The danger of National's Standards!

One Dinosaur has noticed things are a- changing - for the worse -  for them!


Guest blog by Allan Alach

As the weeks go by, and as the pressure to implement the “national standards” (better phrased as ‘National’s standards”) is increased, I’ve been noting, with growing concern, what seems to be an increasingly tacit acceptance of the situation. I guess there are three possible reasons for this development.

One of these is that many principals, even though very well informed, and anti-standards, have come under pressure to implement them, either from their BOTs or a result of the MOE bullying. Principals, teachers and BOTs giving way to MOE pressure is understandable, if regrettable. It can be very lonely out there.

Another possibility is that there are significant numbers of educators out there in schools who don’t really understand the full implication of the imposition of standards, nor of the agenda that is driving this. Why?

The most concerning aspect is that some of our colleagues are actively buying into standards based education as the best way forward, although what they are moving forward to is a moot point. Again, why?

Unity is our best defence. Let’s imagine a situation where every primary school in New Zealand, fully supported by their Boards of Trustees and wider community, refused to have anything to do with the standards, regardless of any pressures from the government and their puppets in the MOE.

What would happen? Nothing. The power remains with the people. Or, to phrase this another way, as Benjamin Franklin said when he signed the US Declaration of Independence "We must all hang together, gentlemen, else, we shall most assuredly hang separately". Unfortunately we don’t have this unity, and so it appears that we’re slowly being hanged separately.

Communities (especially parents) need to be well informed about the whole curriculum, and about what and how children are doing . The National government cleverly targeted their lack of knowledge by raising fears that their children were failing - hence the very inaccurate '1 in 5 children are failing.' How about, to use the same dubious data, saying that 4 out of 5 are doing very well?

Informing our communities about all our successes is vital, to show that NZ schools are indeed leading the world in providing a full education, rather than the narrow '3Rs' focus of the government. It's my experience that parents really want their children to have a full breadth of educational opportunities. Competence in the 'basics' which is another variation of the '3Rs' that was current a couple of decades ago, provides the key skills for the rest of the learning to occur. That's not rocket science, and I’ve found that parents are very receptive to this explanation.

The case against national standards in the New Zealand context has been very well made by many authoritative voices and doesn’t need repeating by me. Any reader of this blog, and Kelvin Smythe’s Networkonnet, should be very well aware of the issues about standards. Anyone who hasn’t got the message by now isn’t going to be changed by further argument.

Further to this, the case against any standards based assessment/testing regime, as used in a number of overseas countries, is also extremely well made. The arguments are so comprehensive that really there is no debate that this is a disastrous development in education,nationally and internationally.

Given this, I really wonder why it is that there appears to be significant numbers of principals who don’t seem to be aware of this, or, even more puzzling, why there are principals who are actively promoting standards in their schools. Or is the answer that many people see only the surface level problems with the standards, and believe that they can work their way around them? I don’t know. People who play with fire are in danger of getting burnt.

Why are the warnings of people like Bruce Hammonds, Kelvin Smythe, Lester Flockton, Warwick Elley, Ivan Snook, John O’Neill et al, as well as the NZPF, NZEI, and of very experienced principals such as Geoff Lovegrove, being ignored or downplayed?

Why are these voices of experience not resonating in the educational community? A recent comment on one of Bruce’s blogs said; “it seems we have commentators who have long since left working in schools feeling they can also have a go at us as well”. Without doubt, a sizeable proportion of the most vociferous anti-standard campaigners are ‘well seasoned’, either at or approaching the end of their active careers in education. Is this why their voices are discounted? Does this blog comment imply that only those still in principalship or working in schools have a voice?

Reviewing the educational scene, we know that the current system, with its underlying ideology, has now been in place for 21 years. We can therefore postulate that a large group of today’s teachers (including quite a number of principals) have worked most, if not all, of their teaching careers in this system. Institutional memories of the pre “Tomorrow’s Schools” era are growing dim.

Let’s not forget that the period 1992 - 2002 or thereabouts was dominated by the requirement to assess all 1220+ achievement objectives set out in the curriculum documents of the time, and that the chief villain was, typically, ERO’s demand to see this documented. There was little scope for creativity, innovation and so on, in this framework - the formative teaching years of the group of teachers and principals we are discussing.

It wasn’t until the introduction of the New Zealand Curriculum that this strait jacket was officially removed, and schools and teachers were given the freedom to develop creative and innovative educational programmes in their schools. It’s not surprising that this was very new territory for many, although for us ‘grey hairs’ it was a refreshing chance to revisit the best of the past in a 21st century context.

Here we are, a mere few years later, and the strait jacket is returning in a modified form - same agenda, different method. It’s not altogether surprising that many principals and teachers may be confused and unsure.

It is apparent now, that there is little to be gained by providing more anti-standards information. Anyone who hasn’t got the message that there are serious concerns about standards must be living in a different space-time continuum, and so we need to reflect on why the warnings are being ignored or set aside.

Socrates defined a wise person as one who knows that they do not know. Such a person is open to learning. The reverse of that is a person who does not know that they do not know, and who therefore is not open to learning. Socrates defined this as ignorance. One would hope that principals and teachers are wise by this definition.

Do New Zealand principals and teachers really understand what is happening? Or is there a degree of hiding their heads in the sand and hope the danger goes away (the so-called ostrich approach)? Or do people truly not know? Does this explain the tacit acceptance of the national standards?

The present government’s agenda is obvious. If we don’t fight now, when do we fight? When league tables are published, rating schools by test results? Or do we wait for the inevitable statement that since principals and teachers can’t be trusted to provide accurate national standards data, it will be necessary to implement a national testing regime? Or do we wait a bit longer, for an attack on the NZEI and the development of principal and teacher performance pay based on test results?

Think this won’t happen? Are you prepared to take the chance?

'Necessity makes even the timid brave'  Sallust Roman Historian

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Educationalists,Leadership,Ministry NZCurric,national standards

Henry Pluckrose - creative educator

'Henry Pluckrose, who has just died at the age of 79, was one of the most inspiring teachers of his generation.He believed that children have intellectual, emotional and aesthetic capacities that few adults realise and too few schools exploit'. From Guardian Newspaper obituary.As a teacher 'his classroom resembled an artist's stdio, buzzing with activity and creative energy.Arts in the broadest sense formed the basis of his curriculum;not just art and craft, but also drama, music , poetry and dance. He gave particular emphasis to direct personal experience, taking children to museums, art galleries, churches, historic buildings, woods, fields and parks.'

Henry's obituary made me reflect on the educational influences in my life. Something we all need to do now and then.

I visited Henry's school, Prior Weston, in the late 60s and my impression of the school remain. I was shown around by a well informed 8 year old

My journey to Henry's school was a long one. It started when,as a nature study ( and later science and art) adviser, I had the opportunity to visit almost all classrooms in our province. These visits pointed out to me the importance of the ideas of a few wonderful creative teachers. Many have remained close friends of mine over forty years. The importance of an education based on personal experience and the arts was highlighted by my association with the art advisers who led, or contributed, the way to the development of a creative approach to education -and this in the days of a very formal standardized approach. One teachers became our 'guru' - Elwyn Richardson whom I was later to share ideas with but my first 'meeting' of his ideas was through his wonderful book 'In The Early World' still available to this day.

As a science adviser I became enthusiastic about the UK Junior Nuffield Science programme and arranged to teach in a UK school to find out more about it. It was an approach where the curriculum evolved from student's interests and questions in an organic way. While in England I became aware of the Plowden Report -a report which emphasized the need to see children as individuals and the need to build on, and strengthen, children's intrinsic interest in learning and lead them to learn for themselves. Ironically the publication of the report gave rise to doubtful practices as teachers 'jumped onto the bandwagon' and then criticism, as the UK economy faltered, and then to the National Curriculum which replaced the emphasis on the individual child on to a testable defined curriculum. Official approval, it seems, can be the kiss of death to good ideas.

