Students co-constructing curriculum and contexts.

I believe it is important that students are involved in constructing the classroom curriculum that they are going to learn. In New Zealand, our national curriculum is flexible enough to allow students to have a big say in the contexts that will suit their learning needs and interests. It is not that difficult to do, and can be done with year 11-13 students where high stakes qualifications are included. Kath Murdoch and James Beane are two people who have inspired me in this area.

I was interested to read Marc Prensky's blog this week, advocating the inclusion of students at teacher education conferences. This is an idea worth further consideration.

I wonder how we could include a much stronger student voice in the process of the current tweak of our national curriculum.

Of course, this all assumes that we are ready to share or give up some of the power associated with being the teacher at the chalkface (or smartboard). Chris Sessums looks at the locus of control in his blog this week.

Professional learning vs professional development.

It seems that professional development is a thing of the past for teaching and professional learning is the what should be happening now. It was a few months ago that I was pulled up for referring to 'professional development', and have been mulling this over and reading ever since. I feel that maybe the sun is rising above the fog.

I understand that this change, specifically within teaching, is part of the change in reclaiming (or claiming) of teaching as a profession. The push in the context of a move from a percieved technocratic view of teaching, where teachers are 'trained' in the 'art and craft' of teaching, towards a learned and research based profession. The term 'professional development', in this context perhaps reflects the model where outside influences will 'develop' the teacher's skills, through delivering short courses. This compares to a 'professional learning' model where the teacher is at the core of the learning, learning may not be based on preset outcomes, but it is ongoing, involve collaboration and be long term.

Although governing bodies in New Zealand and England are moving towards using the term 'professional learning', there appears to be a flip flopping between the two terms.

The long tail

I heard an interview with Chris Anderson on the radio yesterday. (Yes, realtime! Still do this sometimes). He was talking about the 'long tail'. In New Zealand education, this refers to the group of students for whom school is not meeting their learning needs and are not achieving. In economic terms (which is where Chris comes from), it refers to products that are sold that are not mainstream, but are economically viable due to the internet. The result of the long tail is that there is greater diversity in products available. Therefore the internet is catering for a much wider diversity in interests and thinking than was available previously. This idea when crossed into education is exciting! encouraging diversity. This links into the idea of personalised learning environments that Stephen Downes and Derek Wenmoth discuss in their blogs.

I am still thinking about the implications of the long tail- both tails.

Beyond Blooms taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy has been useful tool in developing educational tasks for the past 40 years. It was based on an underlying assumption that the mind behaves like a filing cabinet. This assumption is being challenged as the implications of learning in the digital age is explored further.
As an alternative, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1998) suggested 7 levels of approach to knowledge.

1- Knowledge as individuated mental states. Knowing that one person may know things that someone else does not.
2- knowledge as itemizable mental content. Telling knowledge in the order in which it comes to mind.
3- knowledge as representation. Telling knowledge taking into account the listener/ reader.
4-knowledge as viewable from different perspectives.
5- knowledge as personal artifacts. Viewing oneself as constructing knowledge.
6- knowledge as improvable personal artifacts. Viewing a theory in terms of what it can and can't do, what its strengths are and where it needs improvement.
7- knowledge as semi-autonomous artifacts. knowledge objects, like other constructed objects, take on a life of their own and can be considered independently of their personal relevance.
Full paper.

I find this a useful schema when thinking about teaching for understanding, particularly of conceptual understanding.

Connectivism

George Siemens proposes a learning theory for digital age. While it still has some of the underpinning aspects of constructivism, it is fundamentally different. It takes into account one key idea espoused by Bereiter- that knowledge does not exist within one person's mind. This learning theory is worth a look.
George is a regular blogger.