The education 'lineout'

A headline last week left this mental image in my head: a rugby player, on the sideline, throwing the ball in to a line out. The player on the sideline was John Luxton, and the players in the line out were all politicians, mostly from the right. The 'ball' being thrown had the word 'education' written on it in childish crayon handwriting.

Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/jamie-george-saracens-throws-ball-into-lineout-10010888o

The words 'here we go again' have kept going round and round in my head. Of course our politicians know exactly what is wrong with our education system, and of course they know exactly how to fix it, in the same way that our local plumber knows how to do the heart valve bypass that a whānau member of mine will need in the next year or two.

Am I sceptical? Yes. Am I more than a little concerned? Damned right, I am. I suspect that a part of the answer will include .. yes, you guessed it.. 'more testing'. What annoys me is that no-one thinks to ask teachers how to improve education once it gets thrown into the political scrum. No-one thinks to look at the weight of evidence that is the 'teachers' 'front row' before suggesting improvements, once education gets thrown into the political scrum.

Yet as a profession we can tell you pretty much all of what is required, and perhaps unsurprisingly there are dissimilarities between what we would say. and what policy makers might suggest. Similarly there will likely be significant differences between what we would say and what the right wing neo liberals would suggest. Their solutions often involve greater choice for whānau. Sadly this in itself is based on.a flawed market model, flawed because it is based on a series of totally unrealistic assumptions like perfect knowledge, and consumer sovereignty.

You see, few educators would try to tell you that we have it right. However lots of educators can point you in the direction of the right answers. Take for example the current poor reading and numeracy outcomes for our learners. Solving this problem is not rocket science. Professor Stuart McNaughton (the PM;s education advisor), in his recent paper on reading, clearly points out that one of the biggest issues on reading in Aotearoa is that there is no systematic and universal approach to teaching reading. The conclusion must be that a good solution would be to adopt a universal approach to teaching reading. Even in this there is no one solution. There seem to be two sides to that argument, both flawed because they assume that the solution is a binary one. The answer isn't EITHER A and B. The loud voices seem incapable fo believing that the answer might actually be a little of A AND a little of B. Similarly with mathematics. Reflection on my own past is depressing when I think that I cam to teaching out of Initial teacher Education with NO (yes that's right ZERO) preparation for h[w to support literacy for learners!!!

The right wing desire to go back to what we have done in the past is another way of condemning the most vulnerable in our society to continuing failure. Our tail of underachievement is largely those of Pasifika and Māori origin, and those on low incomes. This is the result of what we have done over the past, whether it be silo'd subject teaching in secondary schools, or high stakes testing, or the belief that whānau choice will support successful schools and eliminate ineffective ones (educational Darwinism). Those schools that many think are 'successful' are those higher decile schools in which children start life with so many advantages. The success of those children has less to do with the school than with that comparative wealth of households. In this regard, the impact of the Manaiakalani pedagogy in those lower decile schools shows that we CAN make a difference, a big difference, for those children from poorer homes. 

Perhaps the biggest problem is that as a profession we allow ourselves to be taken in by the 'latest shiny thing', without stopping to think about the usefulness, the efficacy, of what we already do.

So .. what would my 'reckons' be (based on the weight of evidence, which is too vast to try to summarise in a simple pre-Christmas post like this) on what we need? Try these:

1. Develop and adopt universal approaches to teaching reading and mathematics. Resource roll out, and insist that these approaches are used. Too many teachers think they know better, with views that are nothing more than 'myth'.
2. Support the roll out of the Manaiakalani pedagogy across all lower decile schools (for those that wish)
3. Deliberately and intentionally support and embed creative and critical thinking (and creativity more generakly.. go back to those wonderful programme Beeby programmes of the 60s) across schools, especially in initial teacher education
4. Reform initial teacher education so that it supports strong behaviour management skills, and the entree into those universal approaches to teaching literacy and numeracy for ALL teachers (not just primary trained teachers). We already know how to do this, just take a look at the NZ Graduate School of Education model.. it WORKS!!!
5. Reform the funding and staffing models for all schools so that they support the demands of 21st century schooling, nit 19th century schooling.
6. STOP politicising education.. we are NOT your political football with which to capture the votes of the right wing, we are our children's futures, our nation';s future.

Well, that's all I want for Christmas.. is it too much to ask? Sadly, yes..

Deep knowledge, collaboration, and creativity

In conversation with a long time friend, we turned to education. To put some perspective on this, he is a recently retired university professor, currently holding the title 'Emeritus Professor,' someone who began life as a secondary teacher before progressing into doctoral study. He has lots of experience at the 'pointy end' of our sector in both secondary and tertiary teaching, study, and research. He is also NOT a 'boring old **', NOT one of those reactionary 'things were better in my day' people - refreshing, to say the least.

The kōrero got around to the issue of research, and how high level research, at doctoral level and beyond especially, often involves multiple perspectives that are brought to bear through collaboration, and how this is often a case of making connections between existing ideas, of creating new understanding by synthesising what we already know. He had a wonderful example of how a fresh water ecologist and a geneticist had combined their expertise to develop a method of DNA testing of fresh water stream water using DNA testing to build a picture of the biodiversity of life in fresh water. All of this requires what I was initially going to describe as 'expert subject knowledge', but I think I actually mean 'deep subject knowledge'. Our world seems to me to be filled with too may self proclaimed 'experts' who in fact operate from a very shallow knowledge base.

As he described some of his work, my mind fired off in all sorts of directions. The first is the importance of subject knowledge. One of the criticisms I still hear of NCEA is that it not longer values content knowledge (and by default that we as a teaching profession no longer value knowledge). For the record let me restate my position: NCEA focuses on thinking. However you can't think in a vacuum. So to teach deeper thinking you have to build knowledge. I suggest that the deeper the knowledge you can develop, the deeper the thinking you can attempt. However for that to happen teachers have to be 'deliberate and intentional' in teaching for both the deeper knowledge AND the deeper thinking. This is one of the reasons that in our Manaiakalani clusters across Aotearoa we share our mahi around the development of critical literacy skills, regardless of the age and stage of our learners.

