Robust discussion and teaching

Here's a thing I've noticed - robust discussion is not the norm within a school - teachers tend to avoid the nitty gritty and take a superficial look at issues within a school - many focused on short term gain and rapid results.

Subject passion was one of things taken for granted when I was young. I don't know if these sorts of discussions are had any more to the same degree and those that have it are looked on as a little strange. School is to be left behind at 3.15.

When I was at uni (strangely) my finest example of subject passion was amongst the Psychology lecturers. Each lecturer openly discussed their viewpoint and critiqued/criticised the views of other branches of psychology - behaviourists ridiculed those focused on the cognitive, everyone thought the Freudians were nuts and so forth. It was passionate, it was open and everyone had a beer together at the end.

Teachers have to tow the DET policies publicly when speaking as DET teachers - after all we are employed and representatives of the department, especially apparent when talking to parents and the media. But... teachers are entitled to personal opinions as professionals at the coalface. It is possible to have an opinion contrary to your employer, yet still do the job as the employer wishes. A teacher can hate OBE, yet teach it in the way they are employed to do. A teacher can dislike middle school, but be trained in it and be a great middle school teacher within the school and support its ethos.

To establish new concepts effectively each new concept must be subject to frank and open discussion. Once a decision is made (by whoever has the responsibility for the success and failure of the decision), the process needs to be given the full opportunity to succeed and evaluated with an open and critical mind. Opinion on the results of a decision are bound to be divided and this depth to evaluation should be welcomed. Position on a topic should be defended but flexible in the wake of fair criticism. Successes and failures need to be identified and analysed. Where once the devil's advocate and the ability to argue both sides of an argument was welcomed, today this diversity in education perhaps is not as valued or viewed as it should be.

Teaching salary and pay claim

The pay claim in WA is not about annual percentage increase. It's about about redressing the lack of increases over a long period of time. The reasons for teachers falling behind other professions by at least $20,000 are many and varied but the ramifications have been widespread.

1. Students no longer see teaching as a desirable profession - TEE scores are low
2. Teacher morale is low
3. The perception of teachers in the community is low - we are seen as those that couldn't find real work (who else would spend 4 years getting a degree (that a budgie could get entrance to and pass) - then to accept wages lower than manual labour)
4. Student performance in schools is lower than expected (although many point the finger here at OBE) - as evidenced by state school TEE performances
5. Extra curricular work has become the norm and expected rather than a point of difference between teachers
6. Union has weak support and leadership
7. DET has a teacher shortage in critical areas of schools
8. Business has become critical of quality of student output from school and has publically supported the need for teacher pay reform
9. Students are leaving the state school system for private school education despite having access in many cases to smaller class sizes and access to long term experienced teachers bound in place by 'tenure' type agreements

Unfortunately the community does not equate professional status with social justice or good education. Professions in WA are not valued by the community by the work that they do (and the promotion of social equity) but by the money that they earn.

If we are to change the mindset of the public, raise expectations, raise morale of teachers in the profession and improve the calibre of those entering the profession, a fixed rate increase is required (such has been done in other countries) with a publicity campaign explaining why the teacher rise is different to other rises (such as public service rises) and a good idea before inflationary increases are addressed.

When the mean salary of a teacher approaches at least the average WA salary, then we have a starting point for an improvement in the ongoing education saga.

Indigenous Education cont..

I spoke to a colleague about this issue (one of the successful teachers at the school motivating indigenous and low performing/high aptitude students) and he raised (surprise.. surprise) that the most significant factor was the contact he had with parents. It's true too, he has a joke with parents and doesn't hold back if he thinks a student is going in the wrong direction - it works for him.

His main criticism is related to parents saying one thing and doing another - the support of students had to be real as the lure of government money and money from working provided a real alternative to completing school. As a parent it is so important to do what is promised in the way of student support.

A situation today raised another pertinent factor - the need to maintain high expectations. A request to drop to an easier class via the AEIO was turned around with a reminder that assistance was available (and had been organised at the start of the year) but was not being used. The student walked away happy being able to discuss their concerns, negotiate a better situation and we maintain a student university bound. The downside is that I find these type of discussions rather time consuming, taxing and draining.

