The cow heart never would have happened.

This week I had the privilege of co-presenting a global call for Compassionate Systems practitioners based around the use of check-ins and the influence they can have on the various social fields that we are a part of. The conversations were rich and the whole experience gave me an even greater appreciation of the importance of the relational space when it comes to collaboration and learning.

Part of the presentation focussed on some of the check in experiences that I've observed or helped create. We discussed that it is the responsibility of the hegemonic individual to cultivate the space because they have more impact within it. In a school or classroom setting this is typically the teacher's responsibility. Over a number of years, in a few different contexts, I have been exploring the concept of learner agency and I briefly highlighted that for an agentic environment to flourish the stance of the teacher requires a shift to being that of a learner. This causes a disruption in the tacit power structure of schools and, for some, it could also create an existential crisis about what it actually means to be a teacher, but that's a discussion for another post.

When an educator listens and values the ideas of children in the learning environment, deep learning can occur. One of the examples that I shared showed how a teacher in a Kindergarten class used the Wheel of Emotion to explore some of the concepts in a picture book that they were reading. Along with the data she was collecting around the student's level of understanding around various conceptual literary ideas, she was also supporting the development of their emotional literacy in being able to recognise and name emotions and feelings. The Wheel of Emotion was used alongside several other learning experiences as well and quickly became a part of the student's toolbox in their inquiries.

The teacher's acknowledgment that students are powerful learners with the capacity to engage with big ideas, coupled with her willingness to genuinely listen and respond, meant that the responsibility for cultivating the social field within the learning environment was a shared one. This provided an opportunity for further meaningful learning. 

 

One day, as the students were exploring different 2D shapes, one of the students identified a heart shaped object. The choices the teacher had were to either re-direct back to whatever the regular shapes were that were a part of the written curriculum, or to follow this idea further. Again, we come back to the identity of the teacher and her professional stance as an educator. As I'm sure you can guess, she chose the second option. The questions and discussion that followed revealed insightful ideas and connections to the social-emotional learning that the students had familiarity with as they explored the symbolic connection between the heart and the emotion of joy - what does a 'double joy' feel like?, as well as scientific connections to the structure and function of the heart, which also included discussions around shape, capacity and volume. 

When the students asked if your heart could break, the dialogue shifted to an exploration of perspective between the biological functions of the heart and what happened if they didn't work, compared with the emotional feeling of having a broken heart. As their curiosity grew, the teacher was able to organise for a cow's heart to be delivered to school for them to dissect, helping to confirm some of their theories about the structure and strength of some of the materials, as well as supporting the generation of new questions and ideas.

        

Now, I love a rectangle and a triangle as much as the next person, but sometimes those shapes just aren't enough. The cow's heart wouldn't have happened if the teacher wasn't willing to engage with the ideas of the students around 2D shapes to see where they went. Supporting an environment where they felt comfortable to co-create the learning meant that the social field was a generative one and the learning took on a different level of meaning. The result was a combination of mathematical, scientific and social-emotional learning that highlighted the strength of a transdisciplinary approach to inquiry.

Compassionate Systems Professional Growth

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted here! I've been doing a lot of writing since my previous post, but in a different format so have found it difficult to maintain my effort in this space at the same time. I am hopeful that this post is the mark of renewed commitment to my blog (although I've said that before). Here's hoping!

Back in 2018 I shared our school's involvement with the development of the Compassionate Systems Framework - a project born from Peter Senge's work of MIT. The ideas that underpin this framework have been finding their way through our school - primarily in the Primary School where I work, but there are also some seeds in other areas of the school as well. It's an interesting time.

Alongside this, over the past few years we've been trying to find a way forward with our professional growth model. We previously had a setup where we would run a series of lesson observations, using a long checklist of indicators to provide feedback for teachers. There were also pre-observation and post-observation meetings, goal-setting plans, collaborative partners....the whole package was simply to unwieldy to do well and ultimately left everyone feeling the same way my Dad did when I told him I'd cooked him a vegetarian dinner - unsatisfied.

After some reflection, a couple of key points were identified: (i) There is a belief at the school that there needs to be a differentiated system in place to help all educators develop and refine their practice; (ii) There is a feeling that the performative model of the past is not best placed to serve our needs in the future. We've had a play around with some different iterations of classroom visits, walkthroughs and coaching conversations but nothing has felt quite right for our context so far. Parts of these approaches were clearly worth leveraging, but no approach on its own worked well enough for us to confidently adopt. We're mindful that we may be missing opportunities for members of our learning community to engage with each other, but at the same time we don't want to rush into a model that isn't sustainable. 

Coming back to Compassionate Systems, over the past few months I have been thinking about what we do as a school to help our community members respond mindfully to the complex challenges they face. Teaching is a complex profession. Learning is a complex process. I wondered if there were some tools or ideas that might be helpful for us with our professional growth inquiry. 

You can see the iteration of the model that I'm currently working with below. In a nutshell, it is based on the idea that by focussing our attention on the things that we want, instead of those that we don't, we are able to develop a vision of personal mastery and, with the right support, sustainable change. This requires us to be highly tuned to our sense of self and starts with a consideration of our own well-being. For this model, I have followed the work of Richard Davidson and the Healthy Minds Program to frame the structure of well-being. Davidson's 4-Pillars of Well-being overlap nicely with Senge's Core Leadership Capacities of aspiration, reflective thinking and systems sensing. But we're a school, not a life coach. Well-being is a skillset that can be developed over time and there is a personal responsibility of practice and training on the part of the learner. For this reason, the focus of the initial conversation around well-being is centered on purpose instead of attempting to encompass all four pillars. After some tuning in through the Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI - has there ever been a better acronym?), this first stage of the process occurs between a learner and a school leader and the conversation map is based around the first four questions on purpose:

• What sort of educator do you aspire to be?
• How are you integrating what you learn as a practitioner into your daily work?
• What sort of observations can we put in place to capture growth?
• Where have you embraced changes to impact the learning of your students?