If we refer back to Professor Peter O'Connor's Creative Schools Index, one of the eleven dimensions of the index is "Discipline knowledge: To develop expertise in a domain of knowledge that involves specialised content and process understandings." I've written about this idea before here.

But another idea struck me: how could we better leverage off the differing levels of 'deeper knowledge' that our kaiako, and our students, each have in order to build creativity, or 'creative capacity', in our learners? Here are some of my 'wonderings' (I'm still trying to decide if I love or hate that word!!) on the question.

Perhaps first and foremost this is a matter of leadership. By that I refer to leadership at all levels in our kura: the leadership of the Principal, the leadership of the teachers, and the leadership of our learners, our akonga. So, what would a Principal's leadership look like if that leadership were seeking to build collaboration amongst teachers, collaboration that might build new understandings of how to cause learning, and how to build new knowledge? What would a teacher's leadership look like as they sought to collaborate with others, and to build collaboration amongst and between akonga? And what would we be encouraging as attributes and habits amongst our akonga if we are trying to help them to understand the benefits, the power, of collaboration in their lives? 

Perhaps passion projects, project based learning, genius hour, call it what you will, is an important component, particularly where that work is undertaken in groups. Perhaps our Business and Enterprise kete is a great example because of requires students to collaborate in groups. Equally, participation in drama, in sports teams, or kapahaka, are important  and powerful ways to build the habits, the attributes, that akonga need to be able to collaborate later in their lives.

I always recall comments from Professor Eric Mazur of Harvard University in a conference address where he said (and I am paraphrasing here) that in his career to that point he had authored 84 academic papers, and not a single one of them was his work alone. Every one of them was a collaboration.

As a specific thought, it does seem to me that at the senior leadership level in secondary kura, encouraging and supporting thinking that connects traditional subject silos would do that. Encouraging new senior courses that leverage off the amazing flexibility of NCEA, where we recombine standards to create new cross-disciplinary courses, might also be an example of leadership. That thought in itself I hope will help inform an understanding of our own Hornby High School journey as we build cross curriculum courses for our learners.

And one final point: this all requires deep subject knowledge. Therefore we will still require subject specialists. We will still require the mathematics teachers, the biology teachers, the English teachers, the Te Reo teachers. It's just that their expertise needs to be layered across our curriculum and our mahi in a way that is different to what we have done for the last 150 years.

Creativity abounds.. more than just a cliche

Presumably in the beginning a cliche wasn't a cliche, but an observation of something that appeared to be true. It became a cliche because it seemed to be so true that people used it often, often as in a lot, and so it became over used, it became a cliche. Social media, and its tendency to cut every thought down to as few words as possible, has meant that a lot of our lives seems to be described in a series of cliches.

So something like 'If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got', was once someone's observation of what they thought they were seeing often  in the world around them., and so thought this was a wisdom about their world. I have come to the point where there is also another way of saying this: "If you think what you've always thought, you'll do what you've always done, and you'll get what you've always got". And in our mahi to improve learning and educational outcomes for learners, this has never been truer.

In this case however there is good research data to back this up. In a Manaiakalani wānanga yesterday I was reminded (as I often am) of Hattie's meta analyses that show (amongst a huge number of profound things) that teacher expectations have a very large effect size in terms of their impact on learners.

"With an average effect size of 0.4, Hattie finds the effect size of teacher estimates of achievement is 1.62 and the effect size of collective teacher efficacy is 1.57."

Reference: https://www.k12dive.com/news/teacher-expectations-top-list-of-effects-on-student-achievement/422029/

So its effect size is even greater than that of collective teacher efficacy, which I've written about before. So it should be no surprise that when you expect creativity, that's what you get. That ought to be exactly what you expect. That ought to be exactly what you get when a kura increasingly immerses itself in the Manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share'.

And.. lo and behold (cue dramatic music, here!!), that seems to be what I am seeing at Hornby High School.  Over this term, our Year 10 and 11 students, as a part of their wānanga time, have been engaged in personalised passion projects (PPPs). Our aim here has been to improve student engagement with their learning, to harness their inner creativity, whatever that looks like. It's time for that reminder that we don't mean creativity in only the creative arts sense (although we definitely mean that too), but creativity across all learning areas for all learners. The PPP approach in wānanga has been an illustration of us not just expecting creativity, but also putting in place those systems, structures, and routines, that are necessary to support it. It offers student agency, it offers the possibility of doing just what Yong Zhao says we should.

He suggests that at the moment we do this:

Whereas we should be doing this:

This is a notion that sits at the centre of our Kāhui Ako plan and achievement challenges.

The net result? My feeling is that creativity is flourishing. I have dipped in to Year 10 and 11 blogs and gained an interesting insight into that flourishing creativity.

Here for example is the work of Lauren and Louise who set out to create a graphic book based around a story that Lauren had written.

Or here, the work of Johanna and Genica, who crated bubble tea, and designed a cafe in Minecraft.

There's Mya who designed and created a quilted blanket in the textiles room.

Or Tamsyn who looked at drawing as a means to improving wellbeing.

There are so many more, and my sample is purely random. I just jumped around on our list and 'browsed'.

And then outside of the PPPs, Nadia of Year 12 was chosen to be a "Member of the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand Young Shakespeare Company 2022 (SGCNZ YSC 2022)", for which she will travel to London.

Creativity everywhere. Is this happening by pure chance? I suspect not. It happens because we have clarity around our pedagogy, a pedagogy that places creativity at its centre. It happens when we place creativity at the centre of much of teachers' thinking, and I hope at the centre of their expectations.