In England I was lucky enough to get a position in very creative school with teachers who have inspired me to this day. I was uncertain though, at the time, by the total freedom schools and teachers had - unlike the accountability of the New Zealand system. Teachers I met at the time have since appreciated the need for greater curriculum definition and accountability measures. Once again official approval and implementation of a prescribed National curriculum has resulted in doubtful practices leading to such un-educational things as teaching to tests, an over concentration on literacy and numeracy unrelated to context, a narrowing of the curriculum, and demeaning 'League Tables'. Henry , in his later writings, thought it had all gone too far. While in England I visited schools in Oxfordshire, Liestershire that remain in my mind to this day as wonderful schools featuring disciplined child centred inquiry - true examples of the Plowden approach.

Back to Henry. All my experiences in the selected schools I visited (I now appreciate that they were a minority ) inspired me to return to our province to apply them. The teachers I involved were a small but enthusiastic group. We read everything we could about student centred learning and we saw ourselves as the Henry Pluckroses of the South Pacific!

Today in England another well researched report, the Cambridge Report, is viewing the current Standards agenda less favourably with all the associated targets, intrusive accountability measures, and performance tables believing that they have distorted education for questionable returns. The Cambridge Report is asking for something very similar to the New Zealand 2007 National Curriculum. All ironic as, with our new conservative government emphasis, we are heading down the failing Standards Agenda - leading to the possibility of our own League Tables.

Henry knew that the means to solve the problem of the long tail of underachievement by facing up to underlying poverty of the 'failing' children and the need to develop and share the creative capacity of schools and teachers.

He would be keen, as I am, to replace the 'state theory of learning' with an emphasis on sharing the ways we know how children learn; powerful pedagogy rather than recipe and prescription. He would want teachers to move away from mere 'delivery' and compliance and to place more attention to engaging students in realistic contexts. And I, for one, do not see that this cannot involve resources being developed to assist teachers - as long as teacher's creativity and discretion remains. We need a curriculum based on open questions that involve the in-depth exploration of relevant content.We need to do fewer things well to develop future oriented dispositions; and we need to make use of all the various means of expression available through the new media environment our children are at home with - even if their teachers aren't. Top down control, and seeing schools as a market place through League tables, needs to be replaced by personal empowerment, mutual accountability and proper respect for teacher experience.

UK educator Derek Guillard has written:

'When politicians realise that what is measurable is not all that is valuable, when teachers notice that children learn nothing by testing, when parents are sick of their young children suffering from exam induced stress, when the public begin to realise that the results of national tests can always be manipulated to achieve politicians' targets and when decent people decide to stand up against the shame and name culture of failure then someone, somewhere, is going to remember that "at the heart of the educational process lies the child"' (Plowden Report)

We need, as someone wrote, to do the 60s again but this time properly. This time it is the politicians who need to be sorted out - as Fullan has written 'politicians always get it wrong'.

And we need new Henry Pluckroses to inspire us. He may represent a voice from the past but it is one that urgently needs hearing again today.

Somehow I don't think Henry will be forgotten.

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Educationalists,inquiry learning,Integrated Learning,Leadership,national standards,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Wounded by School

It is disconcerting to appreciate that schooling , usually seen as a positive experience, is seen by many as damaging to young people. Many years ago a Senior Inspector, of the then Department of Education, asked a group of advisers how schooling had benefited them. He was surprised when many said that little that they currently now thought important had been gained from their schooling. I had the same thoughts. And we were all 'successful'. Made me think, at the time, lots of students must see school in a different light. Of course no one listened then to their voice then - and mostly they were blamed ( or other factors outside the school) for their own lack of success! Things haven't changed.

Success in life is all too often determined by success at school. And all efforts to improve schooling very rarely take the trouble to listen to the voices of teachers let alone students.

In her wonderful book 'Wounded by School' Kirsten Olsen speaks passionately about the experiences of young people whom the school system has failed.

While reformers , policymakers and politicians focus on achievement gaps and insist on accountability measures thousands of students mentally and emotionally disengage from learning. As well many gifted creative teachers leave teaching finding the current surveillance culture demeaning. And worse still many school principals are part of the problem busy complying with imposed measures to standardize teaching to ensure their school is seen in a positive light by the authorities.

No one listens to the 'voices' of the students. This is what Kirsten Olsen has done and her finding speak loudly and poetically about the need for transform schools so all students experience the joy of learning.

Kirsten writes that current schooling harms all students; the talented and gifted, the middle of the road students , those from different cultures and particularly those the school has deemed to be problem learners.

She writes passionately about the need to develop schools where all students feel valued and empowered, where all students experience the joy of learning, and she writes clearly about the need to challenge school structures and practices many teachers currently use use without appreciating the harm they do.

Current schooling wounds too many students. Anyone who has listened to the voices of students whom school has failed , or their parents will recognise the extent of this wounding. And sadly most of this damage is done in the name of helping students learn what the school has decided to be necessary to learn. Very little of which develops every students gifts and talents even the so called successful students are unaware of their hidden talents. For too many school is neither benign or or neutral.

Olsen is raising fundamental questions about the purpose of learning.

Olsen's findings conflict with teachers who became teachers to help their students. Equally the school system 'wounds' creative teachers who are forced to conform to current approaches. Most classroom teachers currently feel that they have been diverted from their true educative task by the current emphasis on quantifiable improvements. No one is paying attention to the real needs of students to ensure they all develop positive learning identities; identities centred around the development of their gifts and talents. Success is solely determined on school orientated narrow 'academic' achievement.

Some of the school wounds are:

Children who leave feeling they aren't smart; that they don't have what it takes to succeed - caused by effects of testing, grading, ability grouping and streaming
Students who believe their ideas and thoughts are not valued.
Students whose talents and gifts have not been recognised or valued.
Students who have lost the joy of learning for its own sake.
Students who are risk averse to save face
Students who have developed poor attitudes and feelings of alienation or anger
Students who can no longer see connections between various learning areas.

To make things worse conversation with successful learners very rarely mention learning as a pleasure; learning driven by intrinsic motivation. Too many are stripped of their courage and nerve the very attributes all students will need to thrive in the future.

The sum result of all these wounds are a drain on schools and develop future societal problems.

I for one feel the ideas of Kirsten Olsen provide the missing reality of school - the thoughts and concerns of students.

Until school leaders start to listen to their students then little will change.

And only creative teachers -who have always listened to their students and have aways valued their talents, are in position to develop schooling as a positive experience for all.

Until real change occurs schools will continue to wound their students.

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creative Schools,Educationalists,Leadership,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Learning: from 'novice' to 'expert' from John Edwards

This is one of the key slides from John Edward's keynote presentation to the 1400 educators who attended the recent Inspired Impact Conference held in Palmerston North.

For principals, teachers, and their students who are beginning a new year, this particular slide has an important message -a message for anyone helping another person to learn anything.

The white horizontal line at the bottom shows the growth of a learner from 'novice', to 'beginner', to 'competent', 'proficient' and finally 'expert'.

The vertical line at left shows the appropriate basis for the level of help ( rule governed behaviour).

When anyone undertakes new learning ( including first appointment as a principal or teacher)one starts in the 'novice' position. At this point individuals need to know clearly what is expected of them and how to go about it.

As learning progresses the need for rule governed behaviour decreases as shown by the rising orange line. When the 'expert' position is realised then people are able to use their experience ( having internalised rule governed behavior). Such 'experts' are able to 'read' the context and make decisions intuitively. If I remember they have reached a personal professional knowledge (PPK).

The vital transition is from 'competent' to 'proficient' leading to becoming an 'expert'.

At this point the helper needs to pull back from providing explicit 'rule governed behaviour' otherwise people get stuck at the competence level.

This idea of 'puling back' is in line with the concept of 'scaffolding' where, as learners become effective, the 'scaffolding' is removed. If this is not done the learner becomes forever controlled by the rule governed behaviour. As learners, including teachers, develop 'competence' they need to be thrown on their own resources and encouraged to use their creativity, imagination, and intuition. For example insisting that expert teachers need to provide detailed lesson plans actually decreases such teachers effectiveness. In classes over use of teacher assistance leads to all students work looking the same.

