Silencing the Critics of Student-Centered Learning

I recently read some material advising parents to avoid schools, classes, and teachers who were supporting a ‘student-centered’ learning model, as well as any problem-based-learning (PBL) model of instruction.  Unfortunately, I have long forgotten the title or author of the article but I know that it did provide some evidence that these methods of teaching do not work.

Of course problem-based and student-centered learning fail according to the outcomes of a traditional school setting.  However, are the outcomes of a traditional school setting the ones that truly matter?  Is it not widely agreed that our schools are failing students?  Are they not antiquated entities churning out students who are very much able to do what they’re told, when they’re told, and how they’re told?  Innovation and outside of the box thinking has been lost. 

Thus, I propose that when assessing whether a student-centered approach is right for your child you first ask define the outcome that you wish for your child to achieve.  Is it a job?  Or is it the ability to be economically successful, fill a niche, innovate, and retain enthusiasm for learning?

In Defence of Hard Work

Just over a year ago I had the opportunity to undertake my M.Ed. in Britain.  As would befit me, I found upon my arrival that I was being instructed by a Dean who was closely aligned with Chris Woodhead, the former Chief Inspector of Schools who gained notoriety by publicly noting that some 15,000 UK teachers were incompetent.  The Dean of Education, Peter Ireland, keeps me on my toes and recently wrote that:

“Remembering is not an inferior alternative to understanding; it is an essential component of it.”

I have long railroaded against an education system that fills are students with useless and irrelevant facts.  Thus, I largely speak against textbook-based practice, worksheets, and all of the other tedium that fill so many classrooms.  However, Peter’s note gives me enough pause to have to clarify that:

Learning must include hard work. 

Recently, in my Innovations class, my students have been working to create educational games.  James Paul Gee has inspired much of our work and the idea that games can educate has naturally inspired my students.  However, they’ve now run into the ‘roadblock’ that comes in any good learning activity – that place where inspiration has to turn into hard work, and perhaps, even for a moment, a bit of tedium.  Research must occur, the lessons that the game will teach prepared, and the background knowledge remembered and learned.  And, as per Peter’s argument, it is this wrestling with large amounts of information, thereby placing it in long term memory (where recall is more or less effortless), that will allow it to be pieced together in their working memory into a coherent and exciting game.

So – no matter how student centered, inquiry-driven, and authentic the task is there will still come that point where hard work is necessary.  

Why Not Ride to School

 A recent Bicycling article (strongly) suggested that students who exercise in the morning are better prepared to learn in the classroom, particularly students with ADHD.

This research fits what we, as teachers, intuitively know about children and learning.  Active and fit children who have had an opportunity to play vigorously or - as they grow older – train - are calmer, more focused, and have an easier time learning in the classroom.

Some schools have taken this information and acted on it.  The Sterling Hall School in Toronto, long a leader in boys’ education, has implemented quality daily physical education for its youngest boys for years.  Further, Sterling Hall has never sacrificed recess time for the sake of more academic time.  Their boys are also welcome to use ‘standing desks’ and a number of rooms have been outfitted with fitness balls as an option beyond the standard chair.

Most schools, however, choose to ignore the reality that our students are, increasingly, not getting enough exercise.  This is not totally because school administrators aren’t paying or don’t care – rather, it is trying to fit these findings into an existing model of school.  The classic questions come up: “Who would teach that?”, “Where would we do it?”, “Whose timetable does it fit in to?” “What about our morning reading period?”

I put to you today that these questions, which are a matter of staffing, should be secondary.  The statement should be “we’re going to implement this for the benefit of our students.”  Why?  Because we know it’s the right thing to do.  As a wise man once said: “When the why becomes clear, so too does the how.”

A Lesson from Flight School

When I fly dual-control Cessnas with fellow pilots we have a distinct procedure to let each other know who is in control of the airplane.

“I have control.” “You have control.”

In most classrooms, by contrast, the teacher never gives up control. 