The final factor to raise today is the common avoidance of indigenous students to conflict. I had to double check with the AEIO afterwards to ensure that this wasn't one of the cases where student says yes and means no. He assured me that this was not the case and we can verify this when the student comes to the arranged tutoring.

All in all not a bad day..

Successful Indigenous/Aboriginal Education

A worrying trend is seeing high performing indigenous students in year 9/10 fall away in year 11/12. The success of students that buck the trend seems highly dependent on the contribution of a few people in schools.

Firstly the AEIO is one link in the chain. This is the person that has had the perseverence to keep the kids coming to school. They discover and solve issues on a regular basis and to be successful are firmly entrenched in their communities.

The follow the dream programme and their coordinators do a great job in lifting students to a level where university is a potential option. I've seen students, many that have been given up on, be brought 'back online' multiple times and crawl toward some form of success in year 12.

Individual teachers are such an influence on these students lives. Many of these students feel persecuted in the classroom by students and teachers. A good teacher can redirect some of this insecurity into the student seeing the consequences of their own negative behaviour and the same teachers also investigates any ongoing social issues themselves. And when I say good teachers, I mean great teachers, as these teachers are giving life changing assistance and it's not something just anyone can do. I say that with confidence as I'm pretty useless at it, despite best of intentions on many occassions.

Student support and integration are key components. Successful students can be persecuted by their own, leading to dumbing down their ability and overacting behavioual problems. Student integration into non-indigenous social groups can help break the helplessness cycle. Great student indigenous role models especially in year 10,11,12 prove to be so important. They show that success can be achieved, it's ok to work hard and quite possibly fun/cool too!

Administration is often the missing link as they are often seen as the punitive rather than supporting source. The punitive support is essential as there are many lower performing students that require that punitive backbone to underpin their positive behaviour. The other half of the equation is the ability of administration to assist teachers, programme coordinators, students and AEIO's to promote ongoing student success.

DET Pay rise and the fine print

It seems the new pay rise has been delivered and interesting stuff is beginning to hit the fan. My criticism and scepticism of the union (and reason for not joining until now) seems to be valid.

The pay rise offered (in the scant terms described and according to heresay) is below inflation, is over three to four years, has reduced conditions and has the approval of the union. DET looks to be negotiating hard and trying to get this resolved quickly before the imminent state election.

Union information is posted here:
http://www.sstuwa.org/.

but here is the counter argument to union information posted by Marko Vojkovic at http://www.platowa.com/ :

"The official base rate increases are:4.5%, 4.5%, 4% and a floating 2% at the end of the agreement. That equates to 15% over 3+ years. If you take into account it is only backdated to this pay period, it is almost over 4 years.

It is a 1.5%-2% increase on EBA 2 with extra trade offs. The 15 hours PD in your own time is there as is the flexible working hours (which strangely do not appear in the summary) These are from 8am to 6pm.

There are increases for ST2 in terms of a new level, but these must be applied for and involve extra duties so it is unfair to include them in any pay rise. It is a complete sell out. The Minister required Executive to endorse the package before showing it to members.

There was a deadline for the Executive to accept it without actually seeing the full package. Ross Greenwood, the financial analyst on the Today Show on Channel 9 stated that the cost of living has increased by 4.8% and if your wages do not increase by that amount, you are taking a pay cut. This offer asks teachers to take a significant pay cut over 4 years.

This is the complete opposite of the Twomey Report recommendations.Once again, we have been let down by our 'experienced' Senior Officers.When was this offer negotiated and by whom?

If arbitration is suspended, then we are back in negotiations. Either our Senior Officers have been negotiating in secret or they have accepted DET's first offer without presenting a counter offer.

Either way, I feel incredibly let down. Even the way it has been presented to members reminds me of those misleading government ads.

We will now see a huge VOTE YES campaign waged by our Union Senior Officers and their group of sycophantic supporters who believe that what is good for the Labor Party is good for teachers. This can not be allowed to happen yet again."

As always the devil is in the details and the fine print.

Updated here (6 October 2008).

