Who do you want your child to be?

If you didn't see "Who do you want your child to be" on SBS one, 7.30-8.30 11/8/09 then it is worth digging up one of the many webcasts of it or reading the transcript to get a grasp of the ideas discussed. Having the attention span of a gnat, a show has to be relatively interesting to grasp my attention for 60 mins.

From the beginning it was full of ideas, presented in a viewer friendly manner - geared at parents and educators. Well worth watching a couple of times.

It reminded me of the first time I read Raising boys by Steve Biddulph.

Why students are taking easy options in yr 12

Students are taking easy options in year 12. Schools are encouraging students not to take harder upper school subjects. Why?

Students have:

• little resilience - failure is an end product rather than a path to success
• do not experience exams in lower school and fear them
• have little work ethic - would rather coast than strive for excellence
• fear not making TEE score due to perceived issues with scaling and moderation
• have not been driven to complete lower school curriculum in lower school heterogeneous classes and have to make large leaps in year 11/12 to succeed (ongoing problem)
• have difficulty moving from developmental approach (going at own pace is ok) in lower school to graded syllabus approach (you're a C get used to it, we have to go at this pace to finish the course) in yr 11/12
• Core subject areas (Maths, English, S&E, Science) have lost actual teaching time to "equal" learning areas T&E, Health & PE and the Arts.
• VET courses are more readily available and provide an outlet after fatigue of 10 years education

Schools:

• Fear poor league table scores (and thus only attract weaker, behavioural issues students)
• Small academic classes creates timetabling issues
• Require more effort and experience by teachers to get students to pass a difficult subject
• Can only "suggest" that students take harder subjects
• "Good" students are being attracted to academic schools and G&T programs
• WACE issues; have to reach 100% graduation rate (therefore coach students out of difficult classes if at risk of failing)
• Specialist subjects are harder to staff (check the number of schools unable to run Lit, Economics and Maths Specialist or more than one class of each if they wanted to) - exacerbated by the half cohort
• Schools now cater to 'all students' rather than focus on academic students
• Correcting behavioural issues takes precedence to correcting academic issues (just check time allocated to both in any school) - schools can be seen as behaviour centres rather than learning centres.
• Lack of rigor and programming in lower school programmes
• No single point of responsibility within learning areas for performance with loss of level 3 HoD positions to behavioural/administrative roles
• Have a large number of 'refugee' or 'parents with work permits' students with little primary schooling when entering high school
• Students that traditionally left school in year 10 and now staying until year 12
• Students that may have found work in better years are finding it harder to do so in today's economic climate

This is a rather cynical comment and to be honest, this year we have the largest equivalent G&T, Calc course than we've had for a number of years (it raised some concern that we had been too lenient when coaching for subject selection) and next year's cohort for 3A MAS/MAT is an order of magnitude larger again. The issues listed are not true in all schools and when identified schools do look closely at them. I think many of them have occurred all at once due to the simultaneous introduction of the NCOS.

It's not rocket science. Just talk to a few teachers, they'll give you the remaining reasons.

Dispositions and education

I was reading an article on the disposition of teachers that investigated how teaching schools should identify potential students in a similar way to how doctors are identified. Personality traits or "dispositions" to act could be used as a criteria to predict the success of student teachers.

It tied neatly to a discussion I had in the staffroom this week about how teachers had a persona (or disposition) they had to maintain in society. In the past, there was a clear expectation that teachers were pillars of society. They have been maids that did not date or marry. They have been philosophers, terminally interested in the pursuit of knowledge. They have been experts in their subject areas and acknowledged for their ability to do something at a level that is beyond most. They have also been over harsh disciplinarians, child molesters and cretins.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The idea of dispositions was interesting as it worried me. Too many see the 'A type' personality as the only teacher worth having (poor treatment of practicum students in schools is common where "lack of personality" is the main reason for failing or "great personality" hides multiple failings). The 'A type' type teacher is good from an administrative point of view as typically there is little in the way of additional behavioural assistance required, students graduate out of their classes and when kids look back they say that they liked the teacher (but may not have learned much).

Yet if you dig a little deeper and ask a student that has left school who they admired, it seems to be the opposite. It is the disciplinarian, the teacher that yelled at them and gave them detention, the one that made them try harder when there was little left in the tank to try with. The ones that did not need to be liked to maintain a high level of learning in the classroom (but may have needed assistance from time to time to reset the classroom - think back to that time you have seen a teacher explode at a class or a student).

I'm concerned that if you define dispositions, that inadequate research will define the disposition required as being the "type A" personality and exclude the people I have always admired as the true teachers - the teacher that takes pride in their performance first (often to their personal detriment) rather than the teacher that rattles the least amount of cages. The one that seeks out performing and under performing students with mild motivational issues (I don't mean students ill suited to the classroom environment) and lights a fire under them when the easy option is to let them figuratively play cards in the back corner.

Maybe it is these people we need to search out and put discipline frameworks around for education to reach more students.

Assessment and reporting, not more exemplars!

I notice with despair that systemically we are going through another attempt at defining what an A -E is for a variety of topics and year groups to help teachers accurately mark assessment. I wonder how long it will take "those in the know" that providing A-E definitions either is so cumbersome with detail that it is impossible to use or too vague to be of any real use.

There are good reasons why teachers have used percentage grades (and not exemplars or rubrics) historically to assist in judging grades. Percentages combined with basic teacher judgement has been the only valid tool for judging students A-E on assessments. The simple fact is that teachers gain accuracy in assessing students over many years and by teaching as many year groups as possible in their sector (primary or secondary). By watching students mature into more capable students, teachers are better able to determine the snapshot grade of students and judge what makes a student an A (in any given year) and what type of student deserves B-E or the politically incorrect and now defunct F.

The sheer breadth of the curriculum and the variety of responses by students makes the task of defining A-E for all topics in all learning areas a task that serves no real purpose. Teachers do not have the time to find and refer to these exemplars when marking nor are the exemplars accurate for a variety of socioeconomic sectors (yes, I am saying an A in a low socioeconomic area is lower than a higher socioeconomic area by reducing amounts until TEE examinations). Much of marking is viewing the material of the student, noting key issues and making a teacher judgement on where the student is positioned on a continuum. As more students are guided through to TEE (or yr 7 graduation) by a teacher, teachers get better at giving feedback to students with information that helps them reach their potential.

That is what teachers are paid for, they get better with experience and this experience (or lack of) should be valued where accurate and monitored and augmented by senior staff whilst experience is being gained.

(...now if we were being given EPW's with solutions for all maths NCOS then I might give a little cheer as a good use of systemic resources).