For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Embedding Formative Assessment: Practical Techniques for K-12 Classrooms. It’s one of those education books that really speaks to me, from ‘aha’ moments to moments that I felt comforted as it is validating what I have been doing with my teaching practice for years. I wish I read this book before I became a head teacher. I wish I read this book before I started teaching. In this blog post, I will be reflecting on my own teaching practice according to what I’ve learnt from the book. For my first post on this book, I’ll be reflecting on teacher professional learning.
1. Teacher professional learning needs choice

Teachers are experts in their own learning. Teachers know what their strengths are and what they need to improve on. Most of all, teachers know their students. While schools and systems will have their own strategies, directions and goals, teachers should be able to choose their own professional learning goals within this framework to make the most impact on their students learning. In NSW public schools, teachers select their professional development goals every year within the framework of their school’s strategic planning. I’ve been doing a similar process for a few years before the official professional development goals were implemented. While I was able to support every teacher in my faculty to select their goals, I never felt I supported them enough to develop and monitor the progress of their goals. I had regular follow-up, one-on-one meetings with each teacher throughout the year, along with pre and post meetings for lesson observations once a term. For a couple of years I even had everyone in my faculty doing action learning. However, I never felt the goals, the implementation and the reflections maintained momentum. I had the ‘big picture’ but not the ongoing supportive accountability structures. The book suggests a structured teacher learning community meeting where teachers meet and learn from each other from discussing the implementation and progress of their professional learning goals. The book provides ideal timings for such meetings and ideal frequencies of these meetings. What I find extremely useful is the suggested structure of the meetings as it provides a clear pathway for the teacher learning community to listen to each other, give each other feedback and use that feedback to plan forward. I also really like how this strategy emphasises teachers to be the experts of pedagogy.

2. Teacher professional learning needs small steps.

Teaching is complex. Solutions cannot be copied and pasted from one context to another. What works for one teacher with one class may not work for the same teacher with another class. Teachers need to tailor the strategies they learn in professional learning to make it work for them and their students. This takes time. Often we expect results almost immediately, even for the teacher implementing the change. And when we don’t see immediate results, we think it’s a failure and we don’t implement that strategy ever again.
The book emphasises that new practices take time to develop because they need to become a teacher’s habit. This is the major hurdle. How can teachers be supported so that evidence based practices become habitual, day-to-day classroom practice?

In my next blog posts, I’ll be reflecting on designing learning intentions and success criteria, activities designed to identify students’ understanding and the value of self and peer feedback.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts and experiences on the impact of teacher professional learning. What makes teacher professional learning ‘successful’? What ensures teacher professional learning have impact on student learning?

Scientific investigations are key to being a scientist. A typical high school science curriculum will have the scientific method as a key component. Students learn about the steps of designing a fair scientific experiment – writing an aim, devising a hypothesis, designing a method, analysing the results, scrutinizing the results, drawing a conclusion etc. This is then matched up with writing an investigation report.

In New South Wales, Australia, high school students are required to plan, conduct and report on a scientific investigation of their choice in the Student Research Project (SRP). I have always found the SRP to be a wonderful opportunity for student choice and personalisation of their learning because students can choose what they want to investigate and different students are able to design, conduct and analyse their experiments to different levels, according to their interests, ability level, passion and commitment. However what often happens with the SRP is that students are given a list of pre-approve “experiments” to do at home by themselves. Some popular ones are which kinds of sticky tape are the stickiest, what will keep flowers fresh the longest, what conditions will cause bread to go mouldy the quickest, etc.

While there is nothing wrong with these experiments (as they are effective in enabling students to understand the scientific method and how the write an investigation report), it does not not reflect how real scientists work. Real scientists don’t do research by themselves. They usually work with in a team, often with a mentor/supervisor who guides them in their research. Their research contributes to a bigger picture of research in their field. They don’t randomly pick a topic from a booklet and do an experiment hundreds of students have done before. When I was in third year university zoology studies, my classmates and I had an Honours student as our supervisor and we did a mini-honours investigation on whether skinks can identify predators through scent. It was something that has not been done before in that area. It was a topic that would contribute to the understanding of animal behaviour. It was one of the most authentic, engaging and valuable science learning experiences for me. And most importantly I was guided by another scientist who was more experienced than me. I learnt so much from that apprentice-master style of learning.

So how can we bring that type of experience to schools? I think now it’s easier than ever. With technology, it is now possible to create and maintain community partnerships. For the SRP, perhaps students can partner with universities? Can high school students help contribute to university research? Can high school students partner up with an Honours student or scientist? Perhaps students can use their SRP in citizen science projects such as monitoring the environment?

