to plan for, and teachers need to be free to capture the teaching moment and be given flexibility to work with individual student needs. And it is an area which is an investment in students’ life journeys, where seeds planted during experiences at school may for some, only really begin to bear fruit at an unexpected time in the future. But with the support of this particular quality of education students may be lucky enough to have a relatively greater proportion of their lives that is fulfilling.

References

NSW Government 1957, Report of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales (the Wyndham Report), p.40

Bigger, Secular Spiritual Education?, e-journal of the British Education Studies Association, Vol 1(1) August, 2008

Crawford and G. Rossiter, Reasons for living – education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality, ACER Press, 2006

Deakin Crick, Inquiry-based learning: reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archeological pedagogy, The Curriculum Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2009, 73-92

Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI), owned by the University of Bristol and the Lifelong Learning Federation, at http://www.ellionline.co.uk

Thomas and V. Lockwood, Nurturing the spiritual child: compassion, connection and a sense of self, Early Childhood Australia Inc., Research in Practice Series, Vol. 16., No. 2 2009

http://www.acsa.edu.au/pages/images/Monica%20Bini%20-%20secular%20spirituality.p

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Education is thinking and Thinking is education

January 1, 2015

Education is thinking; Thinking is education

The best child protection is a community that is engaged with providing a safe and stimulating place to facilitate holistic approaches to pedagogical practice that provides the best opportunities for people exercising their powers. This means mutually recognising and respecting our rights as adults to actively defend the right of children to be in a safe place. Mutual respect is made possible when the community’s members share a safe space to communicate with each other about the meaning and purpose of learning and teaching, and defining the place as a safe place for evolving and productive pedagogical practice.

Learning to be powerful; Powerful to be learning

To empower others implies that those who facilitate this historical and epistemological process are themselves exercising power. A highly engaging curriculum can only by provided by highly engaged teachers and learners. Highly engaged and knowledgeable learners and teachers are powerful people.

A highly engaging curriculum acknowledges human being as a species being – Nature, an objective, global, scientific view; and as an historical and epistemologically organised social construction – Second Nature, the subjective and particular cultural window with a landscape defined partially by the objective window of a global scientific view.

Appropriately localised curriculum content provides sequentially organised and integrated content that is meaningful and procedurally purposeful. This is achieved by defining essential concepts or Big Ideas that persist as from that are metaphorically intertwining, as expanding flux, that spirals out from beginning to end – K to 6.

Theory and practice.

It is worth noting that the key theorists associated with early childhood are not early childhood theorists as such. Rather there are theorists who most influence the practice of early childhood educators primarily because as theorists they have a cogent view of human cognitive and social development from birth to adult. There is a danger that others who were or are not directly engaged with early childhood and the compulsory years of education have less to offer. For example, Paulo Freire’s development of learning and teaching methods for adult literacy provided extraordinary insights into the social and political dimensions and purposes of education per se. Given his profound impact on pedagogy and practice it would be mistaken to exclude such figures from the early years ‘pantheon’. The same can be said for Malaguzzie of Reggio Emilia and Penelope Leach.

Developing empathetic systems.

As an approach that is both exemplary and comprehensive the Reggio Emilia experience has overwhelmingly the most to contribute to hypotheses and practices of Early Childhood practitioners and educators. The approach developed in Reggio Emilia for early childhood education can be defined as exemplary because as practitioners they have a system with a clearly defined purposes and goals, are able to operate and develop practice according to the needs of children, rather than the overt interference of any politician’s whim, and most significantly, out of reach of powerful social and economic forces that are antithetical to the interests of good child development and childhood.

This is most evident when here in Australia our current Minister of Education has expressed her government’s belief that education is to provide the means for the corporations’s single-minded pursuit of profits. In essence the approach developed by Reggio Emilia, while not a blueprint, provides an example of what it means to pay close attention to providing a safe place for pedagogical practice and in so doing demonstrating the provision of a child-centred antidote relatively free from the economic imperatives of corporate-mass-media-culture.

The social and cultural contexts of learning and teaching.

Understanding human activity as social and cultural provides the ‘philosophical’ foundation for child-centred pedagogical approaches to learning and teaching. Education ideally is a partnership between, educators, children, and parents all of whom are acting in the best interests of all children. Educators particularly take the greater share of this responsibility because they are to provide for needs and develop relationships not only within their own pedagogical space but those too of their immediate community and ultimately the system.

