NewStuff

Only in Melbourne can you have a top of 44 degrees with a cool change and a massive drop in temperature so quickly.

Well – of course this phenomena is not restricted to Melbourne but there is a strong narrative about ‘4 seasons in one day’ here. I’ve grown up with it and I love it. In fact, I’m mindful of the fact that I love it – so in case I’m tempted to complain, a thought gets triggered about how much I love the ironic predictability of unpredictable weather.  I kind of take that for granted now.

How then did this become to be the case? Not the weather – I’ve no idea about that. Rather, the idea that I can develop beliefs that inform the value of my lived experiences? Which came first – my subjective experience of the phenomena or my posture towards experiencing it?

And really – why should you care about my subjective experiences in the first place?

‘Position-Practices’ are referred to by Edwards (P 52) describing the epiphenomena of structures in a school. There is some discussion around Giddens use of the term and alternative views put forth.

For my purposes, I’m going to co-opt what I felt Gideon’s was alluding to – that is, structures can only exist as lived experiences. There may well be artifeacts as evidence of past actions rooted in codified structures – but structurisation can only exist as a social activity. Meta narratives that come to exist through interaction with social artefacts over time may well inform structures and agency – but only when enacted in a social context, laying dormant otherwise.

So in a school that wants to develop learner agency, the theory of structurisation is crucial.

For a system then, the implications are terrifying. Schools need to be social sites where structure and agency are emergent affordances of the site specific learning ecology.

From a system wide perspective – how does ‘the system’ develop actions which co-design learning ecologies which in turn afford the social construction of structures and agency?

The point of all of this of course is to give our kids the power to shape their world. So how does this as a vision for education gain currency in the national / state narrative around the project of state education in the first place? Or is it possible that such an enacted belief about education may well hold subversive qualities in and of itself?

So – It is day two of the new year – 2019. My whole day has been orientied towards the hot sun pushing us around a water park down here near Geelong.

The paper I’m looking at whilst my face cools down and starts to peel off is a nifty piece on Heidegger, Descartes and subject / object dualism.

The important bit to note here is that the author picks up on a theme which is useful for insight into the role of developing learner agency. That is the Heideggerian distinction between ‘ready at hand’ and ‘ready to hand’ (or the varying intrepretations of this). Cucen points out that the self (ego) does not engage the object as ready to hand – but as ready at hand. This is important as it positions the self – as dasien. This means that the ‘self’ has a ‘way of being in the world’ that is informed by that world. That this self is not a stranger to the ‘objects’ in it’s world – rather, the self is an object in the socially constructed world of continuous subjects.

I do wonder if we are playing in the space between ontology and epistemology here.

In so far as I’m interested – the thought that occurs is that we need to recognise that our learners have developed a way of being in the world by the time they step foot in our learning spaces. In fact they are adept at working out the power relations between different actors in the network / structure and what it takes to gain access to that power or avoid undesirable positioning.

Transformative Principals is a pod cast that I’ve been enjoying for a number of years. The host has a genuine sense of wanting to improve his own journey with a view to all the learners he serves growing as a result.

The episodes I listened to today were about a bi-lingual school and a motivational speaker. Quite an interesting juxtaposition as I was loping around the lake with the morning sun glaring angrily down on the world.

The bi-lingual school focused on a number of issues:

• The school was for developing literacy in English
  The school was for developing literacy in Spanish
• These two foci informed everything else.
• All staff were bi-lingual in these two languages.
• The school was more than about language acquisition – rather – about cultural growth. Both native Spanish and non-native Spanish populations did not value this as much as the school did.

So here is the thing – what are the dual discourses going on in any learning community? Are they counter narratives? How would I know what the different expectations of the school community are, if they align with the principal’s and how to mutually co-construct and enact a set of values where each demographic has a voice? Such a democratic view of ‘who has the power to be heard in our community’ may not actually be a  value!

The point is that these guys knew what they were there for, formed a belief about what the dominant narrative ought to be and over time brought all the elements together that would sustain this narrative. At the same time, those elements / teachers / families / resources that did not align with the new norms were off-boarded.

I like bonsai trees. Whilst the little tree itself is a beautiful thing – it is merely the canvas through which the Bonsai Master reveals his nature and values. So too with learning communities.

Our kids and families objectively experience the phenomena of the school – the timetable, their books and  other artifacts. These are the products of someone else’s story. For example – the book is in Spanish – not German. Someone made that choice, selected a book and put it in front of a student. On the other hand, there is the subjective experience of the Spanish book by the student and her family. I wonder if it is useful for both sets of stories around the Spanish text book to be part of the same narrative?

This kind of dualism is increasingly important to identify and understand. Without knowing what the competing narratives in the community are, it is difficult to know how the preferred dominant narrative is evolving. If parents or students are posting / complaining that too much time is being spent of Spanish cultural celebrations and not on learning Spanish history – or that the science room should have more robots  and less money spent on language instructors that may identify what is working well – ie: communication channels, but that the purpose for the school is not as widely communicated as would be hoped by the leadership.

My suspicion is that where there is a strong core narrative in a school and its leader, the identity of a learning community is accessible. This accessibility is important because it produces a sense of identity in its constituent members.

Teachers Taking up Explicit Instruction: The Impact of a Professional Development and Directive Instructional Coaching Model

Something very strange is going on here. It is Sunday. Not that big a deal really – however. On Friday, our excited little Vegemites half packed their schoolbags and rushed full tilt out the door – leaving a trail of moldy crumbs, paper and half eaten apples and Christmas wrapping paper that would do Hansel and Gretel proud.

In fact, the Christmas tree is still teetering in the assembly hall whilst the left over food scraps and empty bottles have barely begun to rot into a maggot infested new year bundle of joy. Give it a week or two of blistering summer heat. Pitty the poor cleaner – or some other mug whose responsibility it is to try and get any essential service done at this time of year.

So none of that is very strange – sadly. The bit that sticks out here – is how inspiring ERRR#24 

was. Let’s be clear – they are all pretty great. As usual, I’m deeply inspired and want to take this and make it happen for the kids under my care.

So here is my attempt to reflect on what I’ve been listening to and then somehow operationalise it.

Key points to jot down before I get distracted and forget:

• Instructional coaching is not coaching.
• Very highly structured
• Triad approach including admin
• Built on Relationship – trust.
• Uses lots of instructional protocols
• Not content specific
• Focused on surface knowledge
• Prioritize How to teach,  Who to teach then What to teach (own emphasis)
• Shared language / matrix about what is being observed in the class and how to talk about what is being observed.
• Deep and surface are terms relative to each other. You can’t have one without the other. So start with surface learning.

Where to with this?

Read a copy of the report provided to the ERRR. Identify the elements that would be useful from the research to plug into our existing framework.

ie: Start with our instructional model. Get this in embedded then build from there.

What is in the tool bag and who designed it?

Fundamentally – Lorraine is an expert in this – and I am not. How do we get safe with deferring to the external expert and being inducted / apprenticed from novice to expert?

So – what is so strange about this. Well it is Christmas Holidays for goodness sake – now I’m all excited about doing an inquiry into explicit instruction! It’s a miracle!

Not too long ago Dylan Wiliam tweeted something about this being the most important thing for teachers to know. Hyperbole put to one side – I think there is a genuine case for teachers to be current in the language of cognitive load theory. This is a potted summary as well as a nice collection of other pedagogical theories out there. I wish I’d seen this a long time ago (the web site that is).

One way I know if my brain has latched onto so some idea or other is that I keep referring to the latched onto thing is different contexts. Cognitive Load Theory is one such thing. Frustratingly for the rest of me – I’ve no real idea what the theory is or any detail about it. This then is an attempt to scratch that bit of my brain which is itching with curiosity.

Over time, I’ll pop down the different terms I keep hearing in relation to this idea. There are three main folk serving as my source for knowledge on this:

Craig Barton

Greg Ashman

Ollie Lovell

Effects:

Goal Free Effect.

Means / Ends  strategy impacts on working memory while problem solving. Working memory is focused on achieving the goal – where the ‘learning’ may best be achieved without having to search for a goal.

Worked Example Effect

Be specific about what part of a problem you want the students to learn. In a multi step problem – only focus on the one step as the worked example. Then move onto the next.

Split Attention Effect

What do you want the students to focus on? Then don’t put a heap of other things for learners to have to decode (think diagrams and graphs etal) in order to get to the actual learning you intend to happen.

Practical Techniques for K – 12 Classrooms by Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy

This new version of the book is powerfully useful. The pragmatic and authentic approach makes this accessible and transformational all at the same time!