There are additional questions that can be followed up with on the basis of how the conversation is going and could be used to delve into other areas of well-being, if necessary.

From here we move into the second phase, which takes the step from leadership of the self to the acknowledgment that we operate in systems that are both personal and universal. Phase 2 requires the collaboration of the rest of the learner's team and addresses a key component that was missing in our previous model - the need for psychological safety and the idea that great teams make more mistakes because they don't hide them and because they try new things. We already have a lot of research-based indicators of strong learning practices so there's no need to re-invent the wheel here. These can still be used as prompts for generative conversations around learning. The sheer number may be overwhelming and perhaps needs to be pruned - but there's no doubting the potential for conversation starters that they provide.

This phase allows an opportunity for the learner to engage in an additional reality around their practice, thus providing further perspectives of truth so that they can deeply understand the present before they go about designing the future. We have some conversation starters, some strategies for observing practice and some guiding questions that can be used to identify what it is that you currently do with your students and why. There are two vital factors here:

(i) Because the opportunity is given for the learner to identify a more nuanced version of their current reality (through the help of their team), any improvement that is ultimately suggested engages the mental models of the learner (Robinson's Theories of Action), instead of bypassing them. Through engagement, the current beliefs, practices and implicit ideas that are driving behaviours are understood.

(ii) Because the onus isn't on the various members of the team to manage the improvement a specific person, the opportunity exists for low-risk, honest discourse and the leaner has the opportunity to reflect on what it is that they might do that makes them resistant to change.

The third and final stage allows learners to identify something to pursue that is meaningful to them (as opposed to someone else). It asks the teacher to return to their leadership partner to reflect on what it is they they'd like to grow, and to put in place the conditions to allow this to occur. For this, the mandala for systems change is the suggested tool. An important part of this phase is the short-term and long-term indicators that are agreed upon. There is no point looking at the outcomes of an agreement (long-term indicators) if only half of the strategy is implemented. This is why we must identify and examine implementation indicators (short-term) as well.

This may all sound great, but whether it actually works or not is unknown - it's a pilot setup with a small group of teachers at this stage. I'm sure it will take several additional iterations before it's close to something that can be more widely used. But, as Senge says, it's not about what the vision is, it's what the vision does. This model may not work at all, but in the process of trying, we might find something that does.

Compassionate Systems Professional Growth Model by Dave Secomb on Scribd

Thanks to the prodigious wisdom of Peter Senge, Mette Boell, Richard Davidson, Viviane Robinson, Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan for their inspiration in the design of this model.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Planning for academic language acquisition

Over the past several years I have been fortunate to be involved with some thinking around the area of language acquisition. This originated at my previous school, where the student body was 98% non-English mother-tongue (L1), although it has carried over into my current school as we continue to explore the role that language plays in the development of international mindedness.

One piece that has emerged specifically from this inquiry into language acquisition in an immersed environment, was the desire to create a reference tool that would be useful for teachers - particularly when the support of EAL expert teachers was unavailable. We thought that there were several aspects of language acquisition were important to consider with regards to planning for learning but also felt that most teachers didn't have time to delve into the reams of resources that we'd collated. So our aim was to produce a format that was able to be accessed easily - 'a one pager'. Here is an example of what we're currently working with:

G5 HTWW by Dave Secomb on Scribd

The tool continues to evolve as different teachers use it - for example, we're currently looking at the best way to structure the vocabulary section. It's been particularly interesting to see the German department explore this model during this academic year.

You can see that the planner is separated into seven sections. The top three outline the broad context within which the inquiry will take place. We use First Steps as a common, though not exclusive, planning tool at my school so take the language features and text structure from there. This ensures consistency between the different classes for a particular grade without limiting everyone to a specific genre. We also identify a language objective that runs alongside the content understanding (central idea) of the unit. Again, we do this to ensure consistency across the grade in terms of what we are working towards with the students. After all, if achievement and progress in terms of the unit of inquiry is contingent on the acquisition and application of specific language features then we have a responsibility as educators to scaffold this learning with the students.

The following four sections are based on the key elements for an immersive model: Academic Language; Translanguaging Strategies; Linguistic Scaffolds and Differentiation. It is an expectation that all teachers across the school differentiate for their students so we acknowledge the importance of it but direct most of our energy into developing the other three sections. Academic Language can be looked as the building blocks of CALPS (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). Working alongside this, the linguistic scaffolds are the mortar which hold the bricks in place. Translanguaging strategies are ways of leveraging the learner's L1 proficiency to access the additional language(s) they're learning.

It is worth noting that this tool is not designed to constitute an entire language learning program for a school or grade. It is aimed at informing pedagogy in the 'Learning Through Language' focus. While it will inevitably inform practice in all three areas of Halliday's model, the primary aim is to help develop the students' proficiency in being able to use language as a tool for inquiry. We would advise that there should also be a dedicated focus on 'Learning Language' and 'Learning About Language'. It's also important to note that, although this planning tool was originally devised for use with EAL students, there will undoubtedly be some aspects that are effective for all students in the class, particularly with the focus on academic language. The IB addresses this point in their publication Language and Learning in IB Programs (pg. 24) when discussing CALPS:

"However, it cannot be assumed that even those whose first language is the language of instruction are familiar with academic language. Some may be fluent in a dialect or non-standard variety, may have had little exposure to reading and writing in the language of the school and may also need to be made aware of the types of discourse necessary for school."

