Albert and the discovery thieves
By Kelvin Smythe
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Albert and the discovery thieves
Integrated unit
Travel and communications
Achievement objectives (AO):
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Competencies: Using language, symbols, and texts is about working with and making meaning of the codes in which knowledge is expressed. Languages and symbols are systems for representing and communicating information, experiences, and ideas. People use languages and symbols to produce texts of all kinds: written, oral/aural, and visual; informative and imaginative; informal and formal; mathematical, scientific, and technological.
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Science: Carry out science investigations using a variety of approaches: classifying and identifying, pattern seeking, exploring, investigating models, or developing systems.
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English: Integrate sources of information, processes, and strategies purposefully and confidently to identify, form, and express increasingly sophisticated ideas.
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Mathematics: Conduct investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle: gathering, sorting, and displaying multivariate category and whole-number data and simple time-series data to answer questions; identifying patterns and trends in context, within and between data sets; communicating findings, using data displays.
Specific learning objectives (SLO) for various parts of the integrated unit
[Comment: Such jargon-laden achievement objectives are a symptom of what happens when classrooms are taken over by ‘experts’. Teachers should demand such education statements be written in accessible prose.
The range and nature of these kinds of objective listings by schools are an attempt to meet the bureaucratic demands for coverage. Science and technology are close to being non-existent in schools, but integrated units and the listing of such achievement objectives camouflage this. The activities and the SLO, WALT and Success Criteria in such integrated units have only a tenuous connection with the overall aims, meaning cohesiveness and purpose is seriously diminished.]
Lesson 1: WALT – List a number of kinds of travel and communications.
Success Criteria: Children suggest a number of kinds of travel and communications
Ask the children to write the WALT in their study books.
What kinds of travel and communications can you think of?
List on the whiteboard.
Albert: Time travel.
T: (As the children laugh) We just want sensible ideas.
T: Have you seen time travel?
Albert: Just in my imagination.
Now copy the list into your study book.
Apply Success Criteria.
Apply the WALT
[Large, sprawling, distant (from real people), abstract integrated topics are really designed for cutting and pasting. They allow principals and teachers to tick off a number of boxes, but their affective and intellectual challenge, for all their grand titles, is usually extremely low. The teaching units tend to lack individuality. A common practice is for them to be downloaded and given only minor attention and revision before use.
Teachers in a school are often under compulsion to participate in these thematic approaches, reducing opportunities for variety and initiative. Such topics should get children close to the lives of real people, made real by children gaining lots of information about the lives of the people concerned. While such remote topics can be interesting, even enthusiastically participated in, they are rarely compelling or have the potential to be transformational.]
Lesson 2: WALT – Find out why the various kinds of travel and communications are important.
Success Criteria: Children recall why the various kinds of travel and communication are important.
Ask the children to write the WALT in their study books.
Why are the various kinds of travel and communications important?
List on the whiteboard.
Albert: To be able to travel back in time.
T: Try and be sensible Albert.
Now copy the list into your study book.
Apply Success Criteria.
Apply the WALT
[Pressures on teachers are leading them to be discovery thieves not providers. WALT and Success Criteria tell the children in advance what they are to learn, followed by them undertaking activities, then being asked what they learned, leading them to mainly repeat what they had been told in the WALT and Success Criteria. Not only do the children have stolen the possibility of discovering the ideas but also have closed off tangential, imaginative, and creative ideas that can occur to them.
WALT and the SLO have the characteristics of needing to be (immediately) observable and measurable. This means that anything that isn’t observable and measurable is signalled as not being valued by the school or system.
The most important outcomes in education are rarely immediately or incontestably observable, or able to be measured, so this is having a destructive effect on the quality and depth of education. A philosophy of education based on learning that is measurable and immediately observable affects creativity; originality of voice or outlook; imagination; depth of interest; a feeling for people, situations, and the tenets of a curriculum area; and open-mindedness and tolerance.
WALT and SLO which were introduced to New Zealand education as a means to making education scientific and, not coincidentally, to centralise control of classrooms, have led to a narrowing of teaching and learning.
Even the aims central to curriculum areas, because they are not immediately observable or able to be measured, are being pushed aside, for instance, the main aim in expressive writing (indeed, in any of the arts) is sincerity of expression, but in looking at thousands of WALT I have never seen it in a WALT. (Many of these less tangible effects, though, like picking up on sincerity of expression, are observable but it takes a feeling for writing by the teacher to have the ability to do this.)
WALT and SLO with their basis in the immediately observable, lead not only to depriving children of discovery opportunities but also to clumsy, intrusive teaching, that further interferes with the discovery process.
