Trivia, Information and Meaningful Learning

I find it interesting the degree of consensus apparent in America's education discourse today. Much is said about how 21st century learning is all about creativity, critical thinking, curiosity and character. Everyone's growing interest, from Barack Obama on down, is in "STEM" (science, technology, engineering, math). While many private sector people are still excited about using data to personalize instruction, few people anywhere endorse the current regime of standardized testing. Finally, with the availability of flipped classroom software, iPads, Kindle, google and video games, everyone seems to want to do away with the textbook. 

Yet it seems we still have a fundamentally unresolved issue. That is, what information do students need to learn, and how should they learn it? 

It's easy to say (as Tony Wagner does in Thomas Friedman's op-ed this weekend), that most of the information we teach students in school they will "never use" or they can easily look up online if/when they need it. But when you look more closely at the discrete nuggets of information we teach, it starts to look less trivial. Do we really think students should not learn basic information about American history or biology?

Indeed, the original decision to include information in the curriculum was independent from the core objectives of the oft cursed industrial model of education. In fact, teaching information is based on a fundamental understanding about learning: information provides the schema for analyzing claims, creating ideas, and expressing oneself. Students don't need to learn all the information out there, but there is a minimal level of knowledge necessary for intellectual reasoning and core skill competency. 

We should think twice before we launch a crusade to eliminate all the content from the curriculum. In fact, it may not matter so much what content we teach, so long we (a) teach facts (b) teach enough of them (c) teach them effectively and (d) don't let the information instruction overwhelm teaching critical thinking, literacy and creativity. 

Enter new concept: multi-layered learning. In multi-layered learning, student experiences draw from content and skill instruction simultaneously. Good teachers have been doing this forever, but intentionally structuring pedagogy to couple skills and information together offers greater promise for driving achievement in both. Multi-layered learning takes what would otherwise be trivia, and makes it information relevant for application. 

Two models are particularly effective in delivering multi-layered learning: game-based and project-based learning.  Both models provide some level of structure with elements of choice. Both models have a fundamental orientation to information, while calling upon the learner to do something. Both of these models are highly interactive, involve individual and group learning, and connect discrete skills and knowledge to larger learning objectives. Even mini-games that emphasize drill and practice are an important part of preparing students for 21st century challenges--these games can be a fun and effective way to teach foundational information without using class time, therefore making learning in school all the more rigorous and meaningful. 

Let's forget the idea that education will ever be easy. It won't. There is no panacea, short-cut or simple answer. Information, skills, and understandings all matter. If we can do more to build our instructional practice around multi-layered learning, we will have a better chance of engaging students in their learning and providing them all they need to succeed in the future. 

Fate of Civilizations: Glory is Now Available for Pre-Order!

The game-based learning program I have been working on since July, Fate of Civilizations, now has a project on Kickstarter. We are looking to crowd fund the first publication of the game Glory, which we will be ready to ship in September.

Gamers, teachers, parents and students: please pledge to help make Glory a reality for kids and gamers across the globe. Glory is fun and you learn while you play. It is based on AP, NYS Regents, and Common Core standards; it has mechanisms for continuous game play, so players can unlock new powers, track their progress and shape the game itself. We have developed a curriculum guide and online web application that accompany the game, making this a complete offering for a teacher looking to drive achievement and improve efficiency and engagement in the classroom.

Here is a link to the project:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/970345467/fate-of-civilizations-presents-glory-a-history-boa

We'd love to have you as a backer!

Unions (Part 3) : Teacher Support, Protection, and School Reform Flexibility

Today we will reflect on two aspects of unions that are very important as it comes to how schools function, but that often are overlooked by outside observers. These two aspects are (1) support for teachers and (2) flexibility with school day, structure and management approaches.

Teaching is hard work. Between planning, managing student behavior, grading, contacting parents and administrative duties, teachers have many different "buckets" to tend to, and it takes a good deal of energy, hard work, talent and experience to effectively manage all these areas. For the average teacher (especially in their first few years) doing the job well means getting support, and the sad truth is that managers in the workplace don't always operate from this support framework, but instead act strictly as evaluator, delegator, or punisher. While this could thus open up a discussion for us about school leadership, let's instead look at how unions respond to this reality:

1) Unions protect workers from unreasonable or unfair management practices, giving the teacher room to learn, make mistakes, and grow without the unnecessary stress of unbearing supervisors.

2) Unions offer avenues for professional development that otherwise might not be accessible to teachers. For instance, unions offer generous course catalogs of credited and non-credited courses teachers can take to advance up a salary scale and maintain their licensing. These courses are low cost or cost free, and address critical needs for staff. Unions also protect teacher time, which gives them the opportunity to pursue areas of growth through fellowships, independent research, travel, and graduate study. 