Photo by Diomari Madulara on Unsplash

Compassionate Systems Framework

For the past couple of years my school has been involved with a project in collaboration with MIT and the IB, as well as several other IB schools scattered around the world. This is a guest post from our Director of Teaching and Learning, Jacob Martin, who explains the scope of the collaboration far more eloquently than I. It's exciting to be a part of this project and I'm interested in seeing where it goes and what part this framework might play in the enhanced PYP in our context.  

As a leading International Baccalaureate(IB) World School, we are frequently asked to participate in the development of educational practice at IB schools. One of the most exciting recent projects ISZL is taking a leading role in is the development of a new set of classroom practices called "The Compassionate Systems Framework". This is a combination of systems thinking tools often used in the classroom (examples here) and the development of a compassionate mindset in students. We have been truly amazed by the results of some of the works we have done with teachers and students at our school and the project is becoming a global educational project with ISZL leading the way. The project stems from the work of Peter Senge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Young people throughout different cultures and circumstances are confronted with the complex contradictions of the interconnected, interdependent systems in our world (e.g. climate change, human migration, terrorism, substance use, etc.). An essential question for the future of education is how do we help students to reflect on, deeply understand and respond mindfully and compassionately rather than just feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of these systems. With the growing interest in education in social and emotional learning (SEL) and mindfulness today, we feel it is especially timely to show how these can combine with skills in understanding systems and complexity to establish a cognitive and affective foundation for global citizenship and what we at ISZL call “International Mindedness.”

We are looking to developing the skillsets of a systems thinker with our students, through using a variety of systems thinking tools and practices: seeing deeper systemic structures underlying surface events, and how mental models and “artefacts” shape those structures. But, even for skilful systems thinkers, complex issues can easily be seen as something outside of ourselves, or something we understand intellectually but not emotionally. “Systems sensing” skills help to “sense into” the multiple experienced realities in any complex setting.

Over time, these skills can combine to nurture a compassionate stance. One technique involves understanding the structural sources of problems that go beyond individual people or groups (avoiding a blame based culture). Another lies in staying “next to that other” and feeling with them how they feel yet with less internalisation of the other’s emotional state than can occur with empathy alone (and the consequent feelings of being overwhelmed or “emotionally high-jacked”) and yet also holding an intention for others’ well-being - which is why compassion is seen in many developmental traditions as a cultivated, refined state of being.

In this framework we deliberately cultivate compassion as an essentially attribute of the mind: to cultivate compassion is to be able to appreciate the systemic forces that influence people’s actions. It is the capacity to hold paradoxes - to see and sense the larger system with all its interdependence and interconnectedness and all the unintended consequences of human behaviour - without judgment but with real care for the system and everyone involved in it.

In a world where snap judgements and beliefs are often used to justify actions, where the media bubble we each inhabit is reinforcing stereotypes and beliefs, we are looking to provide our students with a way to see problems more deeply and to understand and find compassionate solutions to them.

PYP for new parents

Well, it's been almost a full year since I've last posted on this blog. So much has been happening over the past year and there's lots to write about. I have actually been doing a lot of writing - just not in this format and the time hasn't yet quite been right for me to get back into it. Looking back at some of my most recent posts, there's some things that I'd like to revisit - but I'll save them for another time. To get things started again, I thought I'd share a presentation that I facilitated last week with our new parents at ISZL.

Starting at a new school is always a nervous time. Will I enjoy it? Will I make friends? Will I know what is going on? And that's just the parents! It's logical that if a family moves to a new country with their children and they can settle into a new school quickly then is eases the burden on the rest of the move. In my years of experience working with new families I often find that those that weren't entirely sure about whether it was the right decision to move can sometimes narrow their focus on things that they might be able to have more control over. School is one of those things. Offering opportunities for parents to listen and discuss their experiences and ideas around education can help to ease any concerns that they might have.

Let's not hide anything here - the PYP is different to many approaches to primary schooling in different places around the world.  What's helpful for parents to know, in a curriculum sense, is that their kids will be more or less learning similar subjects to what they're used to (although this may look a little different in practice), we look for regular opportunities to collect data on whether their children are learning, and that there's a school-wide focus on for learning for the future. Oh, and there's very minimal home learning - more on that in a separate post.

PYP for New Parents by Dave Secomb on Scribd

The Second Machine Age

Over the past couple of years I’ve been randomly exploring what the future of education and learning might hold for us. Recently I’ve been dipping in and out of the book: The Second Machine Age: Work, progress and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. This was published in 2014 so even now there’s a risk of some of the things mentioned becoming negligible. More on that in later posts. 

The book begins by shedding some light on the title. The authors quote anthropologist Ian Morris (author of Why the West Rules - For Now) as he describes human societal progress. There have been some pretty major events and developments that most of us would consider landmark moments - things that have significantly changed the course of things. Domesticating animals; farming and agriculture; great wars and empires (Ottomans, Romans, Arabs and Mongols); philosophical leaders such as Confucius, Buddha and Socrates; the establishment of major faiths (Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam); systems of writing and number; Democracy, The Black Death, Christopher Columbus - the list goes on. It is difficult to single out one of these as being the most important. Different groups of people from different backgrounds will all have valid reasons why their choice should take the top spot. In his work, Morris aims to somewhat settle this argument. He developed a way to quantify what he calls ‘social development’. For an in-depth definition of his equation and the various factors that play a part, take a look at either his book or the 2nd Machine Age, which briefly describes it. In a nutshell, though, it’s defined as ‘a groups ability to master it’s physical and intellectual environment to get things done.’ The results of his work are, in a word, astounding. As the graph below shows, numerically speaking, almost everything mentioned previously hasn’t mattered all that much when compared to one other thing. The axis show social development graphed against total worldwide human population:

As you can see, progress was pretty much static for a long, long time. Until around 200 years ago when we see a dramatic shift. Something sudden and profound arrived which bent the curve of human population and social development. This was the Industrial Revolution and, more specifically, the steam engine developed and improved by James Watt. Prior to Watt’s developments, previous steam engine designs could harness about 1% of the energy released by burning coal. Watts’ design increased this by threefold and started us on the path to being able to overcome the limitations of muscle power and generate massive amounts of useful energy at will. This lead to factories and mass production, railways and mass transportation - the things we now recognise more commonly as modern life. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call this the First Machine Age - the first time that our progress was driven primarily by technological innovation. They claim that computers and other digital innovations are doing for our brains what the steam engine did for our muscles. This is the Second Machine Age.