You get what you expect, you see what you are looking for.. the cliches go on, but you get the meaning.

Random 'reckons' and wonderings about creativity

I'm a Sir Ken Robinson 'fan boy'. There, I've said it publicly!!! And his 2007 Ted talk 'Do schools kill creativity' (still one of the most watched clips on Youtube??? Or is it one of the most watched Ted talks on Youtube? You get the idea, anyway) had a significant impact on my thinking, and consequently on my work as an educator, and now as a leader in education.

My connection with Professor Peter O'Connor (University of Auckland) a year ago took my thinking forward into the more immediate area of my work in leadership in a secondary school context at Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School. All of that is by way of background to the fact that I end up doing a lot of thinking about creativity, creativity in kura, and creativity in life.

Much of my thinking is about what creativity looks like in everyday life, and in our kura for our rangatahi, and what deliberate acts of leadership might support its growth and development in our kura. A few days away from the office allows me to think without distraction about this stuff. Rather than a coherent line of reasoning and argument, this piece is more by way of some random 'reckons' and wonderings about the topic of creativity.

My first wondering is if in fact creativity sits along a huge continuum of possibility. I 'reckon' that even simple acts like phrasing a conversation (which words it use, what inflection to place on those words), or deciding which way to turn as we walk, are in fact acts of creativity. That sort of thing perhaps sits down one end of the continuum. At the other end (if my 'reckon' was anywhere near correct) might be the creation of a great painting, the writing a poem or a ballad, or performing a beautiful piece of song. If that 'reckon' were correct, then we could place everything in life somewhere along this continuum of creativity. 

Why is that significant"? My wondering is if that would allow us to open our eyes to the myriad of creativity that is all around us. If so, my 'reckon' might be that this idea might help us to see that creativity isn't something that resides only in the hearts and minds of the 'creatives'. That in fact creativity resides in the heads and hearts of all of us. If we were able to accept that, could it then open the floodgates to allowing us to better harness this wellspring of creativity that I 'reckon' we all represent? If so, I wonder, would that mean that we might be better equipped to address the multitude of problems that confront us today?

As I wandered the streets of the little Canterbury village of Akaroa taking those few vital days to unwind, here are just a few of the things I saw.

One of my fave arts and crafts galleries, called 'Lava'. Retail 'galleries' like this abound in Aotearoa (as they probably do everywhere), and they reveal a depth and breadth of creative talent. I wondered if they are also small 'shrines to creative talent, places of worship that not only reveal that depth and breadth, but also the incredibly low value that we place on creativity. How may of the 'creators' whose work is on sale in such places can actually eke a living from their creative talents?  Do we love to go into these galleries as an act of worship, and a yearning for more creativity in our lives?

There was this little stall selling knitted goods to fundraise for the local health centre. Each and every item was the product of creative endeavour ftom someone, somewhere.

And as I sit writing this, there are these dudes sitting outside the motel unit next door to ours, quietly 'jamming' on their guitars, and singing. I suspect that they are more than your usual 'beer and BBQ' guitar strummers. They are sitting there enjoying the sun, creating by simply performing together. That's creativity too.

 Back in the school context, on the last day of term I went for a wander (as I frequently try to do.. being connected with our learners continues to be the best professional feeling ever), and I came across a myriad of cool stuff going on. Here was Anaru finishing a card table he'd designed and built.

There were students using a gizzmo called a 'makey-makey' to create circuits, and hence code games.  There was a banana being used as a 'controller' for a game, along with copious amounts of blue tack. These were all signs of creativity. And they all seemed also to carry the common theme of play as the students went about their mahi. 

I use the word mahi with some caution, because the mere act of play tends to imply that there is no mahi involved. How could there be when we are having fun? I 'reckon' that's wrong!!! It was reassuring given that Playfulness' is identified as one of the 11 creativity dimensions on the CAST Creative Schools Index. My own personal creativity is often really well demonstrated in the context of 'play'. 

On the last day of term I also had the privilege and pleasure of taking our for morning tea our first two student who this year had gained their NCEA with an Excellence endorsement (that is of course before they have even entered an exam room.. pretty awesome eh!, and I do this every year.. shout those students a morning tea, that is). We were accompanied by their Dean who is also our Head of Science. They reminisced playfully and laughingly about creating hokey pokey as a science experiment. The memory was clearly a rich warm memory. I had the impression that the experience was associated more with play than 'mahi' or 'learning', that it had created a richer deeper memory than may that 'best lesson ever' that we think we have delivered.

I 'reckon' that play is an essential component of our mahi as educators at Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka as we travel our journey towards that aspiration as a 'centre of creative excellence he puna auaha'.

But in secondary education we dismiss play as a valid way of learning, we do so far too often, I 'reckon' we do so at our cost, and to the cost and detriment of our learners. We allow ourselves to be driven by assessment and qualifications frameworks, we assume that we have to be 'grown up' about this 'education thing' and that this means we are meant to 'look like a university'. After all that is what we are meant to be preparing our learners for, right? And that's what learners and their whānau want, right?' 

That of course raised a whole new question of what a modern university actually looks like, but that might be a topic for another day.

The output of collective teacher action

 I've already written about what it looks like when teachers get together and share practice. I was sitting in a staff PLD session this week and our leaders of learning referred staff to the collective output of two terms of 'Teacher Summits', of two terms of teacher sharing.

I clicked on the link to the web page on which we have accumulated the outputs of these two terms of sharing. (Notice that I use the word 'output', because this is what our teachers from across Uru Mānuka have produced. To use the word 'outcome' would mean to talk about the impact on student learning.)

I was profoundly struck by what I was seeing: the distillation of just a little bit of the teacher wisdom, experience, and skill, just a little of the net result of years of that wisdom and experience in how to be more effective in. causing learning. A bit like 'creative commons' on the web.