Negative aspects of middle schooling

I've been watching the progress of middle schooling - especially as many schools are moving to this model. As per my last article about action research, here is another topic that is affected by the all change is good brigade.

Here are some negative aspects of a typical middle schooling:
a) Middle schools typically have a different timetable to senior school, limiting subject offerings across the whole school.
b) Teachers become specialised in middle school practices limiting involvement in upper school classes.
c) Student primary to secondary school adjustment and corresponding levels of personal responsibility is delayed until year 10 (eg. behavioural issues are later to develop)
d) There is an apparent reduction in rigour of courses as a disjunct is often created between primary delivery, subsequent middle school delivery and senior school expectations
e) Behavioural and pastoral care take precedence over academic performance
f) Students become isolated from upper school modelling of appropriate behaviour
g) The consequences of non-performance in middle school (as students develop at their own meandering and dithering pace) is not immediately obvious to students.
h) Heterogenous classes (non-streamed) classes are fixed with the same content taught across multiple classes, limiting opportunity for class advancement or addressing teaching moments.
i) Teachers in middle school classes can feel isolated from their subject area
j) Resources become spread throughout the school, causing repetition and higher net cost

There are counters to each of these arguments. I know this.. but I raise some of the concerns here to promote discussion of possible pitfalls.

Creativity and thinking

The idea that all work done in school ends in assessment narrows the creativity of students.

Since I was a lad in school, the amount of creative work done in class has decreased. My guess why is that getting students to do 'thinking' work is too hard to mark and crowded out of the curriculum with the need to assess specific content.

Funnily enough, where creative work was once welcomed by students (and I'm sure even primary teachers today can verify this), in high school students spurn it. They don't seem to want to put in the effort to create something and try different applications of concepts, especially when more than one way exists to complete a problem.

At the start of last term I asked students to create a two bedroom house in under 150 m2. Then I reduced it to 100 m2. There was graph paper, a little computer programme that you could create a floor layout and some leading questions on a worksheet available for those that couldn't start. I had pre-prepared another similar project with sporting fields. If I did these projects in primary I'd get all sorts of models and different ways of measuring, reports on how objects were laid out and so on.

I did have a couple of stand out results in report form. On the whole though I had way too many not finish/start saying this is too hard, this is stupid, I'm not doing it.. For that group of students I've put away the open ended task for now.

On the path to senior school where do students lose their creative will? Is the need for constant assessment reducing the opportunities and skill of students to be creative?

Freethinking, valid statistics and improper research

Citation is the bane of free thought. An article is judged as likely truth or mistruth by the amount of items in a reference list.

We unconsciously imbue our students with this ball and chain when teaching referencing and citation. The freewheeling thought required of creation and inspiration gets buried in the need for regurgitated, "critical" evidence and reference based research. This whole blog has spurred the need for recycling concepts and using other's posts to lend credence to ideas. If you're here, it's to hear what I think based on my experience and disagree or agree with it. After all my view might change 14 minutes from now with a point made by you!

The action research movement and the original OBE movement has been encouraged through the "I must be right because I can quote 15 other people that agree with me." It's complete and utter nonsense. We should not disregard tried and true methods because a group of people say it is wrong and those using them don't scream their obvious effectiveness. Nor should we disregard a notion based on anecdotal evidence even though it sounds right but we can find no evidence that anyone has documented to support it.

While we're at it I resent the need to write boring, uninspiring articles lacking emotion. We need to encourage children to write with the passion they are born with rather than bleed it out of them with needless detail and bland academic articles.

As educators and professionals we need to use proper and valid statistical methods on real samples (applied mathematics!!) to question what we know and evaluate new ideas with an open mind as experimental concepts before we implement them to a wider student community. I enjoy research and experimentation (being a research and development manager in my not too distant past) but dislike change without proper consideration (in the same way I dislike bad implementation of IT). Education too often has used our students as guinea pigs instead of treating children with the same care as say new pharmaceuticals or an algorithm in a defence contract computer program.

Introducing poorly prepared bland children to society is equal to a crime of introducing a dangerous drug to the masses or creating a flawed computer programme that controls nuclear missiles. One student can change the world. Let's create children that can conquer that world and not just document then sleep through it.