All good learning is driven by curiosity. Sharing, discovering and applying mutual concerns in regards to pedagogy assists to organise the curriculum and pedagogical activities, and ipso facto our learning community. Children too learn by asking questions about their relationships with others and their place within The World around them. As soon as they can speak coherently this curiosity is articulated as questions, Who, What, Where, When, How and Why? We know that children come to school with their own experiences and knowledge. Parents, and particularly early years educators should recognise and account for this in their pedagogical practice.

Valuing curiosity and imagination

Learning proceeds from experience and inquiry thereby providing the foundations for the ongoing development of intelligent cognitive and social behaviours, or habits, for the transition into the compulsory the middle to upper primary years.

Key Assumptions of Experiential and Inquiry learning. The place of Dialogue with Children and building strong foundations for good habits.

Education is essentially learning to think. Young children live imaginatively and have ideas largely unburdened by facts. It is critical to keep curiosity and the desire to learn from this curiosity alive. The desire to know, ask questions and seek answers underlies the key purpose of all our learning.

Educational play-based -productive (cognitive) activity is an important element of our classrooms. A ‘play-based’ approach provides for the use of the arts in all aspects of their learning wether it is literacy, numeracy or imaginative play. The Philosophy with Children program adds an equally important ingredient to all aspects of their learning and our teaching.

By encouraging the skills of respectful and sincere dialogue between children and their teachers, and the teachers themselves, the importance of dialogue, questioning and thinking are emphasised and explicitly stated and connected. Equally there are profound connections between inquiry, philosophy, the arts, the natural environment and becoming literate. Education is essential for active citizenship and productive democracy.

The Development of children: there are two distinct lines of development:

the Natural and Cultural.

  • Natural – biological growth and maturation of physical and mental structures.
  • Cultural – learning to use cultural tools and development of human consciousness that emerges through cultural activity.
  • Children’s cultural development occurs first as social or interpersonal plane and then on the individual or psychological plane.
  • People are social-beings and the creations and makers of their social, cultural, and historical contexts.
  • Social interaction and participation in authentic cultural activities are necessary for development to occur.

The place and role of language and dialogue in human culture

The acquisition of language is the most significant milestone in children’s cognitive development.

  • Language is the primary cultural tool used to mediate activities and is instrumental in restructuring the mind and informing higher order and self-regulating thought processes.
  • Language plays a crucial role in forming minds as it is the primary means of communication and mental contact with others.
  • Language is the major means for representing social experience and is an indispensable part of our thoughts.
  • Language is the bridge between our social-cultural worlds and individual mental function.
  • Mental abilities develop out of the need to communicate and function as a collective.
  • The development of the individual and complex, higher mental functions occur through social interaction

Education, Development and Sociability

  • Formal education and other cultural forms of socialisation are key to developmental pathways toward adulthood
  • Thinking is contextualised and collaborative – it emerges from particular activities and social experiences. Forms of thinking are products of specific contexts and cultural conditions. Higher forms of thinking are socially and culturally contextual – members of these contexts share them.
  • To understand the development of individuals it is necessary to understand the social relations of which the individual is a part.
  • Social influences are ever-present in cognitive skill development.
  • Social engagement is a powerful force in transforming children’s thinking.
  • School and associated literacy and numeracy activities are a powerful context for shaping and developing thinking and action.
  • Mastery of academic tasks assist in transformations of memory, concept formation, reasoning, problematising and problem solving.

Zone of Proximal Development or Scaffolding and other minds.

  • The social and cognitive are essential aspects of each other.
  • Ways of understanding reality are similar across human beings we all have the same biological equipment for interpreting experience: The human brain and body.
  • Thinking is not bounded by the individual brain or mind and body inseparably joined (intertwined) with other minds.
  • Thinking is a profoundly social phenomenon. Social experiences shape the ways we interpret and think about the world.

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Reggio Emilia Principles, Philosophy with Children, and Inquiry Learning.

January 1, 2015

An introduction to Reggio Emilia Principles and Approaches and Philosophy with Children and Inquiry Learning.