This is ABSOLUTE GOLD. It is a resource of immeasurable value. It captures what I suspect almost every teacher in training might hope for: a direct statement of what good teaching practice might look like. Of course you don't need to be a teacher in training to see the value of this resource. All of us can find something here that we could apply almost immediately in our daily practice - the holy grail of teacher PLD, the thing that leaves every teacher feeling that their time has been well spent.

And this web page shares the output of just two Teacher Summits, of just one year's work in sharing practice. Wow!!!

This output is one of the many results of our participation in The Manaiakalani Programme in which we have clarity over our pedagogy, an agreement about what we believe matters, about what we believe works, in causing learning. It is the net result of our overt commitment to the pedagogy 'Learn Create Share', our commitment to ubiquity, visibility, and equity, in education. It reflects shared beliefs about what works, supported by strong positive achievement data. That is the Collective Teacher Efficacy I have discussed previously.

And it's deeper, even, than that. These resources are the collective wisdom of teachers cross all age groups. They represent the cross pollination of ideas and strategies across the primary/secondary divide. I hope that this mahi might well mean that we are on the way to eliminating that divide. Because we are all teachers of children.

The power of teachers sharing beliefs, practice, and data

That the Manaiakalani kaupapa works is hard to dispute. The data keeps accumulating: writing progress at twice national averages. As we also know, reading and maths less so (only 1.5x national averages).

Look at the fluency of writing from Jordan, of Year 7. The visual expression of Sofia in Year 10. The list goes on.

I tend to overthink things (too often) and often therefore wonder why this stuff works. I ask the question 'what is it about Leaner Create Share' that creates this acceleration? Is it the pedagogy itself, or is it the fact that we have a clear visible pedagogy that we promote, that is clear to all staff across the kura engaged with this Manaiakalani kaupapa? We should not assume that this is universally so. I have seen many (I suggest most?) schools that do not have a clear pedagogy, and far too many teachers who do not know what they stand for, nor how they will achieve it.

I settled on the view that it doesn't much matter, because it works, and that is the most important thing. I tend to use a phrase that a former colleague would often use, and I say of myself 'I'm not over bright, you know'. 

It was a comment by colleague Gary Roberts (Principal, Hornby Primary School) that generated another of those 'aha' moments for me as we talked about our Teacher Summits run across our Uru Mānuka kāhui ako. He said this is what Hattie calls 'Collective Teacher Efficacy'. Some will no doubt say 'what the ** is that?'

Easy:

The concept of Collective Teacher Efficacy itself is much older. It was introduced in the 1990s by Albert Bandura and is rooted in his concept of self-efficacy, Bandura (1993, 1997). He defines collective efficacy as “a group’s shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment.” Bandura found that the positive effects of CTE on student academic performance more than outweigh the negative effects of low socioeconomic status.

(Ref: https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/ )

In a video interview clip on the same page Hattie (https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/) makes the point that collective teacher efficacy is not only a matter of believing that students can achieve, that what we do makes a difference, but it is also a matter of backing it up with the data to show that it works. The 'effect size' of CTE is 1.57, the highest of any of the potential impacts that the Visible Learning team has investigated. As a point of reference the effect size of simply leaving learners to do their own thing is 0.2 i,e. that would be natural age related improvement.

We have the shared view of a consistent pedagogy, we are building this collective view that all learners are capable of being successful in their learning, we have the data to show that what we do works. We share practice across our kāhui ako, and across Manaiakalani's 100+ schools, practice that we have established works.

Collective Teacher Efficacy? Yup!!!

How do you eat an elephant?

It might be a generational thing, but this was a saying my parents used to use when talking about tackling really big projects .. How do you eat an elephant? And the philosophical answer is of course 'one bite at a time'. 

I was reminded of this on Tuesday afternoon as I walked from presentation to presentation during our second Uru Mānuka Teacher Summit. The summit brought together 106 teachers from across the Uru Mānuka kāhui ako to share great ideas and good practice. It is one of the many many benefits of our membership of the Uru Mānuka cluster, and the Manaiakalani kaupapa that we embraced six years ago.

My ffirst response was a sense of excitement at the incredible range of ideas and practice, and the passion of the presenters presenting. The list was sufficiently long that I had to take three screen shots scrolling down the spreadsheet in order to capture them all. I did so to illustrate my point. Look at the diversity of presentations.

I was also excited by the number of our secondary colleagues who felt sufficiently confident to present to a diverse audience that spanned both primary and secondary sectors. Ka mau te wehi e hoa mā!! That's a tough gig, and I am incredibly proud of you all.

This is the second cluster wide Teacher Summit we have run. How is my Mum and Dad's saying relevant? The summits are a great example of how we crack this problem of improving student achievement across our kāhui ako, across our whole community .. we share practice one idea at a time. 

I keep repeating the same statement, we have many of the answers within our community of teachers. Our best 'bang for buck' in trying to improve achievement is to share the wonderful practice that already exists. 

There is a time and a place for external providers of professional learning, without a doubt (and Hornby High School has been lucky to have worked with an outstanding provider over the past five years). However we can tend to assume that we always need to go to external providers to find the answers.

These summits allow our teachers to come together and share these wonderful ideas. They cross fertilise the primary and secondary sectors, which in my head has always made sense. After all regardless of sector, regardless of shoe size of our akonga, we all share the same core business: causing learning.

The one piece of the puzzle which I feel is missing is the early childhood sector. In my opinion teachers in that sector have some of the best practice of all. We now need to evolve our Teacher Summits so that we engage more effectively in this pedagogical layer with our ECE colleagues. We have slowly been working to bring our Hornby ECE's into the Kāhui Sko. Maybe engagement in our future Teacher Summits is the logical next step.

If we truly want to support community wide change for our akonga, then I think this is an essential next step.