As one old principal once told me it is possible to help people to death - others call it 'learned helplessness'. This,I believe, occurs all too frequently in our current surveillance culture and over planned classrooms. We need to give all learners space to be creative.

The time required to progress from 'novice' to 'expert' will depend on the situation and what is to be learnt.

The progression from a novice to an expert performer in such a complex situation as teaching some say is a 'journey of a thousand days'. Others have written it requires 10000 hours. We need to think, depending on the entry ability of the individual, of a three year progression to become an 'expert' teacher.

In a class the 'journey' will take from term one to four for most students and, in my experience, well over six terms for some. This is one reason why I favour 'family' or mixed aged classes.

For a classroom teacher it means not to be frightened to provide students with all the help they need at the beginning of the year ( or any learning experience) but to keep in mind that the vision ought to be to develop 'confident independent life long learners' equipped with skills and attitudes ( 'key competencies') to become 'seekers, users and creators of their own knowledge'.

The artistry of the teacher is to judge when to assist and when to trust the learner to strike out on their own.

This liberation of the learner is the real challenge of a creative teacher. Unfortunately too many teachers( and learners) never progress beyond the competence level.

Thanks John for sharing the model. Good advice.

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creative teaching,Educationalists,Leadership,Personalized Learning,teaching and learning

Dweck's book a must for all teachers and leaders.

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It is hard to avoid reading about Carol Dweck's work on the power of mindsets in learning. Business leaders and sports coaches use her ideas and so ought schools. It will be the most influential book on motivation. A book that with ideas to change the lives of students and their teachers.

I am writing this blog before I have fully absorbed the message of the book as I want to loan it to a young teacher . As a result of reading the book I have decided to start something I have been meaning to do for years. I now have the right mindset. Watch this space.

My advice - buy the book pronto. My copy cost NZ $29. Not bad for a mind changing book. 'Mindset The New Psychology Of Success' Published by Ballantine Books NY ISBN 978-0-345-47232-8


Carol Dweck is a Stanford University Psychologist and in her book Mindset she shares the ideas about learning she has been working on for decades. In her book she shows the power of people's beliefs that strongly effect what we want and whether we succeed. Beliefs ( 'mindsets') we are unaware of but which have a profound effects on our lives. An understanding of these beliefs have the power to unleash your potential and that of your students.

Dweck has written this book in a popular style which makes it available to anyone who picks it up.

Schools worldwide have problems with students who fail to learn and this book provides some real answers.

Dweck outlines the two mindsets.One she calls 'fixed' where students believe that their talent is 'fixed' from birth ( natural talents) and the 'growth mindset' which sees learning as a result of effort and practice. Dweck does not suggest that those with a 'growth' mindset can be anything but they do believe that a person's potential is unknown and that to develop it requires 'passion , toil and training'.

The real problem is that many people feel that those who succeed in any field do so because of natural talent. This is the 'fixed mindset'. The problem is that such people do not believe in effort and even see the need for it as weakness. And those who believe they cant do something see no point in trying.

My bet is that such people make up our so called 'achievement tail'. Helping struggling children change their limiting mindsets may be more profitable than obsessively focusing on literacy and numeracy standards.

Dweck writes that the 'fixed' mindsets can be changed and replaced with the more positive 'growth' mindset. Her book is full of practical ways to do just this.

'When you enter a mindset', she writes, 'you enter a new world'.

Dweck believes all students are born with an intense drive to learn and worries about what puts an end to this exuberant learning and why some children develop a limiting 'fixed' mindset.

It begins, she says, when students begin to evaluate themselves and, as a result, some become afraid of challenges - and this is further developed by parent who want their children to succeed. Such children end up by wanting to make sure they succeed and don't like taking risks; don't like to expose their deficiencies. And they don't like asking for help.

'Growth' mindset children, in contrast, see success in learning as stretching themselves, about becoming smarter, and are happy to ask for help.

'Fixed' mindset people do well when things are within their grasp. If 'fixed' mindset people think they cant do anything they don't try, avoid situations, find endless excuses, blame others, and don't ask for help. They don't want to to risk their identity. Perfectionist girls seem specially at risk in this respect.

It makes a big difference which mindset develops.

And the positive 'growth' mindset can be taught.

Dweck lists accomplished people who were considered to have little future potential including Charles Darwin and Elvis Presley. People with a 'growth' mindset know it takes time and effort for potential to flower. She also describes people who many think had a natural talent ( 'fixed') but whose success was determined by a 'growth' mindset including - Mohammed Ali and Michael Jordan.

Dweck suggests teachers do a simple survey of their students to see what mindset they hold and then to introduce ideas to change those with the limiting 'fixed' mindsets. Do they believe their intelligence was a fixed trait or or something they could develop?

She also describes a number of research situations where she demonstrates such changes. Students with the 'growth' mindsets allows people to love what they are doing and motivates them to try harder, practice and ask for help. Mistakes, or failures, are seen as learning opportunities not the end of the world. A 'growth' mindsets allows abilities to be cultivated.

Talent, or drive, with the right mindset, can help any learner produce amazing things. It is all about continually improving on ones personal best.

Talented or failing 'fixed ' mindset students fail when placed in new learning situations - 'growth' students enjoy the challenge. Even prodigies with gifts feed the gift with constant endless curiosity, practice effort and challenge seeking. All children , Dweck writes, have interests that can blossom into abilities and this includes those currently seen as 'low ability' or failing. No one know about negative ability labels like Maori and Pacifica group or woman when it comes to maths and science.

All students need teachers who preach and practice the 'growth' mindset. Such teachers focus on the idea that all children can develop their skills. 'Growth' orientated teachers and parents praise effort rather than ability or talent. Praising talent teaches students the 'fixed' mindset. Ability grouping and praising ability can have negative effects on learning.

We need to give all students the gift of the 'growth' mindset and in the process put students in charge of their own learning.

Many students will enjoy the stories in the book about the difference between the natural and effort orientated sports people. Their stories will help students appreciate the positive growth mindset and how sports people learn to cope with setbacks. Teachers will enjoy the differences between the 'fixed' and growth orientated coaches.

School leaders will enjoy the differences between the heroic talented leaders ( 'fixed') and the 'growth' orientated leaders and how they handle failure and staff development.

The most important chapters focus on teachers and parents and where do mindsets come from?

These chapters focus on the messages we give children - and that every word and action sends a message. Students are extremely sensitive to such messages. What we praise, or give feedback about, is vital and it needs to be focused on effort and future strategies to consider.

Consider also how children develop their attitudes towards maths, or art, or sport. Do they see it as a 'fixed' gift or something they can all do to some degree with effort and practice as they ought to? Consider how you would set about to change students' attitude towards maths, or art, or anything thay have closed their mind to.

'Dont judge. Teach.It's a learning process', Dweck writes.

All the stories Dweck shares are about how parents and teachers want the best for their children in the right way - by fostering their interests, growth and learning.

If teachers make explicit the importance of a 'growth ' mindset and encourage it in their students all students will succeed. The teacher's stance is all important. 'Growth' mindset teacher tell the truth and set about to help their students close the gap. Dweck's research shows it can be done even with students who at first don't seem to care.

Most interesting for teachers are the mindset lectures she gives her graduate students and the brain, or mindset workshops she gives younger students where students learn about positive mindsets and how to use them.

In just eight one hour sessions children's' minds, she shows, can be changed.

And she makes the point that change is not easy. It is hard to give up a 'fixed' mindset. Concrete plans are required not just good intentions. 'Will power', Dweck writes, 'is not just a thing you have or don't have. Will power needs help.'

It is all about seeing things in new way.

Every day presents you with chance to grow and to help the people you care about grow. Learners who take on board a 'growth' mindset become more alive, courageous and open.

Buy the book to really get Dweck's powerful message. The ideas in the book will resonate with the many creative teachers who really value developing in their students a positive learning identity. Students who are able to 'seek, use and create their own knowledge'. Students who will become 'confident life long learners'.

Get it now and share her ideas.

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creative teaching,Educationalists,Leadership,Personalized Learning,teaching and learning

Thank you Phil Cullen

Phil Cullen is a highly respected Australian educator. Now retired he was once the Director General of Primary Education Queensland. He continues to show an interest in educational matters and expresses concern about approaches he feels go against teacher professionalism - in particular national testing moves.