Schooling is a partnership between the teacher, children, and parents all working in the best interests of children. Teachers also share this responsibility they are also aware of the needs and relationships within the whole classroom and the larger school community. By discovering and sharing our mutual concerns in these regards our activities as a school community can only be strengthened.

What is Learning? Valuing curiosity and imagination

Education is essentially learning to think. Young children live imaginatively and have ideas largely unburdened by facts. It is critical to keep the desire to learn from their curiosity alive. The desire to know, ask questions and seek answers underlies the key purpose of all our learning. All learning, regardless of age, is driven by curiosity and doubt. Very early on, as soon as children can speak with any coherence, they constantly ask, Why? Children come to school bringing with them their own knowledge and experiences. Building on this apparently innate desire to learn the early years – Prep to Grade 4 – provides the foundations for the continuing development of intelligent behaviours or habits in the middle to upper primary years and establishing the capacity for independent learning and self-regulation in secondary and post-compulsory education.

By building strong foundations good habits are developed

Formal, school based learning requires a period of transition for young children. Play and game based approaches to learning is an important aspect of the classroom. Many aspects of our culture ignore the authentic needs of children. Specifically our culture tends to define all of us as consumers rather than creators. This is also perhaps best explained by understanding that young children should not feel pressured to perform to predetermined standards and outcomes but rather encouraged to appreciate a love of learning. Consequently the emphasis is on building understanding and meaning by using their own activity, thoughts and reflections on their everyday experiences.

Reggio Emilia principles and approaches seek to build on children’s strengths and understand children as they are rather than what we want them to be or think they should be thereby acknowledging that personality and character are developed by social interactions and the relationships between themselves and adult co-inquirers. Reggio teachers equally regard themselves in this way too; we do not walk in front or behind but alongside students as co-inquirers. Such an approach explicitly acknowledges children’s personal and collective intellectual efforts to make sense of their world and the place of learning within it.

Reggio Emilia educational theory and practice is informed by many years of international collective research based on observing and listening to children in early years settings. While it is very influential in preschool settings we believe that the principles and approaches can be, and should be, extended into primary education. While the emphases may shift The arts are at the center of all aspects of their learning whether it is literacy, numeracy or imaginative exploration and discovery. Philosophy with Children has a similar approach to Reggio Emilia and describes its model as a process of creating a community of inquirers where the object is “thinking about thinking” or meta-cognition.

The combination of these approaches makes possible a powerful foundation for what is commonly defined as Inquiry learning. By encouraging the skills of respectful dialogue between the children themselves and their teacher the importance of questioning and thinking is also emphasised along with direct instruction of ‘thinking tools’ and processes that the discipline of philosophy provides. These two approaches also provide for learning that is slow and deep.

Creating a community of learners

Learning to get along with each other, developing routines and responding to a variety of situations is an important aspect of early years education. Learning how to be with others and value them is a significant theme throughout the early years.

Understanding who they are and where they belong in the world begins to develop in a self-conscious way through the awareness of others as they move from a predominantly egocentric view of the world.

Children are encouraged to actively make, and think, about their world. By exchanging their own stories, speaking and listening, reading and exchanging opinions, and questioning each other’s stories they are encouraged to be critical self-conscious thinkers.

Creating a sense of common purpose and cooperation.

A multi-age classroom offers many opportunities for formal and informal peer learning and teaching. Relationships between adults and children are nurtured. The quality of this relationship is an important element of the children’s self-understanding and development as a learner and teacher. For this reason the active participation of parents and other significant adults in the classroom is encouraged across all programs.

Teacher judgment.

The teacher is the authoritative adult who acts with the best interests of the individual child and the children as a whole. Learning and teaching in this environment expects to encourage dispositions that assist independent and cooperative learning. A self-critical or self-reflexive attitude that does not rely on rewards and punishment is encouraged at all times.

In Conclusion.

It is not possible to do justice to these approaches on paper other than to reiterate that other than their own intrinsic worth these approaches significantly support learning in all areas of the curriculum. The thinking and manipulative skills developed positively impact on literacy – language, reading and writing, story telling, drama – feelings, emotions, other points of view, numeracy and mathematics – quantifying, recognising patterns and their expression in mathematical language.