Do I think this just happens by accident? Hell, no! Do I think it happens in all Kāhui Ako? Possibly, I don't have enough knowledge of other kāhui ako to judge. Do I think it is highly likely to happen because Manaiakalani is a community building initiative? Hell, yes!!

How do you eat an elephant?  'One bite at a time'.  How do you secure improved educational success across a community? One good idea at a time.

Relationships and technical skills: the synthesis and creativity of teaching

I love this whakataukī:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

If we were to paraphrase that for education, perhaps it might say:

'What is the most important thing that causes learning for the learner? 

It is the teacher, It is the teacher, It is the teacher'. 

Professor John Hattie, in his meta study that culminated in 'Visible Learning', states:

Teachers–     who  account  for  about  30%  of  the  variance.  It  is  what  teachers  know,  do,  and  care  about which is very powerful in this learning equation. (Hattie, Page 2).

I'd go as far as to say that a teacher's work can be reduced down to two major components: the ability to build and sustain learning focussed relationships with learners (which by the way I think must include a full kete of behaviour management techniques), and the technical ability to cause learning. In saying that, we have to be careful not to suggest that this is a binary thing i.e. it isn't one or the other. It is BOTH, simultaneously. I would go as far as to suggest that causing learning is a 'synthesis' of the two, a synthesis that I think is unique at every moment. As an act of synthesis, perhaps the act and the art of causing learning is in itself an act of creativity as we combine relationship building and technical mastery in our craft in order to cause learning.

My concern with that notion is that it may be interpreted by too many both in and out of the profession to mean that it is not possible to systematise the process of causing learning, and the corollary that to do so is to stymie this act of creativity. Reference to the work of Dr Kevin Knight, and Lois Chick, of the NZ Graduate School of Education, would show such a view to be the lie that it is.

With reference to the issue of teacher technical skill (perhaps better referred to as pedagogy, a word that I am not that keen on, if I am honest), as teachers we have been (if I may generalise) too poorly equipped by much of our initial teacher education. I know that my own initial teacher education 43 years ago included NOTHING about how to support low level readers. I am not seeing much of that in newer grads either, with the exception of one ITE provider. Therefore it is important that as professional educators we are supported to develop those skills. We are all teachers of literacy. How do we do that?

On the subject of reading for example, you only have to read the paper published in late 2020 by Professor Stuart McNaughton, Chief Education  Scientific Advisor (McNaughton, 2020), on the matter of reading, to see that well-espoused. To simplify his paper down to its simplest form, he states that there is no systematic, coherent, and consistent, approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. Teachers in my opinion simply do not have the necessary skills (again, a huge generalisation, but one that I make on the basis of repeated observation).

Yet we have to 'know stuff' if we are to go about our daily work, and in teaching 'knowing stuff' doesn't just mean knowing about supply and demand diagrams of past participles as much as it means knowing how to cause learning. 

Take Professor Peter O'Connor's Creative Schools Index (well, I refer to it as his, but I know that the index is the result of significant work by a large team, my reference is one of convenience). The index uses eleven dimensions in order to assess levels of creativity in schools, and one of those is Mastery. Learners and teachers need to develop, and to show, mastery of their subject matter as a component part of the act of creation. Reframed, that might be interpreted in this way. Jane Gilbert in her book 'Catching the Knowledge Wave' (Gilbert, 2005) redefined knowledge as knowing stuff, AND doing something with the stuff. Contrary to some claimants at no stage did she say knowing stuff was unimportant. Au contraire!! As I have often said, thinking, and creativity, are higher order skills. However to think, and to create, requires 'stuff' to think about, 'stuff' to create from i.e. you have to 'know stuff' to be able to able to think about it, or to be able to 'create' from it.

To briefly shift the focus to another currently contentious learning area, that applies equally to maths. You have to know about columns and place values, you have to know tables, if you are to think about mathematical problem solving. Similarly you have to know how to support and develop reading in learners if you are to cause learning.

Criticism of teachers sometimes suggests that teachers resist change. I reject that notion. While in my career I have met the occasional teacher for whom that might be true, my over-riding experience is of teachers who essentially say 'I understand what you want to change, and why, but I have no idea what that looks like in my daily work, and so how to do it. Show me and I can change.' I recall that personal revelation and revolution in my own teaching and literacy practice when I attended a number of sessions of what at that time was called the 'Secondary Literacy Programme'. It was game changing for me, because it showed my HOW to support reading development  and required only a limited amount of synthesis on my part to be able to adapt that for learners in my subject area. I was learning how to cause learning.

So when I saw the latest work coming from the Manaiakalani team supporting the teaching of reading I was overjoyed. They have by observation identified specific examples of good practice in how to teach reading and literacy across curriculum levels,  from across the network of Manaiakalani schools, on a series of web pages titled 'Literacy exemplars'. They have brought these together as a series of resources, tagged within our "Learn Create Share' framework, organised in a way that is consistent with our high leverage practices in reading, and made them freely available to teachers. The resources cover the whole range of years and curriculum levels, and an increasing range of the specific subjects that students tend towards in middle and senior secondary school.

What's more (and this is the 'piece de la resistance' for me) they are accumulating video recordings of good practice via the Manaiakalani 'Class On Air' programme, video snippets of good practice, open to all. So teachers can see exactly what it looks and sounds like to employ good pedagogy.

This is the very best of sharing practice. Again at the risk of being highly repetitive, none of us individually knows all the answers, but between us all we quite possibly know most of them. I have seen a number of attempts to do this in the past, at least one sponsored by the Ministry, and one sponsored by my former subject association, but I am not aware of any that have lasted the distance. This is revolutionary. This is a game changer. In our hands we have (in my opinion) the means to liberate teachers and learners. This approach offers teachers the 'what it looks like' answers they crave, it offers the ability to create more consistent and coherent approaches to teaching reading in a more systematic way. It offers a level of creativity to teachers and learners while also supporting that more systematic approach to teaching reading.