The authors generalise three conclusions from their work:

(1) We are living in an age of incredible digital progress. The technologies that we experience as part of this are not new (Time magazine declared the personal computer its “Machine of the Year” in 1982). But just as it took generations to improve the steam engine to the point that it could power the Industrial Revolution, it’s also taken time for us to enhance and refine our digital engines. 

(2) The transformations bought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial ones. Technology can bring us more choice and freedom in our consumption - information from books and friends, entertainment from superstars and amateurs, expertise from teachers and doctors to name a few. Economic historian Martin Weitzman claims that “the long-term growth of an advanced economy is dominated by the behaviour of technical progress”. Technical progress is improving exponentially.

(3) Digitisation is going to bring with it some thorny challenges. All benefits have challenges that must be managed and this will be no different. Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. It’s a great time to be a worker with the skills and education that allows you to use technology to create and capture value. Unfortunately, though, it’s not a great time time to be a worker with ‘ordinary’ skills because computers, robots and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate. It’s important to discuss the likely negative consequences of this second machine age and start a dialogue about how to mitigate them. The problems won’t fix themselves but they’re not insurmountable.

With digital technology advancing into the realm of the stuff of science fiction, the authors stress that the choices we make from now on will determine what that world will look like. In future posts I’ll outline some of their research and ideas for the future. The implications for education could be monumental and I look forward to being a part of this.

Photo Credit: dluders Flickr via Compfight cc

Maths POI

Over the past two years I've been leading a group of teachers through an inquiry into the way we structure our mathematics scope and sequence here at Branksome Hall Asia. During the first year of this process we identified aspects of our current scope and sequence document for mathematics that we felt needed further clarification or enhancement. We wanted to maintain the conceptual focus that is essential for the PYP so decided to keep the same descriptors for the Constructing Meaning and Applying Understanding sections that are highlighted in the IB Scope and Sequence document. We'll examine these as part of our next review.

For the Transferring Meaning section, different working groups focused on each strand of mathematics - Number, Data Handling, Shape and Space, Pattern and Function and Measurement - and rearranged them into organising titles that encompassed the important aspects of each strand. For example, in Pattern and Function the strand titles were - Identifying Patterns, Representing Patterns and Rules and Relationships. The aim of this was to make the progression of learning indicators in this section more explicit for teachers to use as signposts for their learners' next steps. We designed each indicator to be written in two ways - an 'entry in to phase' version and an 'exiting phase' version. This helps with differentiating content for individual learners as they work towards a conceptual understanding.

The resulting document is rather lengthy and in some ways this is unfortunate. As a group we discussed our concern that some teachers may use the scope and sequence as a 'to-do' list, hastily aiming to tick off as many of the learning indicators as possible. Well-intentioned, but not conducive to the development of conceptual understanding. The relentless pursuit of doing and knowing doesn't allow time for true reflection or any form of genuine application in order for the content to take on meaning for the learner (i.e. understanding). So, while we had a useful document for teachers to use as a road map for their students' learning, it wasn't as effective as it could be.

I was fortunate to connect with some deep educational thinkers during a visit to Thailand a couple of years ago and was introduced to the idea of a maths POI by Mignon Weckert. The maths POI provides a conceptual framework for mapping the maths scope and sequence across the grade levels. Because it focuses the learning around big ideas, it helps teachers to assess for understanding in mathematics and ensures that facts, procedures and algorithms are underpinned by concepts.

The implementation of this has been an interesting exercise. We are coming to the end of our first year and some parts have worked well while others need tweaking. A couple of common questions are:

(1) Is the PYP is meant to be trans-disciplinary then why are we planning all of our maths as standalone units? We are fully committed to the trans-disciplinary nature of the PYP. However, we are also aware that not all units allow for a seamless weaving of mathematics alongside the other disciplines. On review, the eagerness our teachers to embed all of their maths into the POI was leaving us with some areas that weren't being addressed, or were only being addressed as an after-thought (i.e. "oh my gosh, there's only 2 weeks left of the year and we haven't looked at mean, mode and median yet! Quick, do this, kids!". By mapping everything out into conceptual units, we can ensure that a cogent arrangement of the scope and sequence is achieved without any gaps in the learning. Once this was finalised, teachers then looked for the links to their units of inquiry. This helped to decide the order that each unit would be taught in as teachers were able to see if the unit itself provided a lens to inquire into the mathematical ideas, or if they needed to be introduced prior to the UOI so that maths could be used as a tool for inquiry. So although they're planned as standalone units, the teaching of them is still as trans-disciplinary as it was previously.