We are talking here of teaching as an art. Quantitative academics claim their education knowledge is evidence-based and scientific, and condemn teaching as an art, labelling it as craft, akin to clay work or, as John Langley of MultiServe recently wrote, a belief by teachers in magic. But most quantitative research, as I have described elsewhere, is distorted, narrow, impractical, dishonest, self-serving rubbish.
I believe in the efficacy of teaching as an art, an art not unmindful of academic ideas, but confident in its own expression, based on successful and proven experience.
Two academic metaphors are being imposed on classroom teaching: the metaphor of scaffolding and that of exact next-step teaching. Both metaphors imply that
academic theory can guide teachers to know exactly what to do next, and all this in class of pulsating cognitive and affective structures. Apparently academics know what is exactly going on in children’s minds in a way they would never claim to be able to do in other situations. It is, of course, an absurdity, but it is a absurdity politicians and education bureaucrats find convenient because it gives them the chance to say ‘they know’, that they have special knowledge superior to that of teachers and, in the interests of children, it is their duty to impose such knowledge on teachers. Quantitative academics in finding a market for their pseudo-science distortions are ruling the roost.
This has been a long lead into the following points:
First, the metaphors of scaffolding and exact next steps are inappropriate, children’s cognitive and affective structures are infinitely complex; children’s leaning does not occur as if a structure on which materials have to be added, or in a progression of exact steps – it happens in magnificent complexity. In response to this complexity, teaching is often best practised in a straightforward, open-ended way organised by broadly-set aims. Academics in their conceit and office-based dreams, recommend teaching based on micro-objectives, a case of matching complexity with complexity. Such an approach, if a rich and imaginative education is the goal, is bound to fail.
Teaching as an art is based on the idea that to try to bring order to the turbulence of children’s learning by resorting to complexity, WALT, and SLO is to limit the imaginative possibilities of children’s learning.
The best ideas in children’s minds are often immanent, and best left in that state, until they come together for a child. Ideas are not necessarily derived from words, developed by them or adequately expressed by them.
The so-called ‘next step’ is an arrogance, it is rather ‘a’ next step decided by the teacher – the implication that it is the step which is the best or only logical one, as I said, is an arrogance.
Even if a teacher can see a way to stimulate a child, provide a revelation, or unlock a learning difficulty – the teacher should always be ready to take stock to determine whether a discovery opportunity is being unnecessarily taken away from the child. Giving time for the child to discover a way forward is often the more powerful way to proceed (both cognitively and affectively). Making wise decisions about intervention in learning lies at the heart of the art of teaching.
Elwyn Richardson in ‘In the Early World’ (if you are a new Zealand teacher and haven’t read this book, shame on you – there is an introduction to the book in a series of postings on networkonnet – click on Schools on the homepage) would agonise over an intervention as simple as saying to a child. ‘Was the flax bush only green?’]
Lesson 3: WALT – Decide what form of travel or communication we will use for our enquiry learning and problem solving.
Success Criteria: Children decide the form of communication and travel they will use for their enquiry learning and problem solving.
Ask the children to write the WALT into their study books.
Discuss with a neighbour what kind of travel or communication you would like to enquire into and problem solve.
On the whiteboard, list the children’s names beside their enquiry and problem-solving topic.
No Albert. Time travel is not a sensible idea. Look at the WALT. It says travel or communication. Time travel is a fanciful idea.
A passenger on a train and someone standing on a platform is not an important idea about travel and communication.
I’ll put you down for trains.
Apply Success Criteria.
Apply the WALT
[This is variously described as enquiry learning, problem solving, or learning how to learn – I describe it as old-style projects done electronically; cutting and pasting; learning how to copy; non-problem solving – because there is no explicit or implicit problem to be solved.
A problem that qualifies as a genuine problem for children has certain characteristics, for instance: it is a genuine problem – not one the children already know the answer to; it is a genuine problem – one that has considerable intellectual challenge; it is a genuine problem – one whose nature allows some genuine thinking at the children’s level of thinking; it is a genuine problem – not one that can be downloaded at the click of a couple of keys; it is a genuine problem – one that has considerable affective challenge to it – in other words, stimulates children’s curiosity; it is a genuine problem – in that its richness readily lends itself to other lines of investigation.
Problems can be explicit or implicit. In children working on explicit problems, the problem is usually best developed after the children have participated in a number of preliminary activities. The problems for enquiry should be provided with time to emerge and be refined. In many respects, I prefer the subtlety, honesty, and power of implicit problem solving. Implicit problems for enquiry usually relate to the main aims of curriculum areas and are undertaken by the children focusing on a topic by undertaking a number of information-gaining activities – but the activities, if undertaken in an open way, soon demonstrate that they are far more than information gaining. Children develop an affective relationship with the topic, an attitude of mind, a deep curiosity – in these ways children reveal the nature of their grasp of the implicit problem and their degree of movement toward resolving it.
