08. pedAgogy and educAtioN – Page 4

November 3, 2014March 28, 2017

sdl, col, and desired outcomes of education

— update 27/3/17 —

– revised DOE webpage URL in footer
– be able to think for and express themselves confidently (revised to include SDL at pri level)

— update 27/7/15 —

revised the headings of the comparison table

— end of update

3-4 years back, our team attempted to rationalise the link between mp3 student goals (self-directed learning “SDL”, and collaborative learning “CoL”) and MOE’s 21st century competencies.

in my professional development work with primary and secondary school teachers, a question that has been lingering at the back of my mind for a very long time but somehow i couldn’t figure out a way to make things more manageable for teachers: “among the many SDL/CoL competencies, what is expected at primary level, and what is expected at secondary level?” to a teacher, it would mean the ‘extent to teach’, and in turn affects the design of teaching and learning activities. in other words, with a ‘baseline’ in mind, a teacher will be able to know the minimum expectation, while working towards stretching his/her students’ potential.

and this morning, i may have found a way: in our context, teachers teach towards the Desired Outcomes of Education, and key stages with related attributes have been defined. i attempt to map keywords in the outcomes at different stages, with SDL and/or CoL, depending on which competency the outcome is closer to. as i argue that an SDLearner is found in the CoL situation, some ticks in the the SDL column could see a tick in the CoL column too if i choose. if. and here is my attempt in Acrobat X PDF:

therefore, if i am a primary school teacher, i am expected to develop an SDLearner who knows his/her strength, is curious, and takes pride in his/her work. in terms of CoL, s/he needs to be able to cooperate (cf. collaborate), share & care for fellow group mates, and be able to express him/herself in a group.

if i am a secondary school teacher, i am expected to develop an SDLearner who is able to adapt to change, creative, and takes on responsibility for his/her own learning. in terms of CoL, s/he is an empathetic team player who appreciates the diverse views in a group; effective communication is a group is but an extension from primary school.

of cos that being said, there’s no stopping for any teacher from stretching and developing their students beyond the above ‘baseline’. an effective teacher is one who is able to 因材施教 (：

August 13, 2014July 15, 2015

flipped classrooms, some thoughts

— [update, Jul 15, 2015]

it looks like my original conception below is extremely outdated, especially point no.4. it appears teachers worldwide have been looking for various ways to engage students during the classroom time. and here’s a post with 20 ways. check it out (:

— [/update]

the idea of “flipping” the classroom is not new (has been hearing it floating around for at least 1-2 yrs now). while different pple may use the “flip” term, different conceptions may exist behind those uses. my understanding of it is this:

1. it removes the didactic teaching of a lesson away from the face-to-face (f2f) lesson
2. the didactic part is replaced by the use of ICT-media online. usually videos as it captures images, animations, and sound nicely all-in-one.
3. students are expected to “learn” from the media posted online
4. with the f2f time freed-up, teachers are able to let students do homework and provide closer (or even 1:1 guidance) for students

the above presented some basic assumptions about teaching and learning:

a. teaching is a didactic activity. this is most often found in schools that implement a lecture (with or without tutorials) system. it’s no wonder flipped classrooms have seen many ‘success’ in higher ed (an example) settings as most of us may recall how useful lectures are, perhaps even from (my) JC days. a replacement of the talking head/person in front of the lecture hall with a video definitely presents multiple opportunities, esp. when you have lecturers who speak too softly, speak too fast, speak too slow, talk about things you can read off texts, or talk about things that have nothing to do with the topic at hand and you are expected to read on your own anyway. video, with the ability to play, replay, fast-forward, is simply a saviour!

a related qn would be: is our current CL classrooms (you may replace CL with any subject u teach) as didactic as a lecture? current teachers, especially the teachers who have walked their practicum journey with me during 2012-2013 would know they would never graduate from NIE if that’s the case. since our classroom practices have already shifted towards more interaction, albeit IRE interactions still exist largely, how much would our students benefit from a flip?

b. teachers post a video of him/herself talking, students watch, and students learn! **WOW** if learning takes place so simply, why do we need teachers stepping into the classrooms at all? just employ a group of “expert teachers” to produce videos, ask students to buy a portable internet-enabled video player, watch the videos, and they will have learnt everything and anything. **WOW** from this perspective, part of the flipped classroom idea takes on an extreme naive assumption of learning. and why does it remind me of educational videos produced by CDIS and played back on Channel 8 some 20-30 yrs ago? or, Sesame Street, anyone?

i would like to also ask: if teachers claim that students are unmotivated during f2f lessons, how motivated would they be to watch/hear you talking to them for an hour or two AFTER SCHOOL? to learn? so, the flip idea appears to require students who are already motivated to learn (for whatever reason(s)) to begin with, isn’t it?

while posting videos appear to be the hype to some when they learnt about the flip idea, it is the f2f time that is the key consideration. WHAT are we going to do now with time supposedly freed up? say, i. let students do more drill-and-practice related to the topic in the video?, ii. engage students in discussion about the topic in the video?, iii. organise students into groups to discuss their ideas about the videos followed by some presentations?, iv. give students enrichment materials related but beyond the scope of the video and do (i) to (iii)?

now, does one realise that (i) to (iv) still presents a largely teacher-centered way of managing learning activities? while there may be group work, the task, the goal, the topic, and the timeline are all determined by teachers. it is still very far away, if not going against our vision to develop 21 century learners, or self-directed (SDL) & collaborative (CoL) learners.

therefore up to this point, any implementation of “flipped classroom” without the use of ICT (an example), or any implementation that does not advance students’ 21cc, especially SDL and CoL with ICT, isn’t good enough for me. these are just age-old practices relabelled to bring some hype. full-stop.

flipped classroom has to service the rethinking about education (e.g. Bereiter, 2002) if we were to ready our students for the knowledge society. blindly jumping onto this bandwagon, or any other to come in future, isn’t going to help.

