flipped teaching sharing – recap and thoughts

had the chance to attend a 学思达翻转教学讲座 held at pei chun 培群小学 yesterday. 总算有机会一睹叶丙成老师的个人风采。
as i have heard how impressed some teachers were in the sessions they’ve attended last year, i thought it’ll be good for me to do a recap of what i heard. cos as effective presenter/teacher, we do update/morph our sharing content from time to time.

for a start, the title of the talk may be misleading for audience who has prior knowledge of flipped learning, or flipped classroom. as an audience, the workshop appears to be 学思达教学讲座。the “翻转” part appears to adopt a different set of ideals from this.

as i have not had the chance to step into a taiwan classroom, the beginning part of the talk lent me a quick overview of taiwan’s classrooms. i was quite surprised to hear that an extremely high % of classroom adopts highly teacher-centered approach from a pedagogical perspective. if so, the 学思达 approach would definitely be refreshing from a student’s perspective, as they now had chance to engage in active participation, instead of listening and falling asleep.

two basic arguments for engaging students’ in activities and reducing listening were presented: 1. the Learning Pyramid, 2. speed of reading outstrips speed of narration (thus listening) by a few folds. however, it is interesting to note that the National Training Laboratories, commonly credited as the source, refuted claim that the diagram was from them (ref 1, ref 2). and of course, we could always find arguments against the learning pyramid too.

the underlying philosophy of 学思达 approach remains as the teacher is the expert, the know-all. as a result, lesson preparation for 学思达 approach is highly taxing on the teacher (but not impossible even for a 1-man team as 叶丙成老师 has proven). this may be partly due to the fact that 学思达 approach believes that the teacher has to source as much relevant/useful information for students as possible so that their classroom activities would be meaningful.

学思达 approach engages students’ in active participation through discussions to find answers, and later to engage in competitive presentations. marks, assigned to groups, are used as the primary motivator. #iwonder how would things turn out if marks, as an emphasis due to the competitive element, are later removed. perhaps it could still work cos in 3-6 mths’ time, students should be attracted by the learning from the highly engaging lessons.

there is a brief recap of the history of flipped classrooms, how Khan Academy comes about, and how Taiwan, following Khan’s footsteps, have adopted the ideas 2 years ago. but it is not obvious to me how this part is linked, or relevant to 学思达 approach. for the after-class component in “翻转”, 学思达 does not advocate the use of videos; it probably falls back to the textbooks(?), and the highly detailed and customised 讲义 created by the teacher.

学思达 is good if your classroom/teaching meets the following criteria:
1. you used mainly teacher-centered (i speak, u listen; i ask, u answer; otherwise quiet) pedagogy.
2. your students are mainly motivated by marks (not learning, yet.)
3. you would like to explore more grouping strategies (beyond think-pair-share, convenient grouping)

学思达 probably wont be too attractive to you if:
1. you are comfortable and effective in facilitating group work/cooperative learning/collaborative learning
2. you want to shift away from spoon-feeding your students (not necessarily just in class)
3. you want students to be(come) the creator/curator of knowledge

will need to find time to look at the books, and return to update more ideas later (:
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reimagining teaching …

while browsing through the NMC Horizon report K-12 2015 report released just two days ago, another report “Reimagining Teaching in a Blended Classroom” prepared by TNTP mentioned on pg.20 grabbed my attention instead.

as my current work led me into exploring blended learning for teachers’ PD, i put on a teachers’ PD lens too while reading. i think “REIMAGINING” is appropriately chosen. the very conception of learning, teaching, and even classroom needs to be re-visited.

while some teachers are jumping (bravely? blindly?) onto the flipped classroom bandwagon, i believe this report may draw parallel lessons on why “flipping” works for some teachers, and not all, yet. for instance, the traditional roles of a teacher can be classified into 3 types: guide, integrator, researcher & developer (p.2-3). such a proposal of roles brings in the opportunity for teachers to collaborate, specialise, and/or develop professionally. as the report pointed out, for blended learning to work (or flipped learning if one prefers), the whole staffing needs is going to be different. in our system, i imagine the need to (re)develop teachers in various competencies to take on 1, 2, or all 3 roles concurrently. in order for blended/flipped learning to be sustainable, a whole-department (or even a whole school) approach is the way to go. as i draw on my short 1-year experience in introducing blended PD, i can imagine it could be overwhelming for many teachers, if one were to work alone. taking on all 3 roles at one go is going to be an extremely steep learning curve.

but before we could talk about getting it going, are teachers ready for the reimagined roles? it’s definitely not going to make life easier for any teacher (change itself is already a painful process; learning is a slow and time-consuming process; and coupled with the reality that ICT in teaching & learning is not just about efficiency). fundamental shift in a teacher’s beliefs (esp. epistemic) is needed. teachers need to reexamine their assumptions of their own teaching, and their students’ learning.