Examples of such implicit problems are in mathematics, revelling in mathematics being about ideas; or in social studies, expressions of the idea of the underlying similarity of all human behaviour as a means to coming to terms with, and appreciating, the differences; or in science, the level of curiosity and open-mindedness children display.
The belief that because a child has come up with a problem, or children have come up with a problem – especially early on – and that that is an exercise in democracy, or the basis for being something that will truly interest them, or is worthy of enquiry, is seriously questioned.]
Lesson 4: WALT – Use our imaginations doing cut paper art work.
Success Criteria: Children produce attractive art work as set out in the instructions.
Ask the children to write the WALT into their study books.
Give the children the pieces of coloured paper cut into small squares.
These are your instructions:
Do a drawing of your travel or communication idea in dark crayon.
Fill the page with your drawing.
Have lighter colours at the top of your art work.
Push the paper down so it is neat and tidy.
The following colours go well together.
Only use paper for your art work.
No Albert, you can’t use ripped paper instead.
Yes, you must draw an outline.
You can use other colour combinations if you like, but I think you’ll find the ones suggested work best.
Apply Success Criteria
Albert, why is lightning heading for a train?
Apply the WALT
[This is anti-art and a further example of teachers as discovery thieves. In the arts, as in all curriculum areas, teaching points should be made subtly, individually, and sparingly. It is the holistic way. The arts should be about experimentation, trial-and-error, discovery, and originality of style, not about standardisation, uniformity, and pretty art for classroom display.]
Lesson 5: WALT – Do enquiry learning and problem solving.
Success Criteria: Children undertake enquiry learning and problem solving as set out in the instructions.
Instructions for your enquiry learning and problem solving:
Do enquiry learning into how your travel or communication works.
Do problem solving into the importance of your travel or communication.
Provide a graph about something to do with your travel or communication.
Set out clearly and attractively your enquiry and problem solving findings.
Any questions?
No Albert, we don’t want to hear about your ideas about energy. The study is about travel and communications not energy.
Remember class, I don’t want to see downloaded pictures, draw them, but you can download maps.
For two weeks the children do their enquiry learning and problem solving taking turns at the computers. When children are not at the computers, they are at their desks completing drawings.
The children take turns at presenting and displaying their enquiry learning and problem solving.
Albert, what do we have here?
All done in drawings?
Two rockets passing.
Alice in Wonderland looking into her Looking Glass?
You shaking hands with yourself?
What’s all this about. Where’s the text on trains you did?
It’s in my mind.
Apply Success Criteria
Apply WALT
[The obvious thing to say is that New Zealand education for the 21st century is not sympathetic to the Alberts of this world, but that would be to miss the point: in the provision of intellectual and imaginative challenge, 21st century education in New Zealand, is not sympathetic to children irrespective of their abilities. All children from their first day at school, no matter the decile of the school, or their learning characteristics, should have opportunities for intellectually challenging and affectively engaging learning. For teachers not to be able to provide that, or not to think of providing that, or allowing themselves to be encouraged or distracted away from providing that, is a failure of imagination and pedagogical thinking.
Intellectual challenge and affective engagement is not an optional extra to be delayed pending the 3Rs being attained. Teaching the 3Rs is not the base of the learning pyramid which, once established, gives licence for children for children to move toward the apex. For many children the apex or any semblance is never remotely approached, and even when attempted is undertaken only halfheartedly. Learning the 3Rs and intellectual challenge and affective engagement are not mutually exclusive – just the reverse, they are reinforcing and, for anything like a satisfactory education, imperative. The emphasis on the 3Rs is a return to the past, condemning many children to a second-class education and, given the demands of contemporary life, akin to certain groups of children being allocated to gardening skills. It is a policy doomed to failure in the guise of one deemed for their salvation.]
Lesson 6: WALT – To read and understand an explaining school journal story.
Success criteria: Know about computers at the school; recognise the changes in computer use since then; recognise the similarities; learn how to model an explaining essay.
Give copies of ‘We’re on the Internet’, School Journal, Pt 4, No.1, 1997 to the children sitting on the carpet.
Ask them to read the story, and then ask them a series of questions about it.
Albert – this is not the time to be going into what you consider two sides of the same coin.
Use the journal story to model an explaining essay.
Apply success criteria.
Apply the WALT
[An outcome of the move to more phonics (though a far less decisive move than in most other countries), is the undermining of the individualised timing to begin formal reading, and the undermining of the ‘I can read’ approach. The pressure to begin formal reading and the associated focus on testing – leaves a lifelong deleterious footprint on many children’s interest in reading and ability to read. One of the most difficult ideas to get across to those intent on pressuring children for early formal reading is the need for children to have sufficient experience and vocabulary to make reading meaningful. Teachers of children in the upper levels of primary schools are now required to spend considerable course time working out how to get children to engage with the meaning of text. Such courses, though, are mainly flashed up comprehension exercises, guaranteed to achieve one thing only, to
make reading even less interesting to children.]