These aspects of unions are important and should not be dismissed by critics. At the same time, these services do draw criticism. For instance, critics could respond by saying:


1. teachers need to be held accountable, and unions protect bad teachers
2. unions shouldn't be in the business of providing professional development--it's not their core function, so it shouldn't excuse unions from obstructing reform and improved schooling.
3. while some teachers might advance their practice with time off, others might not. 


So unions protect teachers, and that can be a good thing or a bad thing. Big surprise. What can we learn from this little exercise? Well, it clearly places the union between the teachers and the management. So if management is working for reform and teachers are lazy, unions are the enemy. But if management is incompetent or corrupt and teachers are hardworking and skilled, the union is the hero! Clearly, on the teacher side, we know that neither extreme is the truth. Perhaps we should look at a corollary issue--what does management in a school actually do? How does management interact with, or should it interact with, the union?


While politicians make the rules, unions are still instrumental in setting them and this is frequently sited as an obstacle to reform. School leaders find union reps to be a thorn in their side, disrespecting and subverting well-intentioned efforts, and calling out minor infractions of work rules that might be counter-productive in the first place. Leaders cannot manipulate their staff when a vigilant union rep is around, and this truth can go both ways for the students. With tight budgets, principals can't ask unionized teachers to stay late without paying them overtime, and a series of issues stem from just this one conundrum. Questions abound about what schools could be without unions, and charter schools are a laboratory testing these hypotheses. We ask: What could we do with a longer school day? Longer school year? More flexibility with staff assignments? More options for holding teachers accountable? 


With experience as both a unionized teacher and a non-unionized teacher, and through my observations of what is going on at other schools across the nation, here is my conclusion on this point about unions, teacher support, and flexible school rules. I'd argue that the union is not the problem--though it also does not contribute enough to the solution. Rules in schools are not set by unions, they are set by politicians who are accountable to voters and donors. The unions do have a voice and this voice is generally used to do what unions do--protect workers rights. I would argue that this is not such a blatant cost to the students, because protecting teacher time, privacy, and academic freedom actually serves the students in many ways. By contrast, having longer days (one of the most sought after goals of school reforms) is not a recipe for higher achievement by itself. Instead, higher achievement comes from this equation:


longer days+good curriculum+good teaching+good social support=higher student outcomes


Charters that produce better results with longer days often have better teachers, better leaders, smaller classes, excellent enrichment courses and STILL work hard to protect their teachers. Taking away unions might take away some of the bureaucratic headache associated with reform efforts, but it would not guarantee that all the building blocks for achievement are in place--it could just as easily lead to more burn-out for teachers and students as bad/desperate managers pressure the school to do more, but not better. 


With all that is said here in support of unions, I want to emphasize that I do not support tenure nor do I support union "protections" that run counter to sound research about good student learning. 

East Africa and the News

African history, politics and economics has had a long, slow introduction into the core curriculum of American education, and it couldn't be too soon. As our world increasingly globalizes, the significance of Africa's problems and successes will have ever closer links to our lives, and the next generation will need to be prepared to face the realities coming out of Africa head on.

But herein lies the problem: too often all we do is talk about "Africa," as if everything there is the same. Our modern understanding of Africa is a mosaic of images and headlines, from famine in Ethiopia, genocide in Rwanda, and the the World Cup in South Africa, yet somehow Americans still confuse Africa for a single country. Therefore, when the headline "The threat from East Africa" crop ups in the Washington Post last week, the reader needs to have some prior knowledge to digest the treatment of terrorist threats in Uganda and Somalia. How do we insure that that young people in middle school or high school today are getting the education necessary to fend off threats in the coming decades? 


To understand foreign cultures, polities, and economies that shape our world, students need a rigorous education at the secondary level. When it comes to Africa, for instance, students need to know the regional differences between East, West, Sub-saharan and North Africa. They would need to know about the distribution of natural resources, about the patterns of religion and language, about the formations of collective security and pockets of anarchy. Currently, students will only get exposure to these ideas as a unit or part of a unit in a world history class, and maybe will read a book like Things Fall Apart. I think few people would argue that these treatments of Africa are sufficient; the same could be said of our average urban school's current curriculum offerings regarding the Middle East, China, and India; finance; linguistics; health; hands on skills and the arts. 


As we open the "paper" each day, let us run a test in our minds to see what skills and knowledge someone would need to understand a headline article, and more importantly, respond to it. Then, let us reflect on how effectively we build our school curriculums to guarantee that students gain these skills.