(2) If the PYP is designed around phases of learning then why do you assign units to certain grades? This is aspect that we've found the most difficult to manage. Students are not robots that progress in a perfectly linear fashion each year they attend school so of course some are ready for different aspects of a maths concept than others are. The message to our faculty has been that, additional to the other benefits of this framework, the Maths POI provides us with a system for organising the units. The way we've approached the application of this (i.e. the teaching side of things) is that teachers in a grade could be accessing unit of inquiry planners directly above or below the one that is allocated to them. This isn't the perfect system yet. We need to figure out a way of tracking which students have had access to different UOIs than might have otherwise be expected. Its not fair on, for example, a grade four teacher if they plan to work with their allocated measurement unit only to find out that half of the students have already investigated these ideas during the previous year. It's feasible that class teachers could be running three separate (yet related) maths units concurrently to cater for the readiness needs of the students in the class. This is a tricky balancing act on by itself, let alone without a clear system of knowing who's where. So, in summary, the units are arranged by grade but the actual teaching still adopts a 'phase' approach with students working at several different stages.

The Maths POI is a useful way of framing teachers' thinking about their teaching of mathematics. It provides a way to unpack content in a way that aligns closely with the principles of the PYP. The real impact, however, is in the teaching and assessing that accompanies this approach. If teachers plan conceptually but teach traditionally then it serves no purpose. 

Bha Maths POI by Dave Secomb

Learning for the future

Over the past few months I've been reading a lot about where people consider the future of education to be heading. I find it interesting to delve into the various perspectives about what education might look like in the future and would like to share some of these.

The first is a summary of some key points from a webinar discussion between two key players in the world of education and learning, Ken Robinson and Peter Senge. Their discussion was entitled 'Learning for the Future' and offered the following snippets:
- Schools are still the answer. What we have to re-think is what a 'school' is.
- It's not that (some) students don't want to learn, its that they don't want to learn the way that we're teaching.
- Schools as communities of learners: We learn from each other - learning is a social act. It is deeply personal and inherently collective (I love this quote). Learning for the future involves learning what it means to think together, to act together.
- Schools are organised the way they are because of the technologies available at the time.
- Just as in an agricultural model of farming, too much emphasis on the yield, output and results will eventually destroy the soil and land beneath the surface. The same metaphor applies to learning. Too much focus on output, results and the yield will eventually destroy the 'story of learning' that exists as part of the culture.

I'm also currently reading through Future Wise: Educating our Children for Changing World by David Perkins. He offers the following six broad trends that are pushing the boundaries of what's taught and the way it's taught:

(1) Beyond basic skills - 21st Century skills and dispositions: There appears to be a global trend converging towards the cultivation of critical and creative thinking, collaborative skills and dispositions, leadership, entrepreneurship and the related skills and dispositions that speak strongly  to living and thriving in our era.

(2) Beyond the traditional disciplines - renewed, hybrid, and less familiar disciplines: Themes such as bioethics, ecology, recent ideas from psychology and sociology, and other areas that address opportunities and challenges of our times.

(3) Beyond discrete disciplines - interdisciplinary topics and problems: Many curricula introduce students to daunting, contemporary problems of an emphatically interdisciplinary character, such as the causes and possible cures of poverty or the trade-offs of different energy sources.

(4) Beyond regional perspectives - global perspectives, problems, and studies: Attention not just to local or national but also to global matters, for instance, world history or the global interactive economic system or the possible meanings of global citizenship.

(5) Beyond mastering content - learning to think about the world with the content: Educators are encouraging learners not just to master content academically but also to notice where content connects to life situations, yields insights, and prompts productive action.

(6) Beyond prescribed content - much more choice of what to learn: In some settings, educators are supporting and coaching learners in choices about what to study well beyond the typical use of electives.

I find it an interesting exercise to reflect on how many, and to what extent, my school is enacting these 'six beyonds'. For some schools, these have been a part of the conversation for many years, yet progress is limited. Others have been shaping the path for some time. It seems to me that more and more these sorts of attributes are becoming more common in school frameworks.

Photo Credit
 

Multiple ways of knowing - an inquiry into conflict resolution

I couldn't resist sharing the progression of this inquiry as it unfolds among our grade three students here at BHA. The UOI that our three Grade Three classes are currently exploring falls under the TDTheme of 'Sharing the planet' and the central idea is: Effective communication can resolve conflict. The focus on this post will be on the important role that our single subject teachers have played in this inquiry so far.

The students were prompted to consider the last time, or worst time, they were involved in a conflict with friends or siblings. They were asked to think of this as a story with a beginning, middle and end.

Beginning - what happened to give rise to a conflict situation?

Middle - what happened during the communication process to try and solve the conflict situation?

End - how was the conflict resolved and how did it move into peace?

In small groups they then chose one story to represent in a drawing. The students were given long sheets of paper and asked to think about the kinds of colours, shapes, lines, forms and patterns that would best describe what was happening in the three different parts of the conflict story. The drawings below show the conflict stories and their 3 parts; conflict, communication, resolution/peace. The next step is for the students to add emphasis and further structure to the drawings using collage shapes. They will then transition over to our music teacher and consider similar concepts such as dynamics and rhythm that represent the ideas of conflict and peace. To synthesise everything, the students will cut-out and re-arrange their designs as they compose an original score to reflect their stories.

This process clearly offers a tremendous insight into the students' understanding of the process of conflict resolution. Conflict starts out as a range of different opinions and ideas all jostling for the front position. Sometimes it's messier than what it started out like before it gets better. There's usually a breakout moment that occurs prior to the solution. When you get to a stage of finding common ground it is like the pieces fit together. Peace and love may not always be the outcome - sometime we try to cover up a conflict with a resolution. These are all big ideas that are worthy of inquiry into peace and conflict at any age.

So it teaches us two very important lessons about inquiry. (1) Students of any age are able to think conceptually and (2) Teachers must be open to providing multiple pathways for their students to express their understandings.