It won't be the whole answer, and of course it won't be any answer at all unless Principals show strong leadership and encourage, support, and nurture, staff as we attempt to embrace the resources and the opportunity that this represents. Effective change always requires strong, positive, moral, leadership.

What would happen if we did the same with maths?

That's not a bad piece of thinking from a day at the Manaiakalani Cluster convenors' day .. a true tāonga!!

References:

Gilbert, J "Catching the knowledge wave",  2005

Hattie, J  "Teachers make a difference, What is the research evidence?', 2003

McNaughton, S  "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise",2020

Creativity, 'Learn Create Share', and reading

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini 

My success is not my own, but from many others

I don't think this is the first time I've made reference to this whakataukī on my blog, and today was another great example of why it is so apt. Today 191 teachers and support staff from across our Uru Mānuka cluster came together to upskill and make progress on the very tough nut of improving student reading. Improving the educational outcomes for our learners, and so improving their lives, is a collective endeavour. It represents the greatest opportunity to have a positive impact on a whole community, and as I have written before, there is very little in the way of answers that we don't have somewhere within our community, within our collective kete of strategies that cause learning.

However today we took a firm grasp of the issue of reading, and spent the day with reading expert Sheena Cameron and her colleague Louise, working together to upskill on how we can do this better. As Einstein is reputed to have said "insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result" (or something like that anyway). Our actions today (and increasingly consistently over the past decade) across Uru Mānuka, show the lie that was the neo liberal right wing reforms to education that tried to tell us that the market would give the best results. Markets work best (if they work at all) on the basis that each one of us is out for ourselves, and be damned to everyone else.

It is just possible (isn't it?) that one of the results of that approach has lead to the observation of Stuart McNaughton (Prime Minister's Education Adviser) in his 2020 paper "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand, What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise" that there is no consistent approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. We are seeing the consequence of that in declining literacy standards across the country.

So where are we at across the Uru Mānuka kāhui ako? We have made great progress on writing. Our students are on average accelerating writing progress at twice national averages. Reading however is accelerating at something less so, so now it's time...  time to focus on reading. This focus began last year, and our teacher only day this year (postponed from March 2021 because of Covid) is a large building block in this work, expanding staff capability to improve reading. It is bigger even than that though, because it offers learners coherence and consistency as they progress on their learning journey through their years at school as the educators use a common or shared language in their work.

At Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School our own focus on writing has been pretty intensive, both at the junior level, and at the senior academic level. This is because we have the belief that great readers don't make great writers, you have to write to learn how to write. However similarly you have to read to improve your reading. 

Several specific reading strategies stood out for me. The first was the development of the skill of inference, the relationship between the author and the reader, the ability of the reader to read into the author's words the connections and meanings that the author intended.

This took me back to my own learning around creative writing (I do a bit of that as a past time, after completing a Massey Uni paper in 2010), where the basic approach is best described as “Show don’t tell” For example, don't tell me 'the sun rose'. Tell me that the 'growing daybreak bathed the landscape in a warm orange light that brought the bare branches of the trees to life'.

You can't write that sort of thing (I think) until you have learned the skill of inference, and that skill is what makes the relationship between the author and the reader so special. There is a cross over between the two. So teaching students the skill of inference might be expected to help them to write more creatively too?

Of quite obvious relevance to our Manaiakalani kaupapa is the reading strategy of activating prior knowledge. This caught my attention as well given the importance of cultural knowledge and the cultural lens that the child brings to the text. Valuing each child's culturl world view is essential to supporting them to make sense of any text. 

The biggest 'aha' moment for me was the discussion of the reading skill of synthesising. 

"Synthesising is when the student merges new information with prior knowledge to form a new idea, perspective, or opinion or to generate insight. Synthesis is an ongoing process. As new knowledge is acquired, it is synthesised with prior knowledge to generate new ideas

Synthesizing is the most complex of the reading strategies. It lies on a continuum of evolving thinking. Synthesizing runs the gamut from taking stock of meaning during reading to achieving new insight.” Stephanie Harvey and Ann Goudvis 'Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding', Stenhouse, Portland, ME, 2000. .. 

The first paragraph could easily be a restatement of our own definition of 'Create' from our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. It emphasises the importance of creativity for our learners. Every act of connection is an act of creativity, every time learners create meaning for themselves this is an act of creativity, every time our learners add new knowledge to what they already know this is an act of creativity.

The universality of our pedagogy, and the strength of our moral imperative to improve outcomes for our learners, are drivers so strong that we see teachers every day giving their best, and running at 110% in terms of their energy and their input. You can't do that forever, but you can sustain that for a period of time. It is a testimony to the 190+ educators across our kāhui ako (and across the motu, I reckon) that they do this day in and day out, often in the face of significant headwinds of deprivation, and (increasingly) of helicopter parenting.

The challenge for our staff now is to develop a hunch about what to do next to develop literacy skills, regardless of their curriculum area and specialisation, to think about something that might make a difference, try it, and see what the resulting data says. We are all teachers of literacy.

In the meantime, this is what collaboration looks like. This is the power of clustering schools together. This is what 'system change' looks like, at least for our Uru Mānuka community. It is a privilege to be a part of this group of professionals supporting our great community.

Our educational purpose: compliant economic units, or creative human beings?

I was recently privileged to attend the ‘Long term Insights Briefing; Youth employment, the way forward’ organised by MBIE, MSD, and MOE.  There was an interesting cross-section of people and organisations in the room (there were no young people in the room, but we were assured that there were to be separate hui designed to capture their voice, a collective sigh of relief could be heard and felt across the room when we heard that).

As you’d hope, it had me thinking (there would have been little point in going if I hadn’t been prepared to think about the issues!!). I listened to the discussion from around my own table, and the feedback from the other tables in the room, and some themes were pretty evident. There was a general view that education didn’t meet the needs of the group of young people who are most at risk.. There were also views about the willingness and ability of employers to take on young people, to mentor and support them in the work place, and many many more. The views on education were the ones that (understandably) most caught my attention. 