Equally it provides the basis for significant and profound approaches to the social nature of learning and knowledge by using explicit strategies to build behaviour that is appropriate to sharing and exchanging opinions and knowledge with those around them. In this way children are not merely the passive recipients of values but actively participate in developing and understanding our shared expectations as individuals, and as a community.

 

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Food, glorious food! Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Gardens

December 28, 2014

 

Reflection on my years teaching and learning through cooking and gardening in primary schools. I am currently a preschool teacher at Namadgi School (Australian Capital Territory). I also run the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program for Years Three, Four and Five.

Food, glorious food!

Running the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden at Namadgi School will probably be my teaching career highlight. Rarely does school-based learning involve doing. That is, physical activity and applying knowledge in any practical sense. Both of which, in my experience, are increasingly, and sadly, absent from primary-school activities. Cooking and gardening heighten and refine all our sensory perceptions, and the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation’s approach emphasises engagement through such sensory experiences. Actively engaging children in this way is a counter to the idea that our attitudes, and our experiences of food and eating can change by learning with pen and paper alone. It is importantly an antidote to the myopia infecting all of us who must contend with the narrow mindedness of NAPLAN and all the other coinciding efforts to corporatise and standardise life. I have long believed that if we are serious about meeting the diverse needs of our children, an entire curriculum, of real significance and rigour, could be built around the activities of growing and cooking food. Food, without exception is essential to all of us.

At every school where I have taught I have established some kind of a garden for children to be involved with. The purpose has been to make tangible the connections between literacy, maths, science and art. Witnessing the enthusiasm of enough young people told me that those projects were but a glimpse of what may be possible. Success, however, would not be the right word to describe my efforts. Generally, a significant handicap has been the principals’ unenviable preoccupation with the limits of school budgets, or perhaps the department’s latest pedagogical turn. Serious consideration of gardening and cooking providing for good learning did not ever get very far. So it is with a real sense of elation that my school’s leadership has embraced the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden project, and given me the opportunity to develop it.

Stephanie Alexander herself is best known in metro Melbourne as one of the eminent ‘foodies’ and has been owner and chef of that city’s finest restaurants. Ten years ago, however, her concerns about our society’s abuse of food, and the sensory harm it was inflicting on children and families, saw her create what has become the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. I knew about Stephanie from my years as a cook in the industry, but it was later, as a teacher, that I observed the development of her ambition to see children involved in the growing, cooking, and the sharing of their delights at the table. It is an impressive achievement. I can only recommend that any teacher who wishes to undertake any kind of cooking and garden program in their school to give this program top-most consideration. Gardening and cooking experiences and activities from over four hundred schools have been synthesised to produce excellent set-up support, and curriculum materials that will assist teachers integrate literacy, maths, science and art. ICT curriculum demands are also met, by a website designed to upload and document activities and recipes which can then be shared with other participating schools.

It is an age of paradox when the media becomes social; food, like porn is everywhere; and good cooking are competitions defined by TV advertisers. Many of us share Stephanie’s concerns one way or another, the discouragement of sensory refinement, our knowledge of nature, and the decline of conviviality. The pressures families face distorts our lives. Global food markets and corporate retailing leave us malnourished irrespective of our social class. Be it a life-style of over-indulging on the finest of everything, or alternatively, attempting to live on kitten fried Kentucky style, both are the consequence of corporate capitalists’ cultivating ignorance. Consciously engaging children and teachers in the sharing of knowledge about how, when, and why things grow, and cooking and eating together is what enriches us, and protects the world surrounding us.

We care about the things we love. Why then, even before our children can enjoy the natural world, do we emphasis everything that threatens it? So too it is with the food we eat. A pie in a classroom is more likely to be a healthy eating chart rather than a culinary and sensory delight that the children have made. The suggestion seems to be that our children’s ignorance will be remedied by a moralising that engenders species-loathing fear. In turn that approach denies the possibility of learning from hands-on effort and the pleasures that brings. Classroom culture tends to deny the importance of sensory experiences and the development of our capacities to think and talk about them. Rather, the argument seems to go, that to do so is not serious learning. Really? Conversely, I would argue, we do not take ourselves seriously enough.

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Mal-nutrition

December 28, 2014

A letter sent to the Canberra Times (Australian Capital Territory, Australia) in response to the Education Minister’s call to ‘crackdown’ on vending machines in schools.