It is highly unlikely that the students at our school would have been able to articulate these ideas in written form alone. Yes, the teachers helped to tease out the verbal responses from the students (with translation required for some), but that's their role - to listen, not to tell. The point is that those responses were constructed by the students themselves and they may not have seen the light of day if this opportunity had not be available to them. This is succinctly summarised by any Reggio-inspired educator when they talk about the hundred languages of children.

The other beautiful thing about this connection to the UOI is that it was completely unplanned in terms of collaboration between the homeroom teachers and specialists. The idea started as a conversation between our Music and Visual Art teachers and they thought they'd give it a shot. There was no pressure to ensure that they fit in with what was happening in class* so there was a lot of freedom to test out different approaches. When the connections began to appear as significant and highly relevant for the learning that was also happening in the classroom, a lot of discussion between all teachers followed. Although making a strong connection with the unit of inquiry may not have been the first priority for music and art, creating an authentic learning experience certainly was. This idea grew legs because of the teachers' commitment to genuine learning and the lens of the unit of inquiry provided this without being forced.




* To clarify this, at this stage in our school's journey we ask that subject specialists meaningfully collaborate on at least one UOI with each grade throughout the year. They can certainly contribute to more than that, but one is the minimum requirement.

What Hamilton can teach us about intelligence and leadership

As a fan of musical theater I have been swept up in the fanfare surrounding Hamilton, the musical based on the life of American founding father Alexander Hamilton told through medium of hip-hop and rap. While my friends and colleagues wouldn’t describe me as a rap diehard, I do have an appreciation for the form and the lyrical tapestry that Lin Manuel Miranda weaves to tell the tale of Hamilton is something to behold.

Manuel Miranda appears to correlate the ability of a character to rap with their perceived historical place in the spectrum of intelligence. Those that are characterised as prodigiously intelligent (Hamilton, George Washington, Aaron Burr, Marque de Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson) rap regularly, often with intricate rhyming patterns. Those that are less intelligent rap less sophisticated verses, or sometimes not at all. One of those characters is that of Hamilton’s eventual wife - Elizabeth Schyler. Eliza comes from a well-to-do family and also has two other sisters (Angelica and Peggie) that are constant targets of affection from suitors looking to elevate their status by marrying into such a family. Eliza does not rap throughout the entire musical whereas her revered sister, Angelica, has many moments where she raps her story. She is said to be able to ‘match wits’ with Hamilton and certainly earns the moniker of being the most intelligent of all the Schyler sisters.

So what does a person do when they're a part of the hip hop scene but don’t rap? They provide a backdrop for the artists to rhyme verses. Us lay-people typically know this as beat boxing and it can take many different forms. Those who beat box provide a tailored backing track for others to rap to. So there you have it, intelligent people rap and those lower down the cognitive ladder beat box.

This analogy serves as a useful backdrop for learning, leadership and education. As it did back in the 1700s, society still has a tendency to define intelligence through a narrow lens. Unfortunately it appears as though our definition hasn’t evolved over the past 300-odd years. Typically those that are competent scientists and mathematicians find themselves somewhere near the top of the pile, then come those that are gifted with writing, reading and speaking. The humanities usually follow and everything is rounded out by followers of the arts and physical pursuits. Despite recent commentary from modern educational thinkers, this model still pervades many societies and cultures.

By following this, Eliza is not seen as being intelligent. Hamilton is clearly adept with words and numbers (and can rap very well), so he has her covered. But one thing that we know about intelligence is that it manifests itself in different ways. What the beat boxers of this world show us is that they possess a great deal of emotional intelligence. No-one in this world can claim to be the top dog at everything and those that beat box show us that they possess the self-awareness to not only recognise talents in others, but also to notice when opportunities arise for them to support these talents. I believe that good leaders are like this. They know when to rap and when to beat box. They are able to adapt their leadership style to either engage and facilitate inquiry among their colleagues or just as easily support, pacify, console and coach, depending on what the situation requires. After all, leadership is context-driven. I often wonder what our current world would be like if some of the leaders of the past were more like Eliza and less like Hamilton.

Intelligence isn’t a one-size-fits-all model to behold and it most certainly isn’t hierarchical (at least not in the way that we most commonly define it now). We need to challenge ourselves to expand our view of intelligence so that both the Eliza’s and Hamilton’s of our time are able to find their place in the world in a meaningful way.

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Assessment validity

Over the past few weeks I have been part of several interesting discussions on the topic of cultural validity in assessment. There is so much to talk about here but I will offer just a short few thoughts now and aim to follow up with greater insight as I construct my own understanding over next few weeks.

The experience that prompted me to write this post occurred yesterday at my school. I was helping out with the assessment of some prospective students that have applied to join our school. I was asked to conduct a reading diagnostic with a student who happened to come from China. The goal of this task is to ascertain a broad range of the student's literacy and language development. This information is useful to handover to classroom teachers so that the can develop a profile of their new students as efficiently as possible. This particular diagnostic hails from North America and, as such, contains several references to North American culture and life in general. I was asked whether this particular student demonstrated comprehension of the reading material at a D level. My response was that she could read this text with fluency and was able to answer the related comprehension. This was true, she could read it with comprehension, however I explained to her the context of the details. In the story a skunk causes an array of animals to run away. I know that this is because skunks use their odour as a defensive weapon against potential threats. The reason that I know this is that I've grown up with several cultural influences via the media and in print that have allowed me to establish this in my own mind. For a 6 year old girl from rural China this is not relevant or significant for her life. I don't believe that its fair to judge a child's ability to comprehend something on content that is completely foreign to them.