The SRP is a great opportunity for students to experience “real science”. The SRP is a great opportunity for students to pursue their own interests. The SRP is a great opportunity for students to contribute to scientific knowledge. It’s time to re-think the SRP and think about how can we do it differently to inspire our students.

Licensing info can be found here.

This week I started a new role with the NSW Department of Education. I am now the Secondary Advisor for Futures Learning Unit, an initiative of Innovative Education Reform. Since I started, I’ve been frequently asked ‘What is future focused learning?’ Other synonyms I’ve heard this week are ‘future-proofing education’ and ’21st century learning’. So what are these things?

Firstly, I don’t like the term “future proofing education”. Many things in this world cannot be “future proofed”. “Future proof” makes it sound like some kind of insurance. I much prefer the term “future focused” because it emphasises a process and culture. So let’s get back to it – what is future focused learning?

I think most of us have heard of how things are rapidly changing, how many of today’s jobs will be automated soon and won’t exist, how many jobs for the next generation are not existent yet, how globalisation is influencing economic growth and social structures. Here’s a video that summarises the changes our young people will face and why we need to re-think the current way we design learning.

For me, future focused learning is about looking at the way we currently implement learning and teaching and challenging ourselves at whether this is the most effective way at preparing our students for THEIR futures. Will learning each subject separately enable student to learn how to construct knowledge and create solutions for complex problems? Will a heavy focus on knowledge consumption allow students to think creatively and critically? Is a physical environment that is designed to have one teacher for every thirty students for a short period of time the best way to personalise learning?

I often hear that future focused learning is about learning spaces and technology. Yes, spaces and technology are important, but they work with an underlying key factor – learning and teaching design. You can have the most funky and colourful furniture. You can knock down walls. You can have the latest gadgets. But unless the school culture on learning and teaching is future focused, spaces and technology will make minimal impact.

I also often hear “But aren’t we doing future focused learning already? My students are engaged. I personalise learning for my students. We already have cross-curricular units.” I don’t disagree with this. A lot of things teachers and schools already so are making a massive impact on student outcomes for their community. However, we always need to be striving for ongoing improvement which means continuous change. An important part of future focused learning is for teachers to be researchers of their own practice and develop evidence-based practices that best suit their community of learners.

So that’s my very brief take on future focused learning. I’ll dig down more in later posts. I want to get it out there that it isn’t about colourful furniture. It isn’t about refurbishing a building. Future focused learning is about how teachers teach, how students learn, how learning is designed and how schooling is designed.

What are school libraries used for? I think it’s safe to say that most teachers take their students to the library for physical resources like using laptops, computers, books for research or books for reading. I use to do that too. But lately I have found that I take my students to the library not for these physical resources, but for space, learning spaces that are open and flexible. The colourful, funky, movable furniture also helps, but me and my students mainly use it for the space. We bring our own laptops if we need technology. When I think about it, it’d probably be almost as sufficient if the library was a large, indoor carpeted area. With WiFi of course 🙂

Ever since I started project-based learning four years ago, it has driven more personalised, differentiated learning where students are working at different paces and at different tasks. During the one lesson, some students are working in pairs, others in small groups, and some individually. As the teacher, I might be working with an individual student, instructing a small group or instructing the whole class. What I am finding is that traditional classrooms are no longer sufficient for the pedagogy I have developed and grown into over the past four years with project-based learning. I am finding that being in a traditional classroom, that is designed to cater for 30 students, is now starting to restrict the learning of my students. We need an open space where students can find an area that suits their learning needs for the activity.

My class working in the school library in order to access an open learning space.

In the past two terms, I have been taking my students to the library for this specific purpose – space. The past fortnight has seen my students work in teams to design, conduct and report on an investigation to test factors that affect a parachute’s descent. For this project, students have to work in groups in some parts and individually in other parts. Students always end up progressing at different rates. This is where an open learning spaces is needed to enable this kind of learning to occur efficiently. However, teaching and learning in a open space has its challenges. The main ones I found are:

• Students need to be taught and given the experience to learn how to work in an open space where there are other classes and school staff working as well.
• Students need to be taught how to create their own little learning space in the open learning space. This includes knowing how arrange the funky, colourful furniture for the needs of the learning activity. This is why I no longer have seating plans for my classes. Students need to be given the opportunity to choose who they work with and where to sit or stand to work productively. If teachers always do this for them with seating plans, etc, students will never develop that ability.
• Students need to be provided with the experience to develop self-regulation. The success of working in an open learning space is highly dependent on students to work individually, small groups and large groups simultaneously.

Eventually I’d like to be in a situation where there is team teaching of larger groups of students in large, open spaces. Where teaching and learning isn’t restricted an industrial model of one teacher per 30 students in a small classroom with a seating plan.

How do you use your learning spaces?