His website is worth visit.



Extracts from Bruce Hammonds: TOWARDS A 21stC SCHOOL FOR ALL LEARNER {Teachers Today magazine,NZ, July 2010} ….with interruptions from an Australian commentator in italics.

Bruce Hammonds is a New Zealand education consultant, author of “Quality Teaching and Learning.”

The NZ government’s response to schools’ failure and poor teaching is to implement National Standards aka Naplan in Australia and NCLB in the US, strategies that look back to the past for inspiration. This ‘rear-vision thinking’ is too simple and diverts attention.

Time for a public conversation.

The biggest concern is that there seems to be “…no urgency for change…in schools…where disengaged students are reaching frightening proportions”. The standards agenda is “… rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to get a better view. The confusion around national standards actually makes ensuring all students achieve success difficult by distorting teacher energy, narrowing their teaching and making it difficult for teachers to focus on developing inquiry based learning.”

A Vision for New Zealand.

”We could do worse than follow the lead of Singapore with its ‘Thinking Schools, Thinking Nation’ motto. According to the Ministry of Education ‘thinking schools will be learning organisations in every sense, constantly challenging assumptions, and seeking better ways of doing things through participation, creativity and innovation…the spirit of learning should accompany our students even after they leave school… A Learning Nation envisions a national culture and social environment that promotes lifelong learning in our people.’ Singapore’s Education Minister explains that the big adjustment for teachers is the way we educate our young to develop a willingness to keep learning, and an ability to experiment, innovate, and take risks.” [If only Australia’s Minister for Education had visited Singapore in 2008, instead of New York!!]

"Our schools could achieve such a vision if all their energies were focussed on implementing the current New Zealand Curriculum rather the standards".

The same is true for Australia.

"Schools need to focus their collective energies on developing environments in which students and teachers’ creativity, in-depth understanding and thinking can flourish.”

Personalised learning.

“We need teachers with the in-depth understanding able to help children to learn on their own, or as our currently side-lined NZ Curriculum says, to be their ‘own seekers, users and creators."

"Daniel Pink, in his latest book Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, writes “the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing – is essential for high levels of creativity. And, quoting research by Deci and Ryan on the self-determination theory, he writes, “We have three psychological needs – competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When these are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive and happy… [and] if there is anything fundamental about our nature, it’s the capacity for interest. Some things facilitate it. Some things undermine it.” [ Australia’s passion for a blanket testing regime certainly ‘undermines’ it]

Pink’s three conditions for success.

"The three conditions required for the motivation of all learners are : Autonomy – the provision of authentic choice; Mastery – the desire to get better; and Purpose – which provides the context for the next two. … The most powerful energiser of all is purpose – as seen through the eyes of learners.”

Having a winning mind-set.

According to Carol Dweck [Stanford Uni.]: “People hold one of two views of their own intelligence. There are those who believe they are born talented [or dumb] and others believe in effort and practice. Those with a ‘fixed mindset’ give up and …those with a ‘growth mindset’ do not interpret mistakes as failing but merely as a means of improving".

"Perkins [Making Learning Whole] outlines seven research based principles of teaching that can transform education, one of which is that students need to practice the ‘hard bits’ so as to achieve mastery in whatever they are attempting.”

The School As The Home of the Mind.

“Art Costa’s powerful metaphor is well known to New Zealand schools and are similar to Guy Claxton’s ideas of ‘learning power’ and his reference to ‘the mind as a muscle’ which grows with exercise… ideas which underpin the key assumptions of the NZ curriculum…The intentions of Costa, Claxton and the Key Competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum are all about cultivating thinking dispositions. Costa calls them ‘habits of the mind’; and Claxton ‘learning power’. Guy Claxton of England visits NZ occasionally". He has visited Australia, but Joel Klein with his hard-data system, became Ms Gillard’s favourite.


Inquiry learning.

"Student thinking and purposeful teacher interaction cannot develop in a vacuum. Learning needs meaningful contexts…Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory encourages teachers to explore chosen content through a variety of ways – through the arts, the sciences, mathematics, language, music, and physical activity. Integrated learning is natural to the very young [who are not aware of subject divisions] and teenagers today explore the world through technological media crossing subject boundaries with casual disregard. Secondary schools remain locked into compartmentalised and fragmented learning with their genesis is a past industrial era while their students experience and interconnected evolutionary real world".

The Big Picture.

"Schooling ought to be seen as central to the development of New Zealand as a ‘cutting edge’ society. Enough is now known about teaching and learning that no student need fail. The current NZ Minister’s emphasis on compliance [Hello, Julia] through national standards is characteristic of yesterday’s assembly-line thinking rather than looking towards the unknown challenges of the future. The real literacies of tomorrow entails the ability for students to be their own navigators able to thrive in unpredictable situations supported and guided by the positive dispositions they have hopefully gained through their educational experience".


This is not a summary. It quotes extracts from a catching article that is printed in NZ journal, Teaching Today.

While schooling and Australia’s real future has remained a non-issue during present electioneering, it seems alive and well across the ditch

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Educationalists,Leadership,national standards,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Are you listening Mrs Tolley?

Thank you Iain Taylor for this guest blog. The below are Iain's notes for his thank you speech to the Minister after her presentation to the Auckland Principals Association. Iain is well known for his point of view and is currently principal of Manurewa Intermediate School.




Thank you Minister for having the courage and tenacity to address the APPA… as you can see from the numbers here today what you had to say was keenly awaited…and thank you also for ‘putting to rest’, we hope, our fears of national league tables.

You will already have heard around the country I am sure that it is not national standards we fear at all - we already use a wide range of assessments which are standardized. We already know where a child’s performance sits compared to their peers of similar age or stage and teachers already use a range of measures to inform judgments on where a child fits. What we fear is what will happen to that information.

I am sure I speak for all principals here today, but perhaps particularly for lower decile schools it is “value added” that is far more important and valid than reaching a set achievement standard.We all know kids arrive at school with a wide range of strengths and of course weaknesses, all the result of differing personalities, differing home backgrounds and experiences, and a host of immeasurable factors that make our kids who they are.

The revised NZ curriculum I believe is fantastic. We really hope testing in the broadest sense does not signal a narrowing of its intent whereby schools only focus on literacy and numeracy.

A broad education is most important.An education which recognises the huge array of children’s strengths and successes and builds on those.

We want our curriculum to actively combine challenging life type experiences with academic rigour and creative opportunity in the personal education of every student. But a curriculum of this ambitious nature cannot be confined to the classroom alone with a focus solely on literacy and numeracy and all that, sometimes, ‘irrelevant testing stuff’.

The distinction of core curricular and extracurricular components is invalid in my opinion. In order to develop students across a spectrum of intelligences we cannot merely focus on literacy and numeracy, we must still do all the other interesting things. We need to integrate experiences on the sports fields, in outdoor education, using technology, through service projects, in scientific experimentation and down at the stream and the beach and in the bush, in the art room, and in musical and dramatic performances.

It is has always been the strength of the NZ school system that an active, challenging curriculum provides students with the opportunity to develop all their intelligences and these then strengthen each other leading to well balanced, perceptive individuals who have the confidence to take risks, to think outside the box and to take action to improve the lives of themselves and others. We all expect our students to be fully and constructively involved in a range of activities on offer in our schools and testing could well put a stop to many of these relevant and motivating experiences that our kids are doing every day, in every Auckland primary school.

The message we want to constantly convey to every Auckland student is to grasp every opportunity available in their school. The worst thing that can happen is for students to leave our schools saying “I wish I had tried that” and we don’t want that to be the case! National testing and any national comparisons or league table scenario could create that sort of environment.

Once again Minister Tolley thank you for your time and interest.

No reira,
tena koutou,
tena koutou,
tena koutou katoa

Iain Taylor
President
Auckland Primary Principals Association

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Posted in: Big Picture,Educationalists,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,Rants and Raves

A lesson for Mrs Tolley?