Benign as the intention may be, the data gained is not useful. Had I not explained the relevance of the skunk to the story, the student would not have got the question correct and could possibly have been labelled something that she is not. I wonder how often this happens - particularly in international schools. If we take diagnostic reading programs, for example. Although teachers may have an educated, research-based opinion on what an appropriate process is to learn how to read, if the measure that is being used to assess achievement within the process is faulty then the process itself is invalid.

To quote Guillermo Solano-Flores (pg. 3):

"Tests are cultural artifacts. They are part of a complex set of  culturally established instructional and accountability practices; they are created with the intent to meet certain social needs or to comply with the mandates and legislation established in a society; they are written in the language used by those who develop them; their content is a reflection of the skills, competencies, forms of knowledge, and communication styles valued by a society - or the influential groups of that society; and they assume among test-takes full familiarity with the contexts used to frame problems, the ways in which questions are worded, and the expected ways to answer those questions."



Assessing the Cultural Validity of Assessment Practices: An introduction. In: Cultural Validity in Assessment: Addressing Linguistic and Cultural Diversity. 2011. Routledge, NY, USA.

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The Raised Eyebrow

Over the past couple of months I've been thinking about changing the name of this blog. The original name referenced my initiation not only into the world of blogging, but more widely into the development of a world-wide PLN, hence the 'global' aspect. Hopefully over the past five years I've grown as a learner and I feel that, although I have developed stronger opinions about certain aspects of my professional life, the understandings that I have gained have allowed me to question ideas and perspectives with a dose of healthy skepticism.

I think this is also a nod towards a useful skill for younger learners to develop. We live in a world where information is pushed under our noses faster than ever before. If you couple this with the idea that anyone can provide research to support their cause, then I think we have a need for our students to be critical consumers of information.

So there it is. The Raised Eyebrow - an inquiry into understanding.

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Reasons for change

Change management is a leadership topic that is regularly discussed and analysed. There are myriad books devoted to unpacking the processes involved with change, yet it remains one of the most difficult things to define. I think that's what makes people who can deal with change more valuable. Understanding the change process, or a version of it, is an important step in being able to deal with it, and to help avoid (or manage) resistance to change from colleagues or peers. I once heard it explained this way and have found it to be a useful framework for helping to decide on which next steps to pursue in different scenarios.

Resistance to change can be described in three broad categories: I don't like it, I don't understand it, I don't like you.

I DON'T LIKE IT: There will always be a portion of people that simply don't want to change. A general outline of where people fall on the 'change acceptance continuum' can commonly look like:

Innovators - 2.5%
Early Adopters - 13.5%
Early Majority - 34%
Late Majority -  34%
Resistors -  16%

It's important to understand the possibility of that group of resistors (or laggards). I'm always disappointed when 100% of the population aren't as excited about an improvement initiative as I am, but it's a reality. You can't please everyone all the time. A way to approach this group of people was once described to me through the analogy of a garden. You need to take care of a garden and tend to the conditions that will help the plants to grow. But it's a waste of time and resources to water the rocks - they won't grow. A lot of the time in these instances the collective of the larger group will bring the resistors on board, or they will leave. It takes time, though, and it's paramount that the initiative becomes widely accepted in order for this to happen. Jim Collins' work in 'Good to Great' discussed the idea of ‘getting the right people on the bus', which suggests that one of the keys to success in an organisation is to have the right people employed to achieve your goals - and to move on anyone that is not aligned. I think that this has the propensity to be easily misinterpreted. People definitely should be aligned to an organisational vision and mission, no doubt about that. However, they may need time to fully develop an understanding and appreciation of what is being actioned. This is effectively achieved within a a culture of feedback, collaboration and trust, not of fear of being thrown off the bus. In this case, people who are viewed as resistors could actually part of the late majority group. Additionally, what looks like laziness is often exhaustion. Change is about developing automatic behaviours, changing the old ones. This requires a great deal of energy from the rational and emotional sides of people. In the end, the emotional side will always win if both are exhausted. which leads into the next category.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT: In their book, 'Switch', Chip and Dan Heath refer to the idea that most resistance to change is situational, not personal. They describe an experiment that gave people free buckets of wretched popcorn. Some people ate more than others - despite the fact that it was stale and didn't taste nice. This resulting data could logically be construed as showing that these people have poor eating habits and need to be educated on how to correct them. However the revelation was that those that ate more were actually given bigger buckets of popcorn. The situation guided their behaviour instead of their personal view or habit. It can be helpful for agents of change to use this idea in their dealings with people. By shaping the path of the change initiative and designing the situation to work in their favour, change events can be fast-tracked. In many cases what looks like resistance to change is actually often a lack of clarity. If people don't understand not only the imperative to change, but also the key steps along the way, then they are more likely to look at a destination that either seems to far away that they'll be exhausted by the time they get there, or they won't be able to see it at all. The 'I don't understand it' group are important because they may actually be supporters of the change but are either too tired or confused about it that they don't adopt.

I DON'T LIKE YOU: Relationships are paramount in modern society and the associated skills of collaboration and communication are constantly emphasised as being vital in order to be successful in the 21st century workforce. If change agents want initiatives to be implemented as successfully as possible then it will be helpful if they have strong relationships and support from the people around them. Michael Watkins offers this advice for leaders that are entering new organisations - failing to create momentum during the first few months virtually guarantees an uphill battle for the rest of your tenure during the job. He talks about the notion of having 3 months (or 90 days) to achieve the break even point of contributing as much value to an organisation as you consume from it. People often look to those in their social network for cues to the 'right' way of thinking and acting. If you are one of those people then you stand a much better chance of creating early adopters or early majority members in your organisation. He also talks about The Coalition Building Cycle: Gaining allies helps you recruit others, which increases your resource base, which increases the likelihood of your agenda's success, which helps you further in gaining more allies....and the cycle begins again. If you don't have good relationships with your colleagues then you are already rowing against the current without a paddle.