I heard the view that young people ‘graduate’ from secondary school lacking both the technical and the (so called) soft skills to take their place in the workforce. The general tenor of the comments was that schools are not fit for purpose.  There, I’ve said it!!! That sentiment fascinates me. It’s not one I’d disagree with for a single moment. What fascinates me is this. We now live in world in which see young people (actually people in general) as little more than economic units rather than as human beings. In my opinion this is very likely to be the result of thirty five years of market driven economics, and what I believe has been the ‘idolisation’ of the free market. A corollary of this was a discussion at our table that maybe young people at age 13 or 14 aren’t yet ready for the sort of ‘learning’ that we try to deliver, that they are not yet ready for such vocationally focussed learning. How many 13 year olds know what they intend to do in the economy as 20 year olds? How many 13 year olds know enough about themselves to be able to start thinking about that issue, let alone resolve it?

Now an understanding that we are economic units may might not in itself be bad, but I reckon that this has been to the exclusion of other far more fundamental things. I hold the view that being human, being allowed to be human, feeling culturally located and culturally safe, and being capable of forming strong and meaningful human relationships, are all things that are essential before we can learn. These are essential prerequisites before we can be the best that we can be and, if you are wedded to the free market paradigm, before we can be the ‘most efficient economic units that we can be’.

These things are the basis of the so called soft skills that people at the hui were talking about. They are also the same ‘soft skills’ that NZ employers are talking about. Take a look at the ‘Employability skills’ listed on the CareersNZ website. We are assured that they reflect what employers want in employees. Here is the list of the seven essential skills.

The seven essential employability skills

Here are the seven essential employability skills with examples:

1. Positive attitude: Being calm and cheerful when things go wrong.

2. Communication: You can listen and say information clearly when you speak or write.

3. Teamwork: You help out when it gets busy at work.

4. Self-management: You get to work on time every day.

5. Willingness to learn: You want to learn new things to improve your skills.

6. Thinking skills (problem solving and decision making): You try and solve problems or can see where something won't work.

7. Resilience: You get an angry customer but you keep calm, keep working and laugh about it later.

I don’t see any mention there of such things as ‘can differentiate an equation with two variables’ or ‘can draw a circuit diagram’ or ‘can illustrate the impact of an increase in income on a demand curve’. Now I’m NOT suggesting that specific knowledge is unimportant. It most certainly is. I am however suggesting that much of that specific knowledge has less importance than the capacity to be human, to communicate, collaborate, empathise, and think creatively and critically. I am making reference to the key competencies listed in the front half of the New Zealand curriculum. That document aligns really well with what employers want. And what they want are functioning human beings. Functioning human beings are most likely to be the highly productive little economic units that employers want, too.

I am often amused by the contradiction between what employers tell us they want, and what the right wing political pundits often (not always!!) seem tell us they want in terms of ‘standards’. That ‘free market’ mantra lead us down the path to ‘national standards’, and also drives our common assessment of the effectiveness of secondary schools by looking at their NCEA results. Such ‘data’ fails completely to identify those ‘damaged’ young people whom we foster and bring through to near adulthood as functioning humans. Yes they may not have the literacy levels we hope for, but if they are caring compassionate humans, that in itself may have been a massive shift for them when compared with where they began life’s journey. We all too often find ourselves simply trying to overcome the incredibly traumatic beginnings to life that our rangatahi bring to the educational table.

This brings me back to a paper that has resonated very strongly with me, Professor Peter O’Connor’s paper “Replanting creativity in post normal times” (October 2020). From that paper:

“The future of work is human. This inspiring insight follows Deloitte Access Economics’ analysis of changes to the nature of skills in demand since 1988, and extrapolations to 2030. From work of the hands (manual labour), to work of the head (cognitive labour), Deloitte Access Economics has identified an emerging need for work of the heart (i.e. soft skills such as judgement, resolving conflict and customer service).”  (O’Connor page 13)

However I am suggesting that even that position is far less important than the contention that what we most urgently need is human beings. We need people who are kind, empathetic, and can think, both creatively and critically, which of course brings me right back again to my regular hobby horse of creativity.

Even a brief read of Professor Peter O’Connor’s paper “Replanting creativity in post normal times” (October 2020) will show that supporting the development of creativity supports wellbeing.

“Upitis (2014) discusses how ..fostering creativity in students helps them to develop resilience, resourcefulness, and confidence—preparing them to address life’s challenges. Creativity also carries its own intrinsic value. Developing creative sensibilities and habits enhances quality of life for teachers and students. (p. 2).”  (O’Connor Page 17)

Another of my ‘fave’ educational thinkers and writers is Yong Zhao. In amongst his many profound observations and reflections is the notion that our current education systems (globally) are narrowing rather than broadening human talent. I’ve used this diagram before, and it warrants revisiting.

It ought to be our fundamental role to broaden creative talent, to amplify the diversity of human thinking and creativity. The benefits of such a broadening are potentially profound. And there is one of the many strengths, the may promises. that the Manaiakalani kaupapa offers with our "Learn Create Share' pedagogy, that possibility of developing and enhancing creativity amongst students and teachers alike. 

It begs the question of exactly who we are serving in education? What is our main purpose in education? Is it to produce compliant economic units? Or is it to support humanity to grow, to thrive and flourish? I’ll wait and see if any of that filters through in the ‘Long Term Insights Briefing’ material that goes to ministers.

We teach children, not subjects

It was one of those 'OMG' moments. You know the ones. You see something and think 'that has to be the coolest thing I have seen' (using whatever language your generation uses to express utter delight).