Education is all about changing your mind when facing new evidence. Mrs Tolley ( NZ's shrill Minister of Education) by this definition fails relying on simplistic sound bites to answer all critics. She would , however, do well to read about Diane Ravitch's astonishing about face before it is too late and we all head down the American failed way to a standardised McDonald's approach to learning.


Diane Ravitch has long been a passionate advocate of injecting greater competition and accountability into the US education system but she realized, three years ago, that her ideas had evolved to a point that she had changed her mind. In her latest book 'The Death of the Great American School System; How Testing and Choice are undermining Education' she makes it clear she no longer supports market orientated reform strategies in education and the current national testing regime.

Diane Ravitch may not be well known in New Zealand but she gained a formidable influence in the Republican -dominated 1980s becoming assistant secretary of education in the 90s and since then has become a much sought after policy analyst and research scholar. In the nearly 20 books she had previously written she has weighed in against progressive education focusing on free market solutions to educational problems.

Her turnaround has become the buzz of school policy circles; lets hope it can be heard as far away as our beehive!

Ravitch, who once supported requirements for testing in maths and reading, now writes that this emphasis has squeezed out other vital subjects and has encouraged teachers to narrow their curriculum by teaching to the tests. This emphasis , she now believes , is undermining public education.


This is ironic because no one has done more in the past than Ms Ravitch to drive home the messages of accountability and testing. She now knows the testing agenda has not raised student achievement and now sees that testing has became not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself.

'Accountability', she writes, ' was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools'. 'Accountability has turned to test cramming and bean counting, often limited to reading and maths'. She told a convention of school superintendents that the accountability programmes were ' ill conceived, compared with those nations with the best performing schools. Nations like Finland and Japan..we are on the wrong track'.

Mrs Ravitch traces the start of the deterioration from the effort to introduce top down balanced literacy approaches to reading - it became a formula that was replicated in increasingly heavy handed ways. When such an approach was tied to accountability ( 'league tables') she began her turnaround and her criticism of such a narrower approach. A scenario that is being replicated in New Zealand - and one that has already failed in the UK.

She writes, 'School reform is like a freight train, and I am out on the tracks saying, you're going the wrong way!'

How can we ignore such a revelation in New Zealand?

Along the way she also skewers much of President Obama's agenda for improving the nations schools with the president's keenness to introduced national standards ( an improved version on No Child Left Behind testing) and the growing emphasis on using test school data to guide educational decision making. Standards based reform is a 'formula for incoherence and obfuscation'. It is she says, 'A high jacking of public education'. 'You can't have a rich and full education by teaching only basic skills'.

It is not often that one of the fields most influential thinkers publicly reverses themselves. But it does show that Ms Ravitch has the courage to do so .She now believes that a collaboration and trust model would work better than a market and competitiveness model. She now appreciates that the previous competitive model was a threat to the traditional public neighbourhood schools and democracy itself. We need reform that supports the professional wisdom of teachers. One of the worst ideas Mrs Ravitch now believes is to make our schools work like a business' That trend, she says, 'threatens to destroy public education' - 'Who will stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so'?

Mrs Tolley,and her Ministry apologists, cannot write off Mrs Ravitch's new position as 'mischievous' as she has sidelined those who have dared criticize her within New Zealand

Ravitch's epiphany needs to be taken seriously before it is too late in New Zealand.

Is Mrs Tolley up to it?I fear not but we have been warned


Post script: an extract from Diane Ravitch's blog 6th March 2010.

' My hope for the book is that it will provoke a counteroffensive against misguided policies.These misguided policies...have the support of the most powerful people in our society, including our best known pundits and editorialists'.

'I do not agree that our schools are overrun with terrible teachers.Part of the goal of my book is to discredit the current knee jerk reaction of editorials and public officials, who blame teachers for everything that goes wrong with the schools. Blaming the teachers lets everyone else off the hook: families, the media, the popular culture, policy makers, and the students themselves. The overwhelming majority of our nation's teachers are doing the best they can under difficult circumstances with not enough support from society, parents, the media.'

Wish there was the moral courage for some Ministry people I used to admire to speak with such honesty - but then they would lose their jobs.

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Educationalists,national standards,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

The suprising truth about what motivates us.

Daniel Pink, author of the New York Times best seller 'A Whole New Mind', latest book 'Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us' is a must read for educators who want to ensure all their students learn. This is a book that focuses on the importance of respectful relationships between the adult and the learner. Not only is it a powerful book it is written in an entertaining way.


Daniel Pink’s latest book, ‘A whole New Mind: Drive’, subtitled ‘the surprising truth about what motivates us’, is truly exciting. He writes that for too long school have relied on an extrinsic ‘carrot and stick approach’ (or ‘name and blame’).

The three things, he writes, that motivate us all are: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Real learning is achieved when the joy of learning is its own reward

We need to help our students ‘direct their own lives’, to ‘learn and create new things’ and to continually ‘better themselves’ and his challenge to us is apply this to education. Students need clear purposes, immediate feedback and challenges well matched to their abilities Creative teachers, like Elwyn Richardson, have long appreciated the power of personal purpose.

Pink writes to develop creativity teachers need to focus on introducing their students to interesting, challenging and absorbing tasks that, by deepening learning and by doing ones best, are reward in themselves. An obsession with goals ( implicit in our governments standards) and extrinsic rewards are problematic to Pink as they narrow focus, reduce risk taking, encourage dependency, replace intrinsic motivation, and crush creativity.

Quoting Deci and Ryan (experts on intrinsic motivation) Pink writes that, ‘If there is anything fundamental about our nature it’s the capacity for interest. Some things facilitate it. Some things undermine it.’ It is this inner drive to follow interests that must be protected all costs. As Jerome Bruner wisely wrote many years ago, ‘teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation.’

What creates failure is something as simple as what Pink calls lack of ‘grit’ – the ability to persist and not give up. Young children, he says, are born curious and self directed but all too often this is lost because formal schooling has ‘flipped their default setting’.

Students need to learn to make choices over what they do and how they do it .We are all born to be players not pawns and we all resent compliance.

Pink writes enthusiastically about the research of psychology professor Carol Dweck who believes that the ability to learn or fail is in our heads. What we think shapes what we learn, or fail to learn. If kids believe they are born ‘smart’ (or ‘dumb’) learning is difficult. Smart people don’t like new learning that involves risk and ‘dumb’ kids just don’t even try. In contrast, if students see learning (working towards mastery) as a result of their continual effort, they find learning easier and take setbacks in their stride.

Developing positive mindsets in our students would be preferable to wasting time and energy implementing doubtful standards.

Principals ought to keep these well researched ideas about teaching and learning in mind and focus on creating motivating environments for both teachers and students to achieve autonomy, personal mastery and a sense of purpose.

We must not let the distraction of ‘new’ standards ( or even that technocrats who have made us worry about literacy and numeracy details) cause us to forget what education for a creative age is all about.

Learning is about personal meaning making; developing Pink's autonomy, mastery and a sense of purpose for all students.

Schools, with their genesis in a mass produced industrial age, are not good at this.

Personalising learning is the real challenge. One that creative teachers have always tied to do against the 'scientific' best practice tide.

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative teaching,Educationalists,Personalized Learning,teaching and learning

Students need to play whole games

David Perkins ( Harvard Graduate School of Education) is aways worth reading and I have written earlier about his books. His ideas contribute to seeing education in a fresh way - and supports those creative teachers who have always believed in an holistic approach to learning.

It is unfortunate that most teachers, even primary teachers who think they are child centred, still work from traditional teacher determined approach; literacy and numeracy reign supreme. Implementing National Standards will further reinforce outdated approaches. To make it worse over the past decades schools have become obsessed with endless testing that changes little the learning experiences of the students.

Back to Perkins. Perkins writes about developing learning around the ideas of playing whole games based on the metaphor of playing baseball.Not that he was any good himself at baseball but when young he learnt to play the 'junior' game and during this playing was happy enough to get extra help at thing he wasn't so good at.

His message is for teachers to play 'whole games' with the students, so that they see the point of their learning and then to provide special help to those who need it to play as well as they can.