References and further reading:
- Watkins, M. (2003) The First 90 Days: Critical success strategies for new leaders at all levels.
- Heath, C. & Heath, D. (2010) Switch: How to change things when change is hard.
- Kotter, J. (2014) Accelerate (Also see Leading Change and A Sense of Urgency)
- Fullan, M. (2001) Leading in a Culture of Change (Also see Change Leader)
- Collins, J. (2001) Good to Great: Why some companies make the lead...and others don't.

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Collaboration

Yesterday I had the pleasure of catching up with a colleague who is currently on sabbatical as she completes a M.Ed (Music) degree in New York. She was back over this side of the world visiting some family and friends for her break before heading back to continue her studies. It was wonderful to hear about some of the projects she's been working on over there and how they might be put into practice when she returns to BHA next year.

One project that stuck in my mind was that of a game that she was developing as part of one of her courses. The basic idea is that as students play the game they are rewarded for improvisation based on a section of music that they are looking at. The idea here was to diverge from just replicating a set piece of music. Of course there are monsters involved too. In order for my colleague to get her idea off the ground she had to connect with a software developer and a game designer, which she found on campus. Together the three of them developed her idea and are at almost at the stage where they have a piece of software to work with. They're hoping to test it out in schools sometime throughout 2016. Their hope is that their product will be a point of difference as it will be able to be used by teachers with multiple students at a time (i.e. a class) instead of an individual app or game, which appears to be the norm with these sorts of products.

None of this would have been possible if they hadn't have worked together. My colleague isn't a gamer and doesn't know where to start when it comes to designing games. Likewise, the software developer and game designer aren't attuned to what it is like to be working with 20-30 six year olds on a regular basis. Without collaborating, the result would not be what it currently is. This is the sort of collaboration that occurs everyday in the 'real world' - multidisciplinary teams working together to solve ill-defined problems. It is not, however, the sort of collaboration that we always design in our classrooms. In many cases students are told that they have to work together with certain people, or are told that they need to be in groups of two, three or four. This is not preparing students for a life beyond school in the 21st century. Consider the PYP Exhibition - the landmark culmination for the final year of a PYP student's journey. How many times are students grouped together because they have a faint connection to something that they'd like to inquire into. 'Oh, you're interested in researching the migratory patterns of whale sharks? Great, we'll put you in the 'over-fishing' group'. Or, worse still, they're given a choice of things that 'they'd like to explore' and groups are formed that way. Collaboration in the Exhibition, or in any similar process, should be about students inquiring into their passions and, when they inevitably reach a point where they need something that they can't do for themselves, they reach out to someone else and work together with them. If they then go back to their individual work once that part of the job is done then so be it - this is a microcosm of life. Yes, in the real world you don't always get to choose who you work with. I've certainly worked with a range of different people that would not have been my initial first choice. Sometimes there are group members that simply don't contribute to the collective - either by choice or readiness. Sometimes there are learning styles or approaches to work that suit some more than others. Sure, these can happen. But ultimately I find that there is an element of natural selection that occurs with these sort of experiences and things are straightened out. Even if you are required to work with a group that you consider to be low-functioning, you are not bound by it.  There are a variety of avenues to access skills and knowledge in order to build your own understanding along the way.

The dynamic world that we live in means that it isn't feasible to expect one person to be able to manage complex tasks alone. Real collaboration requires every member of the group bringing something to the table that can be used to help the greater good. In terms of assessing this, there are structures that teachers can put in place that allow us to measure how well each person shares their specific information. This is 21st century teaching and learning.

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Documentation

Over our recent break here in Korea our Early Years Coordinator at BHA attended a workshop with Fiona Zinn that explored the documentation of student learning. Our Early Years program is inspired by the Reggio approach and considers documenting student learning to be a key pillar of this. Laura returned from the workshop full of ideas that she wants to implement with the team and today she shared some of these with the specialist teachers about how we can develop the framework of our portfolios.

We consider the use of portfolios to be an important element of our assessed curriculum. They provide students and parents with valuable information on progress, feedback and an opportunity for reflection. As the IB states in Making the PYP Happen...'a portfolio is a celebration of an active mind at work. It provides a picture of each student’s progress and development over a period of time both as individual and group learners. It enables students to reflect with teachers, parents and peers in order to identify their strengths and growth as well as areas for improvement, and then to set individual goals and establish teaching and learning plans.' (pg. 50)

To develop our approach to portfolios, Laura spoke about framing them around three areas:

(1) The voice of the teacher - this could come in an explanation of the task that the students engaged in. It could also discuss the type of play that occurred during the task. This section might have more 'teacher talk' as the purpose is unpacked.

(2) The voice of the student - this section could include photos or videos of the students. An opportunity to record a reflection would also be represented here. The opportunities are vast in this section as they allow for student input into the documentation. What ownership does the student have over the learning in the sample? How are they reflected in the work?

(3) Analysis of learning - this section highlights  the skills, knowledge and conceptual understandings that are addressed in the learning experience. How are the students achieving this?

I think this is a nice framework to reference when we think about developing portfolio pieces. There is plenty of scope for creativity in the way that this is interpreted, however, the focus is firmly on the student and the learning. Laura also lead the discussion around aspects such as graphics, colours and fonts. Her explanation here was that the colour should come from the students themselves instead of from things such as banners, borders and zany fonts. We also discussed the use of images as a form of communication, especially considering that 90% of our student and parent population do not understand English easily yet.

This was a great opening discussion and one that I look forward to continuing with the team as we unpack our beliefs and understandings regarding documentation. I'm hopeful that the rest of the Junior School will be inspired by the work of this group.

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