Fat lot of good it’ll do

August 29, 2014

Vending machines and school canteens in public schools are once again the easy target in the ”war” on obesity (”Crackdown on school junk food: vending machines may go”, August 25, p3).

I do not know how many vending machines are left in schools but it cannot be so many as to be a significant contributor to the high sugar diets that too many people subject themselves to. The school canteen is another issue. They are expensive to run and there is a slim profit margin. The commercial imperative pushes canteen contractors down the junk food path. It would be a mistake to think that either of these is a significant causal contributor to the mal-nutrition that plagues Western diets. In fact it could be argued that it is obfuscation and avoidance of more significant issues.

The problem begins in the profit-driven corporate food manufacture and distribution, and the general anti-social character of our working lives.

Lunchboxes that come from home are loaded with disturbing amounts of high sugar and salt items. Chocolates and chips were once occasional treats but they have now become a lunchbox staple. Time-poor parents are attracted to these substitutes for good food because they are generally dressed up to appear healthy and are packaged to fit in a lunchbox.

If the Territory government were serious about addressing obesity and diet amongst our most vulnerable people, children, then it would need to initiate a campaign against all advertising of high sugar and salt ”food” in much the same way that tobacco has been dealt with. In the long run it will be only radical social change in the conduct of our daily lives and the manner of food production that can begin to address these multiple concerns.

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VOTE for Teachers’ Alliance Elect practising classroom teachers

December 22, 2009

VOTE for Teachers’ Alliance
Elect practising classroom teachers

Peter Curtis for Council
Hurstbridge Primary School

I am a classroom teacher and an active
representative of my sub-branch.
If elected as a Teachers Alliance candidate I will work to improve the conditions of all staff. By building sub-branches we can fully involve all members of the union to;
• Develop policy, stop divisive deals and further reduction of conditions
• Participate in negotiations and agreements prior to public acceptance
Ensure Branch Council participates in organising a united public education sector, and supports combined unions’ campaigns.
• Prioritise the defense of our Occupational Health & Safety laws
• Enact OHS Conference decisions by fully involving members in the VTHC campaign.
• Participation in our federal campaign to stop league tables and other policies detrimental to working conditions and quality education.
Invigorate Branch Conference with democratic discussion and debate on;
• The Government’s Blueprints and VELS
• Reducing workload
• Reducing contracts by reinstating Relieving Teachers
• Replacing the VIT

Teachers’ Alliance candidates will work to ensure officers stay in touch with members by receiving the salary of teachers, and
stand for no more than two consecutive terms.
Vote for a voice representing Primary Teachers

5 Gerritsen, Prue
6 Preston, Ella
4 Cohen, Daniel
3 McPherson, Hamish
1 Ghiotti, Beth
2 Curtis, Peter
7 Atkinson, Anthony

http://www.teachers-alliance.org

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Bullies and Australian education counter reform

December 22, 2009

Bullying is the topic of two articles in the Australian Education Union, Victoria Branch News, March 2009. The problem of bullying is a timely one as it is an issue that dominates many teachers’ concerns, both personally, and across whole school communities. Schools are microcosm of society and consequently the problems that beset our communities are also present within our schools.

Australian society’s political and economic system, like most, is based on the exploitation of many to profit the few. To do so inequality must be enforced to ensure ‘social cohesion’. This is most evident in the federal governments repressive industrial relations legislation that deliberates against any reasonable democratic action to defend wages and working conditions by workers generally, but especially those who are organised in trade unions.

In regard to education Julia ‘Gradgrind’ Gillard apparently must appreciate that many teachers strive to be the embodiment and promoters of democratic values. It is no accident her ministerial responsibilities are education, social cohesion and industrial relations. Let your own internal ‘Big Brother’ make the connections before the development of our imaginations and emotions are outlawed totally. The ‘Gradgrind’ view of education is one directed by bullying business managers manipulating data, and micromanaging the life out of teachers and teaching. Trevor Cobold, national spokesperson of Save Our Schools argues that this “toughness masks their ignorance of curriculum and teaching.”