Most students lose interest in maths ( and other a read of learning) because they can make no connection with their own lives. It is as if they spend all their times practicing isolated skills without ever playing the game.

For most students the only time the play the 'whole game' in school is in athletics, art, music and drama where skills are introduce as required.

Introducing 'real learning', requiring appropriate skills in any area of learning, is the challenge for a 21stC teacher. The traditional approach where teachers teach 'bits and pieces' of learning, where students are expected to put them together later, might be sensible for the teachers but is confusing for too many students. As students move through the school system the 'bits and pieces' are taught as separate subjects and more students 'fall through the cracks' as a result.

Such teaching, Perkins states, is a failure of imagination and he calls the approach 'elementitis' or 'aboutitis'; learning 'elements' of things and learning 'about' things. Breaking down the topic or skill into elements and then to teach them separately. Learning for students becomes a game of solving puzzles without any big picture to guide them as a result students are unable to use the skills taught in real situations.

As for 'aboutitis' this where we teach information, say about science concepts, rather than teaching students how to look at the world around them with those concepts, which supposedly comes later.Once again information is meaningless with out realistic content and later never happens.

'Elementitis' and 'aboutitis' might make learning superficially easier ( for teachers) but young learners find it dull and don't develop the active understandings they need.

Perkin's sports metaphor offers an answer.

Most people , he says,have an early sports learning experience they enjoyed and can relate to and it aways involves learning the whole game at some level. For difficult areas of learning, or for young children, Perkins suggests teachers develop 'Junior' or 'backyard' games. Such games have the advantage of involving all students.

The sports metaphor can be transferred to learning experiences in the arts, music, drama, maths and the sciences. Many 'rich' experiences will involve using skills from a variety of learning areas. Even going fishing could involve a wide variety of rich learning across a range of learning areas!

Simple ideas but if implemented would develop the critical thinking and creativity of all our students and, in the process, develop their gifts and talents.

Isn't this what schooling ought to be about?

The trouble is our school weren't designed for such integrated and creative teaching and too many of our teachers are 'trapped' with faulty 'default mindsets'.

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Posted in: Creative Schools,Creative teaching Educationalists,Educationalists,project based learning,teaching and learning

Guy Claxton - building learning power.

Anyone who has attended one of Guy Claxton' presentations ( as I did yesterday) ought to buy his book 'What's the Point of School'. This book is powerful and timely examination of why our schools are built to fail, and how to redesign them to meet the needs of the modern world.' The challenge of redesigning schools is a big ask but the book gives lots of very practical advice about how to create enthusiastic learners and more effective teaching. In particular the 'learning power' ideas gives guidance to how New Zealand teachers can implement the 'key competencies' of the new curriculum.


I have just spent an enjoyable day listening to Guy Claxton talk about 'Building Learning Power'.All the more enjoyable because I have long been an avid reader of his many books and find myself often quoting him.

After such a day the question is what will those attending do when they get back to their schools? He asked us all to consider the ideas he was sharing and to place them into three baskets : 'We already do it', Maybe? Or we used to'; and 'ridiculous'. Good advice.

With the onset of National Standards the day was even more valuable.Although not mentioned at any great length the message was that by focusing on developing students 'learning power' ( our 'key competencies') teachers and their students will cope the standards without too much anxiety. As Claxton quoted, 'Are we preparing our students for a life of tests or the tests of life?'

We need , he said, 'To provide our students with the emotional and cognitive resources to become the 'confident, connected, life long learners'; the vision of the NZC. To achieve this is all about powerful pedagogy.

The important thing, he said ,was to infuse the Key competencies into every thing that happens at school and not see them as a 'bolt on'. Those who have attended presentations by Art Costa will recognise this 'infusing' approach. Costa's habits of mind are another version of the future orientated key competencies. Such capacities, or dispositions, need to become part of the culture of the school. It is about what Claxton sometimes calls 'learnacy' - the openness to continually learn. This 'learnacy must be at the forefront of all teaching in any subject area. Powerful thinking classrooms could have student generated 'What to do if you are stuck' charts.

At center is the belief that all students can develop their learning power? How do your students see their ability - one one fixed by birth and set for life ( a 'fixed bucket') or one that can be continually expanded ( a 'learning muscle'). The 'mindset' a student holds will effect all their future learning - or non learning. We need, he said, to ask our students about their mindset about learning. 'Bucket thinkers', high or low achievers, do not like taking risks for fear of failing. 'Learning muscle' students are 'have a go thinkers' - the right mindset for National Standard testing!

Both teachers and students need to know what habits of mind ( learning muscles) that they need to exercise, stretch and strengthen. These 'learning power' capacities need, as mentioned, to be part of all learning. They must be a permeate of the culture of the school. 'Messages' that learning power is important ought to be obvious to all. Everone at the school should speak 'learnish' - using common thinking phases .

When we introduce content to our students they need to experience it as a means to develop such habits, to be skeptical and questioning, to use their imagination, develop empathy ( what Kelvin Smythe call a 'feeling for') as well as in depth understanding. This is process and content.

I agreed with Guy Claxton when he said that much of what is seen in many classes makes little impact: thinking styles -we all have our own style; de Bono's hats - more displayed than used; and mind maps - poorly used. Not that, he said, they all can't be useful. And all that drinking of water! With much isolated thinking skill teaching their is little evidence of transfer into new situations. Teachers have to help their students develop this facility in new situations; use it or lose it. An excellent metaphor Claxton introduced was that of 'split screen'; teaching where the teacher interacts with their students ( say when experimenting with magnets) providing prompts to support students process/science thinking and as also developing in depth content thinking.

Claxton repeated, what we all know, that it is the quality of the individual teacher that counts - that, 'there is a fourfold difference between the most effective and least effective classrooms( Dylan Williams)'. And this is backed by John Hattie's 'meta research'. Teachers have to be the best learners in their classroom. Students pick up 'learning power' by example as much as anything. How teachers demonstrate how they struggle though a problem is an excellent lesson for their students!

The language we use is also important. We need to say 'you could do' rather than 'this is the way' makes a big difference. Even replacing the use of the word 'work' for 'learning' makes a big difference. Worth trying as school?

The room environment should also celebrate children's thinking, their prototypes, as well as their completed projects. I like the idea of students having 'thinking journals' ( 'process folios') where they draft out ideas to help them sort out their thinking. Such a book would be a vital means for teacher,students and parent dialogue.

Students and teachers, Claxton suggested, could discuss what makes a powerful learner -and a teacher. These could be displayed and shared with parents. The key competencies would provide ideas for such an activity. Students , Claxton said, after compiling such a list of dispositions, could then self-assess themselves to see how good a learner they are. Resiliency would be top of my list.

As for reporting on students progress towards being powerful thinkers ( with key competencies in place) the suggestion was to write narratives indicating strengths and areas to focus on for individual students - plus of course the results of National Standards testing!

'Learning power ( the key competencies) is the lifeblood of happy life.' Happiness' quoting Csikszentmihalyi, 'arises ...from engaging in a worthwhile challenge'. 'Where there is hope of success'.'Progress is made'.'Full absorption is possible'.'Feedback is clear'

Today wasn't about worthwhile challenges it was about giving students the power to 'seek, use and create their own learning'.

'Things won are done; the joy's soul lies in the doing',Claxton quotes Shakespeare. I agree with this but the feeling of achieving something great lasts forever as well.

I am sure all who attended left with their 'practical thoughts and possibilities' baskets full.

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Educationalists,Ministry NZCurric,teaching and learning

Reclaiming the joy of learning

Painting from the cover of Elwyn Richardson's book 'In The Early World' re-published by the NZCER.

The ideas of Elwyn have been a strong influence in my own thinking particularly in trying to place curiosity, creativity, environmental awareness and imagination at the centre of learning. Once someone said I was ,'locked into the 60s' ( when this book was published). At the time I reacted against this but now I no longer mind. Ever since the 'experts' have imposed national curriculums on schools creativity has been at risk. Recently someone said ( but not to me) that my recent book was old fashioned . No apologies from me. The best of education is as much back to the future as it is reaching forwards. Only the status quo is unacceptable - and the imposition of National standards. We need to do the 60's again but this time properly!

