Schools are intense places. I remember someone saying that schools are full of talented people who stay in the career for the buzz, the “hit the ground running” stimulation, and the satisfaction of being in the hothouse exchange of teaching and learning. But there is also an increasing body of literature that says its getting more intense; that the satisfying buzz is rising to the whine of an overstretched engine; and the term used to describe this seems to be “intensification of teachers work” (the push to greater professionalism, greater ICT usages, greater social issues are some of the threads. Teaching is not alone in this, but its certainly intensifying an already heavy load).
Anyway, we all know that. The exchange “how are you going?” “Flat out” – is sort of a call sign for teachers, and a point of pride for some. Or the variant :"Flat out – here at an event till 9 o’clock last night, camp next week, organising this and that, reports due etc".
Anyway, it often seems there is little time for reflection – for nurturing creativity and new ideas, for properly integrating the latest reform, establishing and reflecting on core values, learning with colleagues.
Technology is a two edged sword in this regard. It opens up the realm of possibilities in interesting ways, but can also multiply the information flow and tasks.
At a recent Scenario Planning workshop (a group of 50 or so Australian teachers and principals meeting intermittently over 18 months to try to develop a range of educational scenarios for 2030) there was a panel discussion that touched on some of this. The organisers felt that teachers, in spite of our self perceived differences, tend to have relatively convergent views of the world - since most of us have survived relatively similar educational environments, and now work within them - and this tends to limit our range of potential scenarios. So they organised some speakers to help “expand our thinking”. The first of these, Richard Neville, certainly did that for me - i've borrowed the title of this post from him –and was I wishing I hadn’t left my mp3 recorder up in the room. (I won’t even try to summarise his material here – imagine a cross between Barry Jones, former science minister and boffin, lecturing on a range of profound science and technology topics and Rod Quantock running hot on a passionate theme).
The next day I made sure I had the device there, and recorded the panellists. But the first two didn’t come out well, so I’ll summarise what they said.
Andrew Metcalfe co-authored the book Teachers who Change Lives. His presentation of some case studies gave us all pause. You could feel the quiet take over the room, a different quality of listening. He sounded a note of something we easily displace from discussion of education, a relatively vulnerable, inner, personal, relational note.
He said we could describe teaching with industrial metaphors, like throwing a switch to turn on a thousand identical lights, or use organic metaphors, like scattering seeds, unsure of the what each one will become– and this is more true to the process. The real heart of teaching is a risky, crazy, unpredictable business, and it is the relation between teacher and student that does the work, where the teacher needs to be guided by what the individual draws forth from them. Its not primarily a matter of finite and deterministic programs, chains of cause and effect, or programmed outcomes, but one of patience and respect, often working in the dark, in a way that can only really be judged in the long term. The attempt to reduce it to solely technical skills (do this and measure that) is trying to pin down the inevitable mystery, to minimise the need for relation. He spoke of the capacity for wonder, the need for teachers to be amazed, to see and develop potential even when the student can’t see it in themselves. In a delimited sense of the word, he even describes love as the means of connection. Referring to qualities like wonder and love in professional dialog is unusual, and love is overloaded with various connotations, so I don’t think it would otherwise have emerged from a room of educators, given the frameworks we were using, no matter how long we brainstormed. But surely that’s the whole point of the need to be stretched out of convergent thinking.