Lesson 8: WALT – Write an essay explaining why your kind of travel or communication is important.
Success Criteria: Children produced an explaining essay as set out in the instructions.
Instructions for your explaining essay:
Start off with the points your explaining essay is going to make.
Explain those points
Do a summing up at the end.
Write good sentences with interesting words.
Remember full stops, capital letters, and spelling.
Apply Success Criteria
Apply the WALT
[Contemporary education in New Zealand is set up for measurement, also for formulaic structure, which is why expository and argument writing dominates in classrooms today. Expository and argument writing is written to a formula, while expressive writing is largely free form; expository and argument writing can be judged more on the technicalities of writing, while expressive writing is more about sincerity; expository and argument writing is liked by adults because it is seen as preparing children for the real world, while expressive writing is about giving children voice; expository and argument writing can be started with the minimum of context, while expressive writing, to succeed, requires time to establish the focus that leads to sincerity of expression – for these reasons nearly all writing in classrooms these days is expository and argument writing.]
Bruce Hammonds in a recent posting – following his visit to England – wrote: (‘The way David Hockney sees it’, 23 October, 2011):
‘Before the word must come the experience.’
‘Too many children have restricted vocabularies which limit their literacy growth – perhaps digging deeply into experiences might provide the very thing such children are lacking.’
Well said, Bruce.
For my conclusion to ‘Albert and the discovery thieves’ I say:
Evidence-based education is an inverted pyramid: an apex of dodgy, self-serving ‘evidence’ supporting an ever-widening spread of classroom and system ill-effect.
I noticed the language, such as it was, but where was the experience?
(About nearly all learning contexts, no matter the curriculum area.) Was that it?
I saw the reach, but where was the depth?
Children are best prepared for the future by having their needs best met in the present.
Futurism in education is a route for escapism
If teaching is substantially an art, then teachers are substantially the experts.
Learning being complex is an argument for teaching being straightforward
The best response to the complexity of learning is the holistic: that is open-ended activities organised by broadly-based aims.
If quantitatives are the answer, would someone tell me what the question was?
If it’s jargon laden, it’s mutton dressed up as lamb.
Enquiry learning should be an aim not a formula.
Integrating pallidity serves only to intensify the effect.
The art of questioning is not primarily about the question.
Bloom’s taxonomy is a punctured lifebuoy.
If it is a good question it would make an even better activity.
The system is designed to make teachers discovery thieves.
Democracy in education begins with allowing some for teachers.
The most important freedom in education is that of teachers to colonise the curriculum.
The mind is not a pair of feet.
Neither is the mind a construction resulting from a temporary platform around a framework of someone else’s design.
Learning how to learn has become a euphemism for learning how to cut and paste.
Cutting and pasting is a poor substitute for thinking.
An often expressed sentiment is we no longer need to memorise knowledge as we have computers: we also have, it seems, a growing number of bloody idiots.
Does this mean we should go out of our way forget knowledge as a means to a brighter future?
Children respond to the world on the basis of what they know, not what the computer has access to.
The expression ‘memorise knowledge’ is a careless, self-serving slander on the past.
The mind is not a palimpsest, it is an organ – the seat of sensation, motion, speech, thought, memory, and imagination.
If having content knowledge is of no consequence, for instance physics’ content knowledge, is it just a coincidence that Einstein’s physicist theories emanated from a physicist?
Creativity and imagination might not be an automatic outcome of knowledge, but they are an automatic concomitant.
Because computers are going to dominate children’s future is an argument for the primacy of humanising education not computerising it.
If computers are to be a tool for the curriculum, first know your curriculum.
National standards are to education strategy what the Siegfried Line was to military.
In education there is nothing more ephemeral than certainty and nothing more dangerous.
In curriculum-driven leadership, the challenge should come through an inspired view of the curriculum, not an unbalanced view of administration.
Management by objectives came out of an Austrian 1920’s response to totalitarianism – it is now a dogma u-turning back to it.
Management by measurable objectives makes education understandable to those who don’t understand the curriculum and a nightmare for those who do.
The dominance of quantitative academics is a symptom of capitalism in excess.
Because the central issues in contemporary education derive from without, they are intractable to reasoning from within.
The overarching aim of teaching is to increase the likelihood of the transformational.
We need to muster the unity and strength to realise our dreams in education or our only remaining ones will be life outside it.
I believe in the efficacy of teaching as an art, an art not unmindful of academic ideas, but confident in its own expression, based on successful and proven experience.
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