It seems proper when thinking of creativity our classrooms to reflect on the writings of 1950s pioneer creative teacher Elwyn Richardson. His ideas are to be found in his inspirational book ‘In the Early World’ first published by the NZCER in 1964 (reprinted 1994).

In the forward to Elwyn’s publication John Melser writes that the book, ‘gives a vivid picture of a school full of vitality in the pursuit of values deeply rooted in the children’s lives and capable of serving them lifelong’. ‘Oruaiti School’, Melser continues, ‘functioned as a community of artists and scientists who turned a frank and searching gaze on all that came within their gambit. Curiosity and emotional force led them to explore the natural world and the world of their feelings…..Studies and activities grew out of what preceded them. New techniques were discovered and skills practiced as each achievement set new standards.’

From such environmental inquiries Elwyn’s students learnt answers, Melser writes, to the question ‘who am I? They gained respect for their and others achievements, taking great pride in their craftsmanship or artistry.’ It was a form of disciplined personalized learning set in a ‘community of artists and scientists.’ Elwyn’s work was based on an awareness of the natural world involving careful scientific observation and a demand for personal and excellence of their ideas in whatever medium used.

Elwyn’s role in achieving personal and artistic excellence was a delicate and encouraging one, always humbly ready to learn from the children. Elwyn has written elsewhere that ‘the children were his teachers as much as he was theirs’. The results were certainly not the standardization of product that one sees today; the result of over teaching. Believing in high standards to Elwyn each new creative product mattered as much as the process.

Elwyn, along with all the other creative teachers I have had the privilege of working with, responded to all children’s efforts and achievements with sincere interest and pride. His book is a testament to his love of children’s ideas and imagery and, the respect he gave their work, respect that was returned in kind to Elwyn. Elwyn gave his students Melser writes, ‘an opportunity to reach their full heights as artists, as craftsmen, as scientists, and as students’ in a ‘community of mutual respect’.

Creative teaching is not new it has just been sidetracked.

It is this vision of creative teaching that has inspired me and one reinforced by the all the creative teachers I have seen over the years. Creative teaching ideas though have a long history leading back to such writers as John Dewey who wrote about similar ideas in early years of the 20th C in such books as ‘Education Through the Arts’ and ‘Education through Experience.’ In the United Kingdom, after the dark days of World War 2, innovative teachers made a break from the arid formalism of pre-war days, and developed child centred programmes leading to official approval expressed in the 1967 Plowden Report. In the US an ‘open education’ movement added to the impetus. Ironically official approval was a kiss of death as teachers scrambled to get on to the bandwagon. Creativity it seems works best when working for a change. In New Zealand, under the leadership of the then Director-General of Education Dr Beeby, similar ideas were being encouraged – ideas that were also soon under attack from conservatives but not before creative teaching was at least established. Richardson was working in these times. Creative ideas were spread throughout New Zealand by means of art advisers led by their charismatic National Director Gordon Tovey. The art advisers ran Related Arts courses, spreading the idea of integrated learning. I was lucky enough to become involved in the mid 60s and during this time assisted a local teacher to develop the first six week integrated unit in our province based around exploring the life in a local stream.

And today our reactionary Education Minister is dismantling the last of the Art advisers to focus on literacy and numeracy not realizing the problem is engaging learners not measuring them! 'Learnacy', to quote Guy Claxton, 'is more important than literacy'. And Sir Ken Robinson who says, 'creativity is as important as literacy or numeracy. What is really required is to return to the approach of Elwyn Richardson and to integrate it with the power of ICT.

The Taranaki approach to creativity.

In the 70.80s group of Taranaki teachers became well known for what was called ‘environmental’ or ‘quality’ education. Encompassing many of the above ideas the teachers involved believed strongly in making use of the immediate environment, and the need to value effort and perseverance so as to achieve quality work. A particular feature was the stimulating room environments featuring displays of student’s research, language, observational and creative art. Key phrases used by such teachers were the ‘need to do fewer things well’ and to ‘slow the pace of students work’ so as to allow time teachers to come ‘alongside the learner’ to provide assistance. Aspects of this quality learning are still to be seen in local schools today but now as whole school approach. One important idea creative teacher’s hold is that process of achieving success is itself a powerful transformational experience – providing such experiences is the challenge for teachers.

Real change depends on creative teachers.

From my experience, then and now, I believe that all real lasting educational change will only come from such creative classroom teachers particularly if it is a whole school ‘learning community’ approach. Unfortunately, since the late eighties, the climate has changed against such creativity as we entered recent decades of standardized curriculums and imposed compliance requirements. It is reassuring to still find creative teachers working away ‘under cover’ throughout New Zealand and it is to them that we must look for a creative revival.

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Creative teaching Educationalists,Creativity,Educationalists,Personalized Learning,teaching and learning

Quotes from Frank Smith and John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto is the author of 'A Different Kind Of Teacher'. Frank Smith's book is called 'an Insult To Intelligence'.

From Frank Smith:
'The time bomb in every classroom is that students learn exactly what they are taught.'

From John Gatto:

' School teachers aren't allowed to do what they think best for each child. Harnessed to a collective regime, they give up thinking seriously about students as one-of - a -kind individuals regardless of what they may wish were true.'

And Gatto of standardized testing says:

' What standardized testing actually measure is the tractability of the student, and this they do quite accurately.Is it of value to know who is docile and who is not? You tell me.'

Smith says:

' I discovered the brutally simple motivation behind the development and imposition of all systematic programmes and tests - a lack of trust that teachers can teach and children can't learn'.

Gatto writing about 'Kafka type' rituals of high schools that;

'Enforce sensory deprivation on classes of children held in featureless rooms...sort children into rigid categories by the use of fantastic measures such as age grading, or standardized test scores...train children to drop what they are occupied with and move as a body from room to room at the sound of a bell, buzzer horn or claxton...keep children under constant surveillance, depriving them of private time and space...Forbid children their own discoveries, pretending to possess some vital secret to which children must surrender their active learning time to acquire... ideas are broken into fragments called subjects, subjects into units, units into sequences, lessons into homework, and all these prefabricated pieces make a classroom teacher proof.'

Frank Smith continues:

'The myth is that learning can be guaranteed if instruction is delivered systematically one small piece at a time, with frequent tests to ensure that students and teachers stay on task'.

Back to Gatto:

'A substantial amount of testimony exists from highly regarded scientists that scientific discovery is negatively related to the procedures of school science classes.

And Smith:

'Children learn what makes sense to them; they learn through the sense of things they want to understand.'

They are 'informavores who eat up knowledge'.

'We underestimate our brains and our intelligence.Formal education has become such a complicated, self conscious, and over regulated activity that learning is widely regarded as something difficult the brain would rather not do...We are all capable of huge unsuspected learning accomplished without effort.'

John Gatto:

' Each of us has a design problem to solve: to create from the raw material around us the curriculum for a good life. It isn't easy, and it isn't the same for ant two people.'

'The priorities of our curriculum are daydreaming, natural and social sciences, self discipline, respect of self and others, and making mistakes.'

And after asking students Frank writes they want:

' Above all, more work which allowed themselves to think for themselves, to experiment, to engage in first hand observation.'

'Learning' Smith writes, 'is never divorced from feelings.'

The learners manifesto Smith writes is:

'The brain is always learning.
Learning does not require coercion.
Learning must be meaningful. Learning is individual.
Learning is collaborative.
The consequences of worthwhile learning is obvious.
Learning involves feeling.
Learning must be free of risk.'

'We need to shift the focus of learning from simply teaching them the process by which educated people pursue the right answers'

And a final thought from George Bernard Shaw:

'What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge,and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.'

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative teaching,Educationalists,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Experience and Education -John Dewey 1938

Such a lot of the ideas expressed today have their genesis in the ideas of John Dewey.That Dewey's ideas have yet to be fully realised says something for the power of conservatism in education. 'Experience in Education' is Dewey's most concise statement of his ideas written after criticism his theories received. In this book Dewey argues that neither 'traditional ' nor 'progressive ' ideas are adequate and he outlines a deeper point of view building on the best of both. The following are ideas he expresses in his book.

