Summing up - Derek Wenmoth

Submitted by tessa.gray on Mon, 2014-10-13 10:20

Through this conference we’ve had the opportunity listen to four first-rate keynote presenters - each bringing insights and experiences to challenge our thinking about our practice as educators.

Yoram Harpaz - described three ideologies that underpin the work of educators and define what happens in a school or school system - then created a cognitive dissonance in challenging us to make the tragic choice! Whether we found ourselves agreeing or disagreeing with having to make such a choice, no-one could escape the challenge he created in confronting how these ideologies shape our personal and collective view of teaching and learning.

Adam Lefstein – challenged us to think more critically about the professional conversations we have, and understand how this discourse shapes what we see happening in our classrooms and the lives of our learners. We learned from him that professional discourse is not a bragging race on your students or colleagues – it’s about getting better from learning!

Katie Novak – introduced us to the fascinating world of Universal Design for Learning, equipping us with a systematic way of ensuring that the needs of every learning is planned for before the lesson. She capably demonstrated how this worked both what she shared and how she shared it.

Quinn Norton – tantalized us by the description of her studies of emergent feral network collectives. She challenged many of our pre-dispositions about the Internet and those who use it, about hackers and hacker spaces, and about how we accommodate and engage the learners in our classrooms who are likely to be a part of these communities.

At this conference we have heard less about technology, and more about pedagogy. We have heard less about ‘how does this work’ and more about ‘why and for what purpose?’ We’ve been introduced to the theory and deeper thinking – but in ways that relate to the practical work we will be returning to do in our schools and classrooms next week.

The provocation and stimulation that we have felt from listening to each of our keynote speakers will, I’m sure, provide a catalyst for ongoing professional conversations long after we’ve said our farewells from this conference.

What we know about learning has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. MRI scanning that allows us to see inside the brain as learning occurs, and landmark studies such as John Hattie’s Visible Learning (Hattie, 2008) mean that we now have a much better idea of how learning occurs.
As a result of these developments and others, we know that quality learning is a combination of the following elements:

● Personalised learning: no two individuals learn in the same way, nor do they bring the same prior knowledge to a learning experience. The way we learn is as unique as our fingerprint.
● Socially constructed learning (Johnson, 1981): the collaboration, peer-tutoring and reciprocal teaching that occurs when students work together results in a deeper understanding of the material being covered.
● Differentiated learning (Bloom, 1974): the prior knowledge we all bring to a task means individuals require different levels of challenge, pace, content and context.
● Learning that is initiated by students themselves (Ramey & Ramey, 2004): typically when a student initiates a learning experience or exploration, they learn more.
● Learning that is connected to the physical world and authentic contexts: children learn through interaction with others and the physical world (Malone & Tranter, 2003). Learning about pond ecosystems is more powerful if students visit a pond in addition to learning about them in a classroom or textbook.

Most of New Zealand’s school buildings were built in a time when direct instruction was considered the only pedagogy that resulted in effective learning. “Factory-style’ learning (where all students learn the same things, at the same time, in lock-step fashion) has largely disappeared from our classes. However the actual classrooms largely remain as they were originally designed, and still retain the suggestion of factory-style learning.
Features of modern learning environments
Modern learning environments that align better with what we know about the brain and student learning can facilitate traditional pedagogies such as direct instruction if needed, but they typically offer students and teachers much more:

● Flexibility: the ability to combine two classes into one for team-teaching, split a class into small groups and spread them over a wider area or combine different classes studying complementary learning areas.
● Openness: modern learning environments traditionally have fewer walls, more glass and often use the idea of a learning common (or hub) which is a central teaching and learning

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space that can be shared by several classes. They provide opportunities to observe and learn from the teaching of others and be observed in return. They also provide access to what students in other learning areas and level are learning, so that teaching and learning can be complemented and enhanced.
● Access to resources (including technology): typically a learning common is surrounded by breakout spaces allowing a range of different activities, such as reading, group work, project space, wet areas, reflection, and presenting. There is often a mixture of wireless and wired technology offering access as and when students need it, within the flow of their learning.
Learning environments to support student learning
Many of the modern learning environments being built today effectively promote and support a range of pedagogies including delivering, applying, creating, communicating and decision-making. Often they are centred around a student ‘home base’ where a lot of the teaching and learning occurs but these bases also allow access to other learning spaces. Not all classes will need all spaces all of the time, but students should have access to them should the need arise.
Modern learning environments support strengths-based teaching. For example, two classes collaborating on a science project that requires them to publish what they’ve learnt in the form of an educational poster will achieve much better results if both classes have access to one teacher who has considerable skill in graphic design and one teacher who has excellent knowledge of science and scientific inquiry.
Case study: Stonefields School, Auckland
Stonefields School is made up of a series of ‘Learning Hubs’ which are larger, shared classroom areas surrounded by breakout spaces that offer students a range of different learning activities: group work, digital production, project work, reflection spaces, reading spaces, etc. Typically three teachers share each hub, and the collaboration that takes place in them mean students have access to a range of teacher strengths, and classes can be reconfigured easily to meet learner needs.

Learning environments to support teacher learning

Open and flexible spaces also create more collaborative communities of practice for teachers. Having access to the teaching practice of your colleagues to model and to be modeled to, supports the development of effective teaching practice far more than teaching in an isolated, private space. This ‘de-privatisation of practice’ means that honest exploration of teacher strengths and weaknesses can take place in an open and supportive environment.
Beginning and provisionally-registered teachers have far more support around them in open learning spaces. Their progress can be monitored, supported and celebrated by their more experienced colleagues and ongoing low-level mentoring is easy to put in place because they have seasoned professionals to the left and the right of them.
Modern learning spaces can support teaching as inquiry better than single-cell classrooms. Working in an open, flexible learning environment where inquiries are shared, interventions devised collaboratively and reflections based on both self and peer observations, leads to a more robust, continuously improving community of practice.

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