July 31, 2014July 31, 2014

MOOC, is it about education, or … ?

the word MOOC is running around my ears for the past week or so. so what does MOOC really offer? din have time to dwell too much into it, so let me just capture some thoughts based on quotes from a WSJ article “The Opportunities—and Risks—in the MOOC Business Model“. some quotes that caught my eyes:

“… the uncertainty that surrounds the nature of MOOCs as viable businesses.”

– should any institution embark on MOOC if it’s not to earn money from it? becos …

“High-quality ones are expensive to produce but well suited to efficiently broadcasting knowledge to large, distributed crowds.”

– knowledge is described as distributable entity. how much of a teacher’s knowledge belongs to static ‘distributable’ stuff? is knowledge broadcastable to begin with?

“… Why should a student listen to her local professor profess, if the same topic is available online from a more compelling instructor halfway across the globe?”

– lecturer’s ‘pull factor’ is extremely important.

“There still is too wide a gap between the idealistic promise of MOOCs as a means to democratize education and the ideological practice of using MOOCs as means to cut costs in already underfunded public universities”

– the ideal vs. implementation gap, as ever. looks like cost-cutting rules the day.

“They reduce the potential for teacher-student interaction, lessening the ability of the professor to provide individualized instructional support.”

– MOOC doesnt stamp from a social constructivist view of learning anyway. not it’s current form at least.

“Those best educators work at institutions that might benefit from their courses being sold online, as the competition crowds out all but the stars.”

– institutions sell and benefit from MOOC

“MOOCs have the potential to bring higher education and generate revenue from millions of students who don’t have access to today”

– again, it’s abt money-making for the institution

“MOOCs are globally accessible, so a weak MOOC can have adverse reputational consequences for its creating institution.”

– an institution’s reputation hangs in there. $$$ hangs in there too i supposed?

and one key reminder for myself, MOOC is a Higher Education entity. if our day-to-day affair concerns Teachers’ PD, how much does MOOC belong? these are entirely two different contexts with different needs; an attempt to plug-n-play like plugging in USB devices is dangerous.

June 26, 2014June 26, 2014

TALIS 2013

TALIS, which stands for OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey, final report 2013 was released yesterday. was first brought to the attention of it via some fb shares of the CNA report.

TALIS 2013 has an interactive webpage which allows users to make comparison between two countries, and the overall average. after making some chart comparisons between SG and Finland, i am glad our system is doing significantly a lot more (not sure statistically so or not) in terms of teachers’ PD. MOE’s belief that PD can improve our teachers and education as a whole is strongly reflected in the charts; this also matches my personal experience and belief (not sure how much belongs to MOE’s influence in this). CNA’s headline “Teachers in Singapore are … among the best-trained worldwide” rightly captured this gist.

another piece of writing related to the TALIS 2013 report is a blog post by Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills. for those of us who dun have time (which is most of us and i confess i am one of us) to read the 442-page report, Schleicher has shared some of his takeaways which could be useful for us too. cut-n-paste a few quotes that i find meaningful [personally]:

“if a teacher is convinced that students learn better when they are encouraged to think through and solve problems on their own, then they are likely to use more active, student-centred approaches to teaching and learning” [this touches on the importance of teachers’ beliefs]
“constructive and fair teacher appraisals and feedback have a positive effect on teachers’ job satisfaction and on their confidence in their abilities as teachers” [teachers, students, we are all alike, aren’t we?]
“they should also work with other teachers to develop a system of peer feedback on all aspects of teaching, from lesson planning and classroom practice to student evaluation” [this requires a very open-mind about feedback. is strongly culturally related.]
“While in many countries there is a lot of debate about the ideal class size, TALIS finds that class size has no measurable impact on teaching efficacy. But teachers who reported that they teach classes where more than one in ten students are low academic achievers or have behavioural problems also reported significantly lower levels of confidence in their abilities to teach, or what is known as self-efficacy.” [work on our students’ self-efficacy, and the classroom size issue may just be no issue anymore?]
“Since TALIS finds that teachers who participate more in decision making in their school are also more likely to believe that society values teachers, they should be open to work together with colleagues and school leaders.” [ownership, buy-in … reminded me somewhat of SDL]

March 7, 2013March 7, 2013

new pedagogy for 21C

if the current school system was organised for the Industrial Age, and school’s killing creativity, where should schools be going? (:

2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra, who founded the “Hole in the Wall” experiments, has proposed a new pedagogy during his recent TED talk.

the new pedagogy is simple and almost unbelievable. it’s: say, “I haven’t the foggiest idea” followed by “I am going away.” and leave the learners on their own to self-organise. how much further can you go in SDL than this? (: