Are we as educators delivering a relevant curriculum?
Are we thinking about the future?
What place does creativity and innovation have in the learning experiences of our young?
When we use the word motivated we generally have an internal representation of an individual who has the ability to be focussed, on task and able to complete a project that has been set.
I’m assuming that many parents and teachers are familiar with the ‘generalisation’ that boys tend to be better at maths and girls better at languages but is there anything in such notions.
A recent piece of research reminds us of the importance of finding ‘excuses’ for educational performance rather than looking at cultural challenges and self- limiting beliefs.
Your social media presence is checked by 57% of employers. This could mean that your Facebook presence is the First Impression you have on an interview panel.
This is a superb, sobering and provocational talk….
Educators need to reflect upon it…
Parents need to think about…
Students should be consulted….
“ I have never met a de-motivated pupil”
Your reaction to that statement may be one of incredulity which could result in you not reading the piece that follows – and when I tell you I stand by that statement then you’ll may even consider the possibility that I am either delusional or at least a bit ‘out there’.
So before you stop reading let me explain.
When we use the word motivated we generally have an internal representation of an individual who has the ability to be focussed, on task and able to complete a project that has been set.
In terms of pupils we often imagine motivated pupils as being fully engaged in the learning process; undertaking work set with a high degree of positivity.
However ‘motivation’ could be seen as that certain something which encourages an individual to engage in a behaviour which ‘moves’ them from one emotional, physical or environmental ‘state’ to another. In essence all behaviour is motivated by something… even inaction can be said to have some internal or external motivator.
Perhaps when we say that a person is ‘de-motivated’ we are really saying they are not behaving or moving in a ‘direction’ we think they should be.
We could consider every behaviour as being the result of MOTIVES, MODIFIERS and MODELS.
Our MOTIVES are our basic needs or drives. We can consider these drivers has having an biological, physiological, emotional, social and aspirational base.
We do not however, always behaviour directly on the whim of these drives. How we respond to these needs are MODIFIED by our values, attitudes and beliefs AND we defer to MODELS of behaviour which we have produced results in the past or have been observed in the actions of others.
The psychological make-up of the individual in this framework is seen as being the interplay between the unconscious drivers and internal modifiers.
In terms of LEARNING (which can be considered in behavioural terms and as a result of engaging in learning activities) students will engage positively or not depending upon a mix of unconscious “decisions”. These “decisions” are influence by the individuals own perception of:-
RELEVANCE of the learning objective (What’s in it for me)
EMOTIONAL CONNECTION to the learning activity or objective
COMPETENCE and SKILLS in terms of ability to undertake the task
In this mix there will also be the degree of compliance (or not) the student demonstrates in the learning situation.
COMPLIANCE may, in some cases drive pupil with a low estimation of their competences to excel because they like (or fear) the teacher; like (or dislike) the topic; deference to social groups which hold learning in high regard (or not).
The attached presentation below outlines some key points which could be used to promote debate about learner motivation. (There is also a PDF on Learner Motivation on the XTRA Ressources Page).
In short educational tasks are motivational IF..
They are RELEVANT (having a clearly defined purpose), EMOTIONALLY ENGAGING and given a REAL WORLD CONTEXT.
If a pupil perceives a task to be beyond their self-defined skill level they may become anxious.
If a pupil perceives a task to be below their self-defined skill level they may become bored.
When perceived skill level is just below the challenge of the task the learner; has emotional connectivity relevance and context we may find that there will be an increase in learner motivation.
Penair Parents Session 24/01/12 PowerPoint can be found here : Penair240112
There has been the generalized stereotype that at higher levels boys ‘do better’ at maths than girls is a long held piece of ’common knowledge’.
The thing about most pieces of ‘common knowledge’ is that it is often based upon rhetoric and misunderstanding rather than actual research. How many of you reading this believe that the poem ‘Ring a Ring a Rosy’ is about the Black Death? (see The Real Twilight Zone)
I’m assuming that many parents and teachers are familiar with the ‘generalisation’ that boys tend to be better at maths and girls better at languages but is there anything in such notions.
A recent piece of research reminds us of the importance of finding ‘excuses’ for educational performance rather than looking at cultural challenges and self- limiting beliefs.
A University of Missouri researcher and his colleague have conducted a review that casts doubt on the accuracy of a popular theory that attempted to explain why there are more men than women in top levels of mathematic fields. The researchers found that numerous studies claiming that the stereotype, “men are better at math” – believed to undermine women’s math performance – had major methodological flaws, utilized improper statistical techniques, and many studies had no scientific evidence of this stereotype.
This theory, called stereotype threat, was first published in 1999 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Essentially, the theory is that due to the stereotype that women are worse than men in math skills, females develop a poor self-image in this area, which leads to mathematics underachievement.
“The stereotype theory really was adopted by psychologists and policy makers around the world as the final word, with the idea that eliminating the stereotype could eliminate the gender gap,” said David Geary, Curators Professor of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. “However, even with many programs established to address the issue, the problem continued. We now believe the wrong problem is being addressed.”
In the study, Geary and Gijsbert Stoet, from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, examined 20 influential replications of the original stereotype theory study. The researchers found that many subsequent studies had serious scientific flaws, including a lack of a male control group and improperly applied statistical techniques.
“We were surprised the researchers did not subject males to the same experimental manipulations as female participants,” Geary said. “It is reasonable to think that men also would not do well if told ‘men normally do worse on this test’ right before they take the test. When we adjusted the findings based on this and other statistical factors, we found little to no significant stereotype theory effect.”
The researchers believe that basing interventions on the stereotype threat is actually doing more harm than good, as vital resources are being dedicated to a problem that does not exist.
“These findings really irritate me, as a psychologist, because this is a science where we are really trying to discover what the issues are,” Geary said. “The fact is there are still a disproportionate number of men in top levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We need more women to succeed in these fields for our economy and for our future.”
The study, “Can stereotype threat explain the sex gap in mathematics performance and achievement?” will be published in the journal Review of General Psychology
Related articles
A survey of employees published this week concludes that 57% percent would check the social media presence (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) of applicants.
This has some very interesting consequences for job applicants who’s web-presence is, shall we say, less than positive. Of course, you could argue, that your Facebook page or Twitter comments are personal and only there for your friends, which may well be your intention, but it does not mean that those same comments, photos of ‘crazy nights’ will not be used to inform a potential employers ‘first impression’ of you.
Of course you could say that what is on-line is not really you … and so does not fully represent who and what you are. Again, that is true, but research undertaken last year by psychologists found that on-line behaviour was an indicator of off-line personality.
So there you go…
Some thoughts about first impressions …
Oh, Happy New Year by the way.
Whilst accepting that philsophically education is about more than passing exams, the reality is that examinations are part and parcel of the learning journey.
The number of young people who approach their end of school or end of year examinations in a stressed, underprepared way is disproportionate to the amout of effort schools put into giving support and advice.
Sometimes young people are their own worst enemies in this regard. They are given the advice and support but are either not interested at the time it is given OR simply do not take it in in the ‘form’ it is given.
The workbook below is designed as a weekly programme which allows students to focus on what needs to be done with regards exam preparation AND offers practical advice on how to set about ‘revising’.
It is available from
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/alan1152
Everything You Wanted to Know About Revision
So another school year has passed – not sure where the time is going.
I looked at my diary and found that the series of various school workshops booked as early as last March have now moved from ‘pending’ to ‘active’.
On Monday I will be in Helston School offering some, hoepfully, motivational and forward-looking insights for the new Year 11.
I guess the challenge is to find out what kind of useful things to say to the class of tomorrow….
I mean afterall they will have heard much of the educational rhetoric that we, as educators, are so keen on quoting BUT the issue is that the world is very different now to when many of the current educators where wearing the ‘final year of school’ shoes.
For my own part I will keep promoting the four Key Skill areas of :-
BUT how to get the message through in a way that makes sense to the students and cuts through the political and educational agendas of schools, parents and government.
Certainly in the eyes of many parents and government officials all that seems to matter is the quality and number of examinations each young person ‘takes’, ‘sits’ and ‘passes’. Of course schools and professional educators are in the business, one would hope, of going beyond the limitations of ‘examinations’ and exploring ways of engaging young people in achieving beyond their potential whilst developing and inspiring them to take an active role in society; hopefully disuading them from joining the cult of anti-intellectualism. (see http://www.alanjonesuk.co.uk/2010/05/cult-of-anti-intellectualism.html ).
So in order to get you thinking about your own educational agenda and ideas have a listen to this from Sir Ken Robinson…
I found this report on an American ‘blog’ – quoted in its entireity below…
U.K closer to Removing Climate Change from the National Curriculum
If a government official’s recommendation is followed, children in the United Kingdom will no longer learn about “climate change.” Instead, British science teachers will go back to teaching “the basics” of that subject.
Earlier this year, Education Secretary Michael Gove called for a review of the nationwide standardized curricula in core subjects. Upon announcing the review, Gove promised to reverse the “profound mistakes” made by the previous government and to restore “academic rigour” to the classroom.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/7876-uk-closer-to-removing-climate-change-from-national-curriculum
In some of my school INSET workshops I often ‘play devils’ adviocate when it comes to discussing some of the more recent classroom activities which ‘Accelerated Learning’ Gurus have writen widely about.
The idea that teaching according to the ‘specific learning style’ of the individual pupil for example.
We all learning in different ways, with different modalities in different contexts. The last of these citeria seems to me to be the most relevant.
I may have a VISUAL learning style preference in one situation and a KINESTHETIC preference in another…
I may need to be encouraged to explore ‘different ways’ of learning for different situations…
BUT in order to be an ‘empowered learner’ I would benefit from having access to a wide range of learning strategies and not just the one which some spurious questionnaire defines.
The widescale adoption of Brain Gym, which developed from something called Educational Kinesiology, is one of those ideas which perhaps need to be critically assessed.
In most schools Brain Gym is a movement based activity which is said to improve concentration and educational performance. Now whilst I agree that he use of ‘structured’ physical activity can provide a useful ‘break state’ within a learning session as well as inspiring a sense of fun and group participation (valuable things within he learning environment), it is some of the more ‘far-out’ claims made by “Brain Gymers’ that need to be questioned.
In many way Brain Gym has a pseudo-scientific feel about it. Appeals to ‘neurology’ through vague generalisations about left and right brain ‘connectedness’ and more concerning the idea that physical movement ‘frees the flow’ of some non-specific and mystical sounding ‘energy’ are of real concern.
When asked about the ‘research’ that has been conducted into the effectiveness of Brain Gym we are told that:-
Does Brain Gym® International have research on the effects of the Brain Gym activities?
Yes, we offer three primary publications that summarize our research: (1) A Chronology of Annotated Research Study Summaries in the Field of Educational Kinesiology, on the braingym.org website, offers summaries of research studies done by a number of our instructors through the last twenty years. (2) The Brain Gym Observer , formerly the Brain Gym® Journal, published three times yearly, offers in-depth articles as well as reports of an anecdotal, statistical, or theoretical nature, written by instructors about their use of the Brain Gym program in diverse settings. (3) The Research Packet offers expanded abstracts of some of the studies in the Research Chronology.
Internal research (anecdote) shared by in-house or certified practitioners – certainly lacking peer review. Dare I say ‘potential bias’ creeps into these reports?
Again I’m not challenging the notion that structured physical activities could punctuate learning activities in a useful way, but any claims beyond that can and perhaps should be questioned.
For example this kind of statement:-
For more than 30 years and in over 80 countries, we have been helping children, adults, and seniors to:
These are claims which surely need some clarification and evidence.
Of course the promoters of this approach have a mechanism for how it all works…
Brain Gym, we are told, “focuses on the performance of specific physical activities that activate the brain for optimal storage and retrieval of information, Focus is the ability to coordinate the back and front areas of the brain…Centering is the ability to coordinate the top and bottom areas of the brain… Brain Gym movements interconnect the brain in these dimensions.”
Sounds good eh?
Ben Goldacre in Bad Science reports these interesting jsutifications for Brain Gym activities…
“you wiggle your head back and forth because that gets more blood into your frontal lobes for clearer thinking; you contort your fingers together to improve some unnamed “energy flow”; they’re keen on drinking water, because “processed foods” – I’m quoting the Brain Gym Teacher’s Manual – “do not contain water.””
Ben Goldacre, who has written much on this topic, was again forced to comment in his blog (June 4th 2011) because of the following…
“This week I got an email from a science teacher about a 13 year old pupil. Both have to remain anonymous. This pupil wrote an article about Brain Gym for her school paper, explaining why it’s nonsense: the essay is respectful, straightforward, and factual. But the school decided they couldn’t print it, because it would offend teachers in the junior school who use Brain Gym.”
Surely in an educational setting we should not only be encouraging students to question, but also question the very things that we do as educators.
If we want students to ‘question’ then we should ‘model questioning’…
Now, and before I get too many emails in protest, let me state again that Brain Gym activities, in my opinion, have a value as a ‘break state’ or ‘fun activity’ within a classroom setting and can promote ‘engagement’ in the same way that ‘visualisation’, ‘meditation’, ‘role play’ or any other shared task would. But to make some spurious claims about ‘hemispherical balancing’ or improving ‘energy flows’ surely demands the application of critical thinking.
Alan
Bad Science Blog
http://www.badscience.net
Ask any parent or teacher about their main gripes when it comes to young people and amongst the top five will surely be the fact that “they just can’t or won’t listen!”
And, of course, they’re right.
Young people do not really listen… but then again how often do parents and teachers?
There have been studies on communication skills. In general they find that many of us spend 70% to 80% of our waking hours communicating. Of that time, we spend about 9% writing, 16% reading, 30% speaking, and 45% listening.
It’s remarkable then that we spend so much time listening and yet have the least formal training in the skill.
One of the reasons young people are not so good at listening is the fact that they rarely see good listening modelled by parents and teachers.
The Chinese character for listening sums up the key components of active listening…
YOU use your EARS and EYES to give UNDIVIDED ATTENTION so that your HEART can connect with what is being said.
Be honest now…
When was the last time you gave your undivided attention to anyone?
Often conversations happen within a context where there are background distractions, other people demanding attention and perhaps even your own ‘genuine interest’ in what you are being told all of which mean that your ‘undivided attention’ cannot be given.
Studies have shown that immediately after listening to a 10-minute oral presentation, the average listener has heard, understood and retained 50 percent of what was said.
Within 48 hours, that drops off another 50 percent to a final level of 25 percent efficiency.
In other words, we often comprehend and retain only one fourth of what we hear.
Other studies indicate that our listening skill suffers as we get older. Ralph G. Nichols, long-time professor at the University of Minnesota (now retired), says in his book Are You Listening? that “if we define the good listener as one giving full attention to the speaker, first-grade children are the best listeners of all.”
Nichols has described in speeches and articles the “10 worst listening habits of American people.” He says that listening training is primarily eliminating bad habits and replacing them with good listening habits and skills.
Here are the 10 bad listening habits according to Nichols:-
Once you’ve convinced yourself the topic is uninteresting and you turn to the many other thoughts and concerns you’ve stored up in your mind for just such an occasion — you start using that unoccupied 75 percent of your mental capacity.
A good listener, on the other hand, might start at the same point but arrives at a different conclusion. The good listener says, “Gee, that sounds like a dull subject and I don’t see how it could help me in my work. But I’m here, so I guess I’ll pay attention and see what the speaker has to say. Maybe there will be something I can use.”
Many of us do this on a regular basis. We tend to mentally criticize the speaker for not speaking distinctly, for talking too softly, for reading, for not looking the audience in the eye. We often do the same thing with the speaker’s appearance. If speakers aren’t dressed as we think they should be, we probably tend not to listen closely or we may immediately classify the speaker as a liberal or conservative, a hippie or a square.
But if we concentrate on what the speaker is saying, we may begin to get the message and we may even get interested. Remember, the message is more important than the form in which it is delivered.
We may hear a speaker say something with which we disagree. Then we can get so concerned that our train of thought causes us to spend more time developing counter arguments so that we no longer listen to the speaker’s additional comments. We are busy formulating questions in our mind to ask the speaker, or we may be thinking of arguments that can be used to rebut the speaker. In cases like this, our listening efficiency drops to nearly zero because of over-stimulation. So, hear the speaker out before you judge him or her.
Too many of us listen for facts and, while we may recall some isolated facts, we miss the primary thrust or idea the speaker is trying to make. Be sure that your concern for facts doesn’t prevent you from hearing the speaker’s primary points.
Many speakers are so unorganized that their comments really can’t be outlined in any logical manner. It’s better to listen, in such a case, for the main point. A good listener has many systems of taking notes and selects the best one to fit a speaker.
This is probably one of the more common bad listening habits. If you’re speaking to a group and suddenly you become aware that most of your audience is sitting with chin in hand staring at you, that is a good signal that attention is being faked. Their eyes are on you but their minds are miles away. We probably have developed our own faking skills to a high point. Let’s recognize what we’re doing and eliminate faking as a poor listening habit.
People who whisper in an audience of listeners fall into this category. Some distractions can be corrected (closing a door, turning a radio off) to improve the listening atmosphere.
We tend to listen to things that are easy to comprehend and avoid things that are more difficult. The principle of least effort will operate in listening if we allow it to do so.
We’re all aware of the emotional impact of some words. Democrat and Republican are emotional words for some people. So are northern and southern for others. There are hundreds of examples. Don’t let emotional words get in the way of hearing what a speaker is really saying.
Nichol’s 10th bad listening habit is the one he feels is most important. It is wasting the differential between thought speed and the speed at which most people speak.
So if you are guilty of any of the above ‘bad habits’ maybe you could look at strategies to improve your overall listening abilities and then MODEL them for those who you’d like to see improve theirs.
Alan
To be told or to be encouraged – the educators conundrum.
Research carried out by Elizabeth Bonawitz and Patrick Shafio published in “Cognition” recently addresses the question as to whether teachers should ‘tell pupils’ the way things are or encourage them to ‘explore’ and ‘play’
Remember in the review of the National Curriculum in which Michale Gove (Education Secretary) was reported as saying “lessons should emphasise the learning of facts and equip children with essential knowledge” and “every child must be given a “profound level” of mathematic and scientific knowledge” (The Guardian 20th Jan 2o11)
Remember the collectibe sigh of educators who saw this as yet another call for a return to ‘traditional’ approaches that ‘served us well in the past’. Well that may be the case BUT we are living in a society where ‘knowledge’ is growing exponentially… it has been suggested that technological knowledge is doubling every 72 hours!!!
So how can ‘facts’ be treated as being anything other than the learning of ‘temporary information’?
Historical “facts” are matters of interpretation and cultural perspective. (I like the provocative statement that History is a set of lies we agree upon)
Scientific Theories can best be desrcibed as ‘temporary statements of how things work’ which are open to review and change in the light of new discoveries.
In philosophy the nature of ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ form the heart of the debates philosophers engage in.
So, does not the rhetoric of Gove suggest that ‘facts’ are permanent and unchangeable?
This is a very worrying suggestion.
As said elsewhere in my other writings I would maintain that there are four key skill domains which need to be developed..
a) The ability to ACCESS and ASSESS information
b) The ability to COMMUNICATE IDEAS effectively in a range of media
c) The ability to MANAGE SELF
d) The ability to MANAGE CHANGE
Of course there are ‘ideas’ which need to be shared as the basis upon which to build new ideas, but these are not necessarily to be given the status of ‘fact’.
The skills within each of the above ‘domains’ can be developed within a context of exploration, discovery and play rather than within a framework of having to learn a series of ‘facts’.
Knowledge is not Understanding nor does it necessarily bring Wisdom.
Now here’s the real educational challenge… Encouraging Creativity
Real creativity stems from the ability to share, communicate and think.
It requires those involved in creative endeavour to feel that they have something to bring to the table; a degree of confiidence.
It requires those involved in innovation be be able to consider and invoke change.
It also requires “domain knowledge” – for example Mozart could be creative because he had come to understand the nature of muscial scales and harmony. This understanding would have come from tuition and guidance as well as being encouraged to ‘play’ with ideas and perhaps ‘bend some of the rules”.
This domain knowledge requires the individual to free to engage in the collection and assessment of information – not necessarily facts.
My fear is that the ‘teaching of facts’ creates the false idea that the learner simply needs to be ‘told stuff’, moreover once ‘told’ and ‘learned’ then there is no need to ‘question’.
Research carried out by Elizabeth Bonawitz and Patrick Shafio published in “Cognition” recently addresses the question as to whether teachers should ‘tell pupils’ the way things are or encourage them to ‘explore’ and ‘play’
They suggest that “the efficient learning of specific facts may lead to the assumption that when the adult has finished teaching, there is nothing further to learn—because if there were, the adult would have said so”
Reading the full article and the associated research validates what many excellent educators already knew instictively. Discovery through play and exploration is more empowering.
I would also propose that play within the context of developing specific skills within the four ‘skill domains’ mentioned above is the best way to prepare young people to be active within a world that does not exist yet; to undertake work and careers which are no currenlty on offer and tackle the problems and challenges we do not yet know are problems and challenges.
Dryden and Vos a number of years ago wrote the same thing – they were calling upon educators to realise that what children are being taught to interact with the world as it WAS and as it IS and not necessarily what it WILL BE when their pupils take their place within society.
Alan
Read the full article here : The Economist