Maybe ,as the self centred greedy capitalism of the West is crumbling, the time is right to develop a new democratic vision for the 21st Century. John Dewey's book Experience and Education provides idea to think about for the century ahead of us? Dewey wrote extensively about the relationship between education and democracy (1916) - a link that those in power today choose to ignore but what better place to establish democratic ideals through example than the school.

Dewey wrote Experience and Education after criticism of his earlier ideas and was an opportunity to reformulate his philosophy.

Dewey was concerned that education had divided into two camps, the 'traditional' and the 'progressive'.One relying on the transmission of traditional subjects the other exalted learner's interests, Neither he thought were sufficient in themselves. Neither of therm applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. He was particularly concerned that progressive education must employ progressive organisation of subject matter and not be limited to children's fleeting interests.

John Dewey's ideas have all but been lost in our current system particularly as students reach higher levels and, because of this, we now have such worrying problem of dis-engagement of learners.

Dewey introduces his book with the idea that we like to think of either-or opposites recognising no intermediate possibilities.

Traditional education is one of imposition from above and outside and the attitude of pupils, on the whole, must be one of docility, receptivity, and obedience. Unfortunately much of the subject matter is beyond the reach of the experience of young children.

This imposition from above, even in so called child centred primary schools, is opposed to personal expression and individuality and learning through experience. Such an education is all about preparation for a distant future than the opportunities of present life.

It is at this point the either-or philosophy becomes pertinent.Dewey believed there needed to be an intimate relationship between experience and education and that students had to construct their own learning.

It does not follow however that the knowledge and skill of the mature person has no direct value nor the knowledge that is contained in traditional subjects. Early progressive schools made little use of organised subject matter nor any form of direction and guidance. This , Dewey believed, was too much of a reaction against the sterility of traditional teaching. Too much emphasis was placed on freedom for its own sake and neglected the role of the teacher.

Dewey believed in one permanent frame of reference; namely the organic connection between education and personal experience. This however did not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Some experience can distort or arrest growth and can also lead learners to land them into a groove or rut.

Traditional learning experiences render many students callous to ideas; many students lose their impetus to learn; and all too often leave students with no power to continue learning.

Everything Dewey believed depended on the quality of the experience; experiences that lead to desirable future experiences. The problem for teachers is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully in and creatively in subsequent experiences.The more definitely and sincerely it is held that education is a development within, by, and for experience, the more important it is that there should be clear conception of what experience is.

Traditional schools, to this day, can get along without any consistently developed philosophy of education but educational reformers and innovators alone have felt the need for a coherent philosophy of education. And, Dewey, writes, it a difficult task to work out the methods for a new education that for traditional schooling.

Dewey admits that the 'new' education is simpler in principle as it is in harmony with growth but the easy and the simple are not identical. To discover what is simple and to act upon the discovery is an exceedingly difficult task.

This is the challenge of creative teaching. It is easier to follow the old ways. Those who wish to be creative need to develop new organisations, says Dewey, beyond current fragmented timetabling.

Deciding on experiences that are worthwhile is vital. Every experience enacted modifies further experiences and results in positive attitudes and growth of understanding and skill. A worthwhile experience arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative and provides a desire to learn sufficiently intense for students to apply effort and to persevere through difficulties.

Teachers need to be able to evaluate each experiences and to assist the student to gain success without imposing control. Teachers need to be on the alert to see what attitudes and habits are being developed and this requires that the teacher has some ideas of what is going on in the mind of the learner. The teacher is an important part of any learning experience.

The primary responsibility of educators is to assist shaping the experience by providing environing conditions and to utilize the surroundings to build up experiences that interact with the personal desires of he students. This is in contrast to traditional teaching where learning is all too often disconnected from the learners experience. Dewey writes that enduring attitudes of likes and dislikes are the collateral results of teaching . Such, attitudes he writes, are what fundamentally counts in the future; the most important being the desire to continue learning. He writes, what avail is it to gain information if the learner loses his own soul - the ability to extract meaning from future experience.

Dewey asks us to look back on our school days and wonder what has become of all the knowledge that was taught to us.

This means , he says, that teachers must give attentive care to the conditions which give each experience a worthwhile meaning and the potential to provide a favourable effect upon the future.

An issue in traditional eduction is one of control. Dewey believes that the total environment the teacher and students create provides social control by being involved in a community in which all share responsibility. Students, Dewey writes, are controlled by the 'moving spirit of the group'. The teacher reduces to a minimum the occasions in which he or she has to exercise authority and when it is done it in behalf of the interests of the group.

The primary source of social control, resides in the very nature of the work done in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to feel responsibility for.This is the essence of Dewey's concept of democracy. Dewey appreciates that some students, due to prior experiences, will not respond positively and will be challenge for teachers but he also believes many poor attitudes arise from a failure by teachers to arrange the kind of work that will create involvement. To achieve this will require considerable planning of powerful learning experiences but also that this planning needs to be firm enough to give direction yet not restrict individuality. Developing a positive learning community so all students learn one of the most important lessons in life, that of mutual accommodation and adaptation, is the challenge for all teachers.

Dewey's book is an attempt to define the nature of freedom. The only freedom of value, Dewey writes, is the freedom of judgement exercised on behalf of something worthwhile. It is a mistake to treat freedom as an end in itself as, he says, it can be used in destructive ways. Dewey believes in freedom to frame purposes, to judge wisely and to consider consequence. Dewey writes about the importance of reflective thinking, to stop and think before acting; to postpone immediate impulsive actions. The ideal aim of education is self control ordered by intelligent judgement.

Intelligent judgement is all about purpose in new situations that we need to pay attention to. To do this requires the learner to observe, to appreciate the significance of what is seen, to be aware of possible consequences. In such unfamiliar situation we cannot be certain of consequences so we need to reflect on past experiences and translate possibilities into a plan of action. The crucial thing involves the postponement of immediate action until observation and judgement have intervened. This reflective process gives direction and the beginning of a plan of attack. Teachers have a vital role to help students in this process. Combining suggestions from others assists in this process and can result in co-operative ventures.

This is in essence the scientific inquiry process.

Question and possible answers arise from observation and ideas must be tested. To ensure the process is of value demands keeping track of ideas, activities and observed consequences. Keeping track is a matter of reflective review and summarizing to record salient features and to extract meanings. Such studies will lead into the the expanding world of subject matter and a continual reconstruction by each learner of what is being learnt.


As for subject matter, Dewey writes, anything that can be called a study including, arithmetic, history, geography, must at the outset fall within the scope of ordinary life experience. From this experience the next step for the teacher is to develop it into a richer and also more organised form. The environment, the world of experience, constantly grows larger , and so to speak, thicker. Such experiences need to lead to appropriate subject disciplines.Teachers need to select experiences that have the promise and potentiality of presenting new problems and the opening of new fields - connectedness and growth need to determine choices.

The objectives of learning for the future needs to be found in present experiences but can only be carried forward only in the degree that present experience is stretched, as it were , backwards.

A single course of study is not possible but the selection and organisation of subject matter is fundamental but, whatever is selected, must allow for improvisation and unforeseen occasions.

Dewey saw the learning process as a continuous spiral linking past experiences with the present. This experiential process of learning would ideally begin early and carried out throughout schooling, making use of the method of intelligence as exemplified by scientific thinking.

No experience is educative that does not tend to both knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas and to a better, a more orderly, arrangement of them. It goes without saying, Dewey writes, that the organised subject matter of the adult cannot provide the starting point nevertheless it represents the goal to which eduction should continually move.

Dewey was writing to answer both the critics of his ideas and those who misinterpreted them.

He appreciated that the road to the 'new' education was not an easy one but a strenuous and difficult one. The fundamental issue, he believed, was not of a new versus old eduction, nor progressive against traditional, but a question of what must be worthy of the name eduction.

Such an education needs to be based on a sound philosophy of experience.

Dewey's ideals about democracy and experiential learning as are relevant and distant as ever.

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