For some reason we continue to insist upon controlling and managing every aspect of the learning process. Like I wrote in Lego, School, and the Box (parts I and II) we continue in this insane practice of telling children what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and with whom to learn it.  

I am currently working with a highly respected colleague on a student-led learning process and the most difficult aspect for him is moving from the front of the classroom to the back.  I respect him for that admission.  It is difficult to give up control.  I’m sure it was also difficult for my instructor to step out of that airplane and let me fly it on my own for that first go-around.  But it was that first go-around, that first time alone in the airplane, in which I realized the power and freedom of flight – not to mention the endless possibility of human imagination and my own abilities. 

For hours before that first solo flight my instructor was there beside me – demonstrating, watching, tutoring, and encouraging.  He even jumped back into the airplane to teach me some more after those first few hours of solo flying. These things we do in schools, as they’re currently incarnated, very well.  What we could learn from flight school, however, is how to remove ourselves from the pilot’s seat.

I shudder, metaphorically and realistically speaking, to think that some of our children will never have the opportunity to hear the words “you have control.”  At what point, given these circumstances, will they discover their own endless potential?

Lego, School, and the Box: Part II

(Part 1 of Lego, School, and the Box can be found here)

Imagine that you have been given the following selection of Lego bricks, and asked to create this machine:

 

You are then given the following selection of parts:

 

What would you do?

Chances are that you would ask for some instructions.  (And, of course, these clear, step-by-step instructions exist).

 Now, instead, imagine that you were given these bricks:

 

And, these items:

And anything else you wanted to use.
 
And instead of having to create what someone else chose, you were allowed to create whatever you chose to create… but the big challenge was that by creating something, you needed to contribute to solving one of the world’s issues or create something of significance to society.

Would you still ask for instructions?  Or would you try to make your own sense out of the situation?

Which scenario would motivate you more?

Naturally, all of these seemingly silly questions are a metaphor designed to elicit thoughts on today’s education system.  In most schools, just as with the first building scenario, our children are told what to learn, where to learn it, how to learn it, and even when to learn it (interestingly, the question of why they need to learn it doesn’t seem to come up too often).   They are boxed in by arbitrary limits that exist purely because some ‘expert’ curriculum writer, or even, in some cases, ‘expert’ administrators and teachers have identified, often without even meeting your child, exactly what, how, where, and when your child should learn.

As Will Richardson and many others point out – this was fine practice in an era of information scarcity.  However, in a changed and rapidly changing world being ‘boxed in’ will never bring about ‘outside of the box’ thinking.  In the classroom of the future – and in excellent classrooms today – children are in the driver’s seat with regards to their education.  The world is their playground and the challenge is not learning things in a set way; rather, it is seeking out the finest experts and materials to solve real problems.

How does your school measure up?

Why Scratch was the Best Tech Activity of the Year

A brief post for today:

Yesterday my Grade 5 tech class worked with Scratch.  The excitement in the room was palpable; the level of learning was high enough to warrant the children calling the class “fun”.  With some professional reflection, this is why I think we had such success:

1)      The children were allowed to ‘open-source’ learn.  I was not the expert in the room – instead, there was hours of Youtube, peers with more experience than me, and miles of blogs.
2)      We learned together.  When a design issue popped up, the entire classroom worked to find a solution.  In this way, we found multiple solutions and learned more than we ever would have in the traditional ‘delivery of knowledge’ method of teaching.
3)      The games they created were of their own design.  Nobody likes to be told what to do.  That said, there are some students who have been so transformed by the school system that they don’t know what to do unless told.  For them, there were some general guidelines.

The conclusion: Make as many classes as possible ‘open-source’, work collaboratively to solve problems, and respect the individual’s inherent genius.

Does this sound like the Google office to anyone else?  I wonder why that company has achieved such success?

 

A New Equation for School

There has been an ongoing story with regards to school for decades, one that is being re-categorized from non-fiction to fiction; it is the idea that you go to school to prepare yourself for a job in the workforce. For many, that equation extended to post-secondary education: more school = a better job.