June Factor (The Age 23/3) too makes a number of critical and salient points to challenge the ‘Gradgrind’ view.
“… this reductionist virus, as is evident from the Federal Government’s recent enthusiasm for a local variant of the No Child Left Behind approach. Every school must adopt a “performance reporting regime involving constant standardised testing and the naming (and shaming) of schools where the children don’t perform as required.
The Bush government’s Orwellian-titled No Child Left Behind policy has forced many schools, especially the poorest, now dependent on test results for their survival, to diminish or omit subjects such as music, drama and art.”
There are now whole school districts in the US where children’s play time is reduced, adult-directed or simply eliminated. This trend was visible even before George W. Bush. According to the superintendent of schools in Atlanta in 1998, “we are intent on improving academic performance. You don’t do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars.”

Educators know that their student’s suffer when they are involved in bullying. We know that bullying is a complex of social behaviour that involves those who are perpetrators, victims, and as well the ‘innocent’ bystanders. The methods being proposed by the Federal Government are tantamount to bullying for the social and personal harm that they perpetrate on teachers and their students. The enforcement of Gradgrind’s system of joyless education can only work by making a Louisa of us all.

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SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS from the economic and political agenda of big business corporations.

July 19, 2009

To all those who care about our home and a culture
of ‘A Fair-go’ and ‘Participatory Democracy’.

SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS from the economic and political agenda of big business corporations. This corporate campaign to do in Australian authors and small independent publishers and bookshops is being ably run and organised by the giant corporations’ quislings.
One vocal example of this species is the ex-ALP Premier of NSW, Bob Carr; he is on the board of Dymocks Books. Despite his many years as a member of the ‘political class’ he thinks crossing the floor means a move to the Macquarie Bank.
Are we prepared to let Coles and K-Mart monopo-lies the economic, political and cultural agendas?
If not find out more and read on …

URGENT – SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS

You will probably have heard by now about the Productivity Commission Report that recommends abolishing Territorial Copyright on books and so allowing the Parallel Importation of books. Many Australians are up in arms about this.

Some of us are developing a short campaign to convince the Federal Government to reject the Commission’s report, and retain restrictions on parallel importation. But we need to let people from all walks of life know about this threat to Australian-published books, both fiction and non-fiction.

We have initiated a new blogsite to help explain our campaign and the issues behind it, and to demonstrate the breadth of opposition amongst authors, publishers, independent booksellers, parents, teachers, librarians, printers and book lovers. The blogsite address is http://savingaussiebooks.wordpress.com/. This new website offers information (easy to understand), links, comments and access to practical ways people can contact (and lobby) politicians, letters to the editors – and getting our concerns out to the general community.
We also are developing a petition on the blogsite and/or a petition format to print off and circulated as widely as possible.

The site also has guest bloggers willing to put their names to blog entries, (hopefully not just authors) because there’re many other professions and trades who will be affected by this change of law.

Please pass on to as many people as you can in your circles.

The timing is URGENT as the Federal Government will make its decision in the weeks ahead. Many thanks for your interest and support.

Regards
Sheryl Gwyther
An Australian writer’s alert regarding the loss of Australian culture with the threat of Parallel Importation of Books.
Some of you may know of author and teacher Sheryl Gwyther. Lothian Books published her first novel, Secrets of Eromanga in 2006. In 2002 was awarded an Australian Society of Authors’ Mentorship. In 2009 Sheryl and other Australian authors and publishers are fighting for their livelihoods. For Sheryl, ”writing is my life now … and with my visits to classrooms and libraries enthusing kids about the amazing world of Australian dinosaurs and about writing, I’m never bored.” You may or may not have heard but Australian authors and culture is under attack from giant global corporate interests.
On June 30 Sheryl wrote, “The Productivity Commission took their findings to the Australian Parliament on whether Australian authors and illustrators will lost Territorial Copyright. Over the past decade this protection has ensured a phenomenal increase of quality Australian-authored books and the emergence of a battalion of award-winning authors. More significantly is the fact it has given the world an insight into our country through the eyes and words of Australian authors.”
Do you want to see Australian children reading books without Australian content and ‘Americanised’ with Mom instead of Mum or faucets instead of taps, and vacation instead of holiday? It could happen if pressure from some quarters (e.g. Dymocks company’s management and major retail chains of Woolworths, Coles, K Mart, Big W and Target) convinces the Australian Government to relax the current Parallel Importation Restrictions on books. (PIRs)
What is Parallel Importation of Books? Parallel importation would allow Australian booksellers to import books from the US and the UK, irrespective of whether they’re already published in Australia. These two countries prohibit Parallel Importation of books into their countries so why allow it in Australia?
How will it affect Australian book buyers? Removing PIRs will flood the market with inferior imports, drown out Aussie content/language and reduce your choice of books – with no reliable evidence that books will cost you less.
If you want to read Australian books; if you want your kids to see their lives and experiences reflected in the books they read, write to your politicians. Tell them NOT to remove PIRs on books. This is an issue that every good teacher should be concerned about. So I have asked that her open letter be published.
Regards,
Peter Curtis,
Primary Teacher, AEU.

