Peering into a Post Covid world

Many kura, teachers, and leaders, are turning their attention to what our Post Covid school world might look like. That act of looking ahead is in itself a supremely human act because it is an act of hope, and faith, hope and faith that the future will be better, that we will come out the other side of this (and any) crisis, that we in fact have a future at all.

In thinking about that future I have on several occasions evolved and voiced some thinking around the structure and focus of 'education' (as opposed to learning), and it goes something like this.

In a child's early years much learning takes place via that child's interests, or passions. Children explore, they play, they experiment, and then as they progress through their Primary years they have increasing levels of skill attached to that, often using with Direct Instruction (which is not always from teachers, but often from whānau). Throughout this we are of course meant to be developing a series of important dispositions that we call the key competencies, things like thinking and self management.

When those students hit secondary school, it's as if we think that it's now time to get our 'big girls'/boys' pants on' and start some proper education. Students are expected to sit down, shut up, and listen to the teacher because the teacher knows everything. We think we are filling their heads with knowledge and skills, based very much on the 'just in case' view of learning. I may be doing us all a disservice, but it seems as if we think that this is the way universities work, after all students sit in lectures of 100-250 students, and a learned professor lectures at them for an hour, so that must be real learning. It's the way universities operate. It ignores the fact that while that may have been true decades ago, increasingly universities are shifting undergraduate practice towards more collaborative work and/or more project work. That is, the days of the lecture being the sole source of real learning are in fact coming to a close. What's more, increasingly universities (even pre Covid) have been operating online with recorded lectures that are rewindable.

And then those who a deemed able are allowed to enter what we call Postgraduate education where they do a combination of 'papers' (classes that very often involve collaborative work at the least) followed by a research project, a dissertation, a thesis. These projects are guided by a supervisor, and are often based on areas of interest to the student.

It's as if we have gone full circle, from passions at the beginning, back to passions at the end. Spot the odd one out .. secondary education. WHY do we think that suddenly learners have different motivations for their learning? Why do we think that adolescents are happier than any other group to sit down, shut up, do as you are told, and we will fill your head?

Now we should not underestimate the impact of adolescence and hormones, but the more I think about it the more I think that in itself it is a very compelling reason for doing things differently. Adolescent learners are more likely to be oppositional, more likely to question, simply because of the rewiring of their whole brain 'architecture' as mother nature does her neural pruning. Giving adolescents choice (called agency), giving them permission to chase their passions, would surely be a better way of doing this. Is it any wonder that we struggle with engagement?

If students are engaged with their passions, wouldn't this be a much better way in which to scaffold those dispositions that we want our young people to gain.  We want them to be self managing, we want them to learn the benefits of persistence, of being able to relate to others, to be able to think and communicate. Wouldn't that be much more likely to happen if students are following their passions? Wouldn't that be a more likely outcome if they have to wrk collaboratively? I know that it is when I am doing something I love that I am most likely to learn new skills.

I don't ever discount the value of direct teaching. I am a bit of a Hattie fan, and his work shows repeatedly that direct teaching has a very high effect size, it impacts very significantly on learning (any effect size above 0.4 means that the strategy is doing more than would be achieved if you did nothing)

That said, notice that even here is it not at the top of the list of most powerful teaching strategies.

Almost the only time I learn new stuff is when I need to do so. Aren't we guilty of a degree of conceit if we think that adolescents want to sit down in front of us and learn everything we want them to learn,  when WE decide they are to learn it? After all, as adults we typically don't.

So what am I suggesting? I am suggesting that we treat learning in the middle secondary years more like an undergraduate course, with a combination of direct teaching and collaborative project/passion based work. Learning would be partly face to face (after all, I think we have had our belief in the importance of relationships strongly reinforced), and partly distance.

In the senior secondary school, courses could look more like a post-graduate course: key subjects that are delivered often collaboratively, and a passion requiring a real output. Each student walks the journey with a dedicated supervisor walking alongside. Amongst other things, the supervisor might bring specialist subject knowledge to support the student's learning, and project. The supervisor would be there to work out what NCEA standards should be attached to the work of that student. The learning leads the assessment, rather than the assessment leading the learning. That sounds a lot more motivating to me. I think it also tells us that we have an even greater need for talented subject specialists staffing our schools, that's for sure.

As a Manaiakalani school, this all sounds like a wonderful next step or evolution in our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. It's not something you can do tomorrow, but it might be a vision of a future for learning for our teenagers.

At Hornby High School we have already shifted our junior curriculum to learning in cross curriculum groupings like English and science, or maths and physed.  We don't have it right yet, but we are certainly heading in what I think is the right direction.

It also sounds a lot more like a great pathway to creative excellence.

How would that go?
Love to hear your thoughts
Robin Sutton
Tumuaki