That equation is increasingly becoming a myth.  As Will Richardson writes: “with many college graduates making lattes at Starbucks, the traditional narrative of a four-year degree being a ticket to a middle-class life just isn’t playing out for a growing number of kids.”

I don’t think that becoming a server at Starbucks is what these young people had in mind when they enrolled I post-secondary education.

Where the school = a job equation breaks down is when you consider the type of person that companies are looking to hire (and the type of person so talented that they start their own company or work for themselves).  These people, the ‘game-changers’ so to speak, are not talented because they went through a school system that taught them the same thing as everyone else.  Rather, these are the people who went ‘beyond school’ and followed their passions.  School, for them, was merely a hurdle to pass along the way to doing what they really wanted to do.  They sometimes did the bare minimum to get through school or they dropped out of school altogether to follow their own passions.   It is these people who are being hired for their talents and ideas.  Those other people who went through school assuming it was the way to that mythical job are the ones working at Starbucks.

Parents are starting to catch on to this pattern.  The homeschooling and ‘un-schooling’ movement is growing.  While these parents are, perhaps, on the ‘fringe’ as the biggest risk-takers (big risk = big reward… another equation that is not always true!), leading independent schools are starting to recognize that the rules for school are changing. 

·         In an age where knowledge is a mouse-click away, teacher-driven classrooms make no sense.

·         It is highly unlikely that our children will be able to have their own creative, original thoughts when they’ve been boxed up in schools for years.  See Ken Robinson here, and my own post on Lego and the Box, here.

·         Thus, a whole-scale common curriculum also makes no sense.  There are essential skills for every student to master, but if each student is provided the same schooling I find it difficult to conclude that different ideas will somehow emerge.

·         Projects, extending well beyond a single subject and a system of bells and scheduling, will take a prominent role.  Schools following the new rules will realize that children need to be creators of knowledge, not merely consumers.

Those who play by the old rules will still find success; but the law of diminishing returns will take precedence.  Whether you are a parent or an educator I challenge you to lead by adopting a new equation for education.

Children's Habits are Changing - For Better or For Worse?

Lego, in recognition of the 15^th anniversary of its Mindstorms robotics toy, commissioned a study on the transformative changes in children’s play.  While I haven’t read the whole report, the infographic found at http://www.lmsces2013.com provides more than enough food for thought.

My primary concern is that children are spending 20% less time outdoors.  Richard Louv, in LastChild in the Woods, makes a compelling case that children need to be outside for their health and for our collective future.  He makes connections between the rise of Attention Deficit Disorder and the fall of children’s opportunities to connect with nature.  Most telling, he points out that children are just having “less fun” locked in the boxes that we call school.

I’m also concerned that children are, in increasing numbers, creating online personas and engaging in virtual relationships rather than those that are face to face.  The happiest teenager I know has no active email address, does not participate in virtual networks, can go days without using the internet, and has one of the island’s fanciest tree houses.   Sadly though, the number of friends that join him in outdoor and authentically creative (versus online creative) pursuits has dwindled as they find themselves drawn to the screen. 

Alan November, a major promoter of tech-driven education and one of my favorite education personalities recently tweeted about a boy in Bali who said that “Google is preventing creativity”.  While the internet may be a tool for individualized learning and sharing, it can also become a crutch that stops creativity.

Most educators will argue, with good reason, that we need to accept that most of our students will be found online and that Minecraft may be the best way to get them creating.  Virtual creation and virtual relationships may be better than no creative thought or relationships at all. 

However, to accept this argument would be to accept things the way they are.  I would rather provide an opportunity for children to be outdoors, to prefer face to face communication over virtual relationships, and a chance to simply have “more fun”.  It will take a complete transformation of the education system and we may even have to create our own schools, such as Bali’sGreen School, to do it.  Out of those schools will come self-reliant children in touch with nature and their true selves (rather than tech-reliant children living primarily through a virtual persona).  They will be uncommon… they will be happy.

“Some men see things as they are and say why – I dream things that never were and say why not?” – George Bernard Shaw