The second speaker, Sophie Curzon Siggers, the student who won The Age “describe your ideal school” competition, took us, if anything further down that path. She acknowledged that there is often a digital divide between how Generation Y kids work and play and communicate at home (tech rich) and at school (learn from this book and copy of this board), and it would be nice if schools were more tech savvy, didn’t block hotmail and confiscate phones etc. Yet while she appreciated the educational applications of technology, such as the convenience of being able to quickly run fractal calculations in mathematics, she also struck a counter balance by insisting that virtual simulations can never displace the social qualities of learning. (She noted those same fractal properties in maths can also be obscured as well as revealed by technology, since you miss slow emergence of patterns seen when manually cycling through the calculations). Hence her main theme seemed to be, one the one hand, the need to promote change in the structures of education, to adapt to technology and to students' needs – particularly more self directed learning - but acknowledging, on the other hand, that education shouldn’t change too greatly, since the real essence of what teaching is about has not changed.. The inner essence of teaching, its soul if you like, is a realm that should not be radically changed by the external pressures of systems and technology. Schools should be about qualities of truth and beauty, places of learning that are deeply satisfying, in more than just aesthetics, fostering goodness in action, and slow patient work. This might seem concocted, and I probably haven’t done it justice, but I assure you that a student said all this to a room of teachers and principals, and the attentive mood only deepened. I don’t think we would have raised these qualities by ourselves either - maybe got as far as “social competency” or “habits of mind”. She cautioned against technology obstructing as well as enhancing, and noted the “overzealousness that is sometimes associated with technology” a well balanced view it seemed to me. (For the record her piece in The Age pulls a few a less punches about what changes might be needed…
“I feel a great deal of my formal education has been an irresponsible, useless imposition on my days, cooped up in classrooms where I was expected to learn a curriculum that was deemed relevant to every student in the state”
and suggests individual learning as the corrective change
“Children must be allowed to decide the content and method of their learning, and supporting them in doing so should be the school's role”
The third speaker, Di Fleming, former principal of a local private girls school, made strong claims for technology being able to catalyse change, to extend and promote student learning – citing how their technology focus had pushed them up the academic ranks, and asked why schools aren’t teaching nanotech scales in primary school, etc. (Her world view was labelled "Technology Solves Everything" in the handouts). She acknowledged the relational vibe of the previous two speakers, celebrated her own grade 3 teacher, but her brisk speech didn’t linger there for long. At the end I commented from the floor, that I was glad we’d heard them in that order, since it seemed to me that the first two provided the platform on which we could support a sttrong ICT theme; that a technology agenda in itself is a relatively external program, compared to the discussion of the inner dynamics we had just been hearing (hear her session here).
(I had an experience like this once before. A group of teachers attended a conference, and then tried to pin down directions we should focus on. I felt comfortable looking at digital portfolios as transition tools – nice clean challenge with a tech edge. But the group felt we needed to clarify educative purpose – what are we trying to do, overall, in our schools? Having just left the Catholic sector, where the question is answered, or obscured, by religious mission statements, and having been somewhat frustrated that the "ethos" and "mission" were treated with an untouchable veneration (honoured as treasures but not really interrogated for theri implications on general curriculum or classroom practice) I was surprised to find my first exercise in the state system was running with a values enquiry. (Here, by the way, is a taste of what that looked like).
And I so had a similar surprise here; which reminded me, at least, that relationships are an irreducible and unpredictable aspect of teaching, which keep it as much art as science, no matter what we do with timetables, assessment, school structures, etc.
The final speaker, Russell Blackford - hear him yourself here sees 2030 as fairly continuous with today; some changes, "the street will find its own (unexpected) uses for things", but nothing too weird by then. Not utopia, not dystopia. He did remind us that 4.8 billion people have yet to make a phone call – a number which seems staggeringly high, and must surely also frame our tech enthusiasm.
Its taken me longer to write this than to hear it; which takes us back to the intensification thesis at the start; who has time do this? One needs to take a dive off a bicycle straight after a conference like this (which itself ate half the weekend (recognise my call sign?)) to get the time to take stock of what was heard, in the enforced rest.
The thing gave a number connections to follow up, ICT and other that I can’t unpack here – visits to schools, ideas for virtual environments, but the craft and relational heart of teaching also stood out.
.. comments welcome (below) ..
thanks for the interesting update
Comment by jenny — August 26, 2006 @ 5:38 am
A very thought provoking piece Rob. The social relationships in learning is becoming more evident in many speakers presentations these days. I believe it is an area that will need more focus and then balance will also be needed.
When we remember which teacher had the most influence on us at school it will usually be the one that we had the best relationship with.
Lucky to have time to indulge in such thinking Rob.
Unlucky to try and skin yourself by falling off your bike. Their must be easier ways to get time.
Comment by Jenny Ashby — September 1, 2006 @ 11:59 pm
I suppose the teachers we connected with most where the ones who taught in our prefered learning style. We seem to create a symbiotic realationship with those students or teachers whom we can can have a realationship with. Its a cycle!
Comment by Peter — September 11, 2006 @ 7:18 pm