08/07/2009 An open letter by Sheryl Gwyther

Culture for DUMMIES

Forgive the acerbic tone to this post, but I can’t let Professor Allan Fels’ latest comment go regarding his desire to scrap Territorial Copyright laws for Australian authors.
This is part of what he said last night on ABC TV’s 7:30 Report about our present copyright protection: “There’s also a claim that it’s good for culture, that is, it’s good for culture that Australian book readers should pay more for books. I don’t understand that.”
An open letter to Professor Allan Fels, Bob Carr and all….
Well, let me enlighten you, Professor Fels with my Culture for DUMMIES.
Heinemann’s Australian dictionary says culture means, ‘ a development or improvement of the intellect or behaviour; the distinctive practices and beliefs of a society.’ Well, that’s pretty straightforward, don’t you think, Professor Fels?
Let’s put it in context of Australian children’s picture books and novels. After all, that’s the area that will be directly hit by yours and Bob Carr’s, Dymocks Bookstores, and the discount retailers Woolworths and Coles’s bid to destroy Australian Territorial Copyright on books. If the Parallel Importation Restrictions (PIRs) are abolished or watered-down (as desired by you and your fellow free-marketeers) future Australian books risk losing their Australian content, voices and experiences.
In the world of children’s books – and maybe you have no experience in this area – the risk is even greater. Australian children must grow up having access to books from their own country. Books that hold mirror images of their own experiences not those of children living in Manhattan, Texas or Manchester. Books that echo with Australian voices, multi-cultural and all; stories connecting with our own place in the world.
If PIRs are abolished and Australian authored books are published overseas they WILL BE CHANGED to suit American or British tastes. Then they will be exported back into this country with American spelling, language and terms – gone will be Wagga Wagga, Mum, footpath, rugby union, gum tree, Indooroopilly, possum and a host of other words.
But even worse than losing our own language is the threat to Australian content in books. Aussie children understand Aussie humour – North American and British children don’t quite get it. Okay, I mustn’t generalise, so let’s just say that publishers (the gatekeepers) in the US and the UK don’t ‘get’ Australian humour … just ask popular Australian children’s author, Morris Gleitzman about his experiences. (His texts are Americanized for the North American market)
And what can Australian authors do when a large American publishing firm says we’ll publish your book, but we’ll need to make a few changes. If we refuse the changes we do not get published. We’ve seen this happen already where Australian books are picked up by US publishing firms. Even picture books are not immune – they become bland, superficial facsimiles of their Aussie twins.
So, Professor Fels, please open your eyes and your mind; life isn’t meant to be all about making more money. And don’t try to pull the wool over Aussie eyes – people who want to buy a book in this country are not bound by the price at the bookshop. We all have access to free libraries across this wide land so no child needs to go without a book because of what it costs. (And let me remind you, the Productivity Commission says there’s no guarantee books would be any cheaper if the restrictions are lifted).
I’m just an ordinary Australian children’s writer trying to make a living in my beloved country – following my passion for storytelling set on this land, that uses the language and experiences of its peoples. Like my fellow authors I live with rejections, rewrites and edits on work that might take many years to complete. I don’t complain if I’m lucky to earn 10% of the RRP on a proportion of a few thousand published copies.
I just move on to writing the next one with the thrill of knowing many children read my stories and enjoy them; and the knowledge that I’m part of a noble profession working to ensure our Australian culture in its written form will survive and thrive, long after you’ve become a tiny, full-stop dot in the book of Australian history.

sherylgwyther.wordpress.com
http://www.sherylgwyther.net

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