i would think this is a report that all teachers who intend to introduce flipped learning as part of their teaching & learning activities must read. it provides much food for thought.

how exciting (:

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hearing a flipped primary CL classroom example

had the chance to meet up with fellow teacher Evelyn, and to hear her share abt her experience in flipping her P4 CL class. she had recorded a series of 24 videos (that included ppt slides, and videos) to get things going at the start. students are tasked to watch one video a week, as it coincides with one lesson a week. it was slow to get things going at first, cultivating students the habit of watching the videos weekly. “they were so used to the standard way of teaching/learning since P1, P2 & P3”, and now students are required to do something that’s very different from the past.

having the videos (prepared using Camtasia) allowed Evelyn time to engage students in more interactions in class. she designed games to engage her students. but in order to participate in the games, students learnt that they need to watch the videos beforehand. homework is done in class, so students do not have to do homework after school.

based on what i heard, i believe what Evelyn has done laid good foundation to free up classroom teaching time, which won’t go away any time soon in a school’s factory-style set up, especially during foundation years at primary level. looking forward to the day to attend a lesson in the classroom to see how discourse is taking place with such an implementation.

if the possibilities to explore alternative/more classroom discourse doesnt excite you, “我的最差的学生从前拿24分,最近拿了一个40分。” (out of 45), any results-oriented teacher could be persuaded somewhat to the very least i presume? 😛

abandoning subjects in schools

saw this article on qz.com titled “This school in Norway abandoned teaching subjects 40 years ago” via a fb feed. as the article pointed out, recent reports had focused on Finland’s decision to phase out teaching by ‘subjects’ abt a month ago.

the Norway school highlighted here is Ringstabekk (Lower Secondary) School, taking in students between grade 8-10. some interesting points in the article:

“4-6 teachers, is responsible for the education and growth of 60-75 students”
– this points to a teacher-student ratio of 75/4 –> 1:19 (max). a ratio much HIGHER than ours.

“The teachers pick up ideas from each other and share their experiences ensuring … all students experience the same learning methods and multidisciplinary themes.”
– we too have our many forms of CoP, PLC, PLN, AR/LS groups. except in this case, there’s (a lot a lot more) “cross-subjects” pollination of ideas & perspectives since the teachers work in teams, and not subject departments.

“The students … work in small groups most of the time. This is based on the theory that most of our learning happens when we think, talk, and solve tasks together … and the idea of “learning by doing,” theories developed by the late Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and the late American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey.”
– i think our teachers cite Vygotsky more often than Dewey. why? perhaps teachers realised there’s plenty of doing, but … … not sure, need further research to shed light on this.

“The Ringstabekk school has to follow the national curriculum and national assessment-systems, so every student still gets individual grades for each traditional subject. “
– our teachers will be interested in HOW to do such ‘conversion’ if we were to experiment with such a system.

“On these tests, they are performing on the top national level, …Students become very engaged in what they do at school—sometimes they don’t want breaks, because they are eager to continue the work they have started.”
– sounds like producing future workaholics, but results & motivation are both taken care of. what else more would a teacher ask for from any student?

“Most parents are very satisfied with the school—they realize that it actually is preparing their kids for a future working-life …”
– if PARENTS are happy, i assume society is happy. any teacher would be happy to have such happy partners in education (:

“The head teacher at the school puts it this way: ”We are not just developing calculators, we are developing human beings.””
– does this imply that some schools are producing ‘calculators’? what are we producing in our classrooms? more ‘exam machines’ than human beings as some teachers termed it? good food for thought.

two other web sources pointing to the school can be found here: a 2001 OECD report on ICT integration, and a Notes page in Wrigley, T., Thomson, P., & Lingard, R. (2011). Changing Schools: Alternative Ways to Make a World of Difference (p.46) via Google Books

flipped learning

it’s been 6 months since i shared my thoughts on how i perceive a flipped classroom. and only recently, i came upon FLN (led by Aaron Sams and colleagues)’s definition of flipped classroom in hope to “counter common misconceptions and bring clarity to discussions”, using another term “flipped learning”.

in this 2-page document, of particular interest to me is the outlining of the 4 pillars of FLIP (p.2):

  • Flexible learning culture
  • Learning culture
  • Intentional content
  • Professional educator

the 11-point checklist would be useful for teachers for quick assessment of their existing practices. whether it can be classified truly as flipped learning or flipped classroom, or it’s just a manifestation as a result of misconception(s). 张冠李戴 is not too uncommon i would think.

where Intentional content is concerned, i think it’s good for teachers to provide ‘starters’ to get students going. along the way, we should allow them to be content co-curators in the spirit of SDL n CoL. of cos, from an exam point of view, teachers could be the one to curate things that are “for exams” aspects of learning, and students co-curate things that extends their learning beyond the scope of exams. in this way, teachers and students could become co-creators of knowledge in a classroom (:

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