I was doing a walkthrough of our learning spaces (as I often do - it's my  reconnection with sanity when the admin ** gets a bit tedious). I walked into a Year 7-9 wānanga session being run by one of our team of secondary trained English teachers (shout out to you, Mr Taylor).

Wānanga time places learners with a 'learning advisor' for 7 hours a week in Years 7-9. In that time they will cover a wide range of activity, from that simple but vital relationship building, to cybersmart, to community impact and passion projects, to literacy and numeracy work, and a whole lot more on top of that. The teacher was standing next to a mobile whiteboard, and he had drawn the numbers 1 and 2 on the whiteboard in large numerals, with a space between them.  Had he taken a leaf out of the book of Dr Seuss?

I watched as he asked this simple question: "how many numbers are there between 1 and 2?" Students came to the front and wrote numbers on the whiteboard, or offered their best guesses about how many numbers there are between 1 and 2. There was quite a degree of curiosity amongst the students.

I was frankly gobsmacked, excited, overwhelmed.. why?

Here was a humanities teacher teaching maths. There was, I thought, a clear understanding from the teacher that he was teaching students, not a subject. His connection with the students was deep, positive.. it was profound.

I talked with the teacher the next day, and he commented that the discussion then went on to what we mean by infinity. (Here is some information in the concept of infinity, and here is some information on this idea that regardless of how close two points re on a number line, there will always be a point in between them) For example the students asked if there were different sizes of infinity. This teacher loves philosophy, and there he was engaging 11-13 year olds in deep philosophy. In an email to me Luke Taylor  said "I'm loving the opportunity to weave philosophy through Wānanga."

Students were engaged, interested, curious, happy to have a go, to try, and come up with an answer. They did not have the usual reluctance to offer ideas, they were 'doing maths'. I'm not sure that they knew that they were doing maths, and that in itself left me wondering if therefore they had lost the typical 'fixed mindset ' that we so often see towards mathematics. You know the one .. 'I can't do maths', 'I was never any good at maths'. Yet actually we can all do maths, we all have the necessary mental ability to do maths. It's just that we tell ourselves that we can't. I know from personal experience that this is true. It took one good teacher to shift me from abject failure in the old School Certificate maths early in the year, to a stellar mark at the end of the year. We can ALL DO maths. That's what I saw in this wānanga class.

Here's another observation: the teacher was de-silo'ing secondary education. He was crossing those traditional 19th century artificial subject boundaries. This makes learning real for learners. I hasten to add that he was following the guidance of our HOD Maths, a maths specialist , who has set up a wodmnerful Google Site to support teachers and learner. This is a basic component of our Manaiakalani work, in which all learning is made visible. Maybe that is a future evolution for the traditional Head of Department, maybe that role might morph into a learning advisor for non specialist teachers? Maybe the HOD will be the one to ensure the integrity of traditional subjects? Mind you, that is a very euro-centric view of learning. maybe schools will structure themselves in a way that respects and values traditional knowledge accessed in traditional ways? After all, that traditional knowledge saw the earliest Polynesian navigators crossing the largest ocean on the planet.

And I saw all of this in part because (I reckon) the teacher realised that he wasn't teaching a subject, he was teaching children/pupils/students (choose your own word, there).

This is another example of 'creative excellence' in action, creative excellence in the ways in which we are evolving learning to be more fit for purpose for our young people.

Ka mau te wehi Mr Taylor!!!

Impactful PLD - none of us knows all the answers, but between us we know most of them

The trouble with a lot of educational professional learning and development (PLD) is that it is based on the assumption that you need an expert to come in and 'do it' to teachers. Lots of 'wannabe' consultants offer expertise that can turn out to be a chimera, an illusion, at the end of which you feel much as you might at the end of a week of eating potato crips hoping that would provide satisfying nutrition: rather empty and unfulfilled (and at times rather sick). Now don't get me wrong, there are also some outstanding providers of PLD, and at Hornby High School we work with a few of them.

However that's not how we roll all the time at Hornby High School, nor cross our Uru Mānuka kāhui ako. Today is a case in point. Today we ran our 'Teacher Summit '21' at which teachers from across the cluster presented a simple aspect of their work, their ideas, their best practice, to teachers from across the cluster, all focussed on our cluster wide focus on reading. Over 100 teachers from primary and secondary schools shared a piece of their best practice, and you know what? It ALL came from inside our Kāhui Ako. We knew all of this, and I have been privileged to witness some outstanding ideas that are stunning in their simplicity and their effectiveness.

This is not someone coming in and telling us our business, DOING PLD TO us. This was us sharing what we have established to be effective teaching practice, practice often the result of teacher inquiry. The fact that we are in this place, doing this mahi, is due in no small measure to our participation in the Manaiakalani kaupapa. The pedagogy and the support from Manaiakalai Education trust have enabled teacher and school efficacy and self determination, and the opportunity to improve our impact on learners. 

It is also a beautiful example of our "Learn Create Share' pedagogy in operation with our teachers. After all, if we are to be authentic in our use of the pedagogy, we ought to use it ourselves.

I picked up some very cool ideas, the sorts of ideas that make me wish I was in the classroom so that I had an excuse to use them. Big thanks has to go to all of the staff who so willingly participated, and to Kelsey our Education Programme Leader, who engineered the whole event.

Impactful PLD Aē. Impactful PLD because none of us knows all the answers, but between us we know most of them

Te Rito Toi 7 - cultural identity, creativity, and a language aspiration for Hornby High school

I wrote previously about the opinion I have formed that for creativity to thrive, learners need to feel culturally located , they need to feel safe and strong in their sense of cultural identity. There is lots of powerful voice out there about what that mahi looks like in kura, perhaps some of the most useful and transformative is that from Anne Milne with her work captured in her writing and presentation 'Colouring in the white spaces'.

There are many ways in which we can meet this challenge. I wanted to share this assembly address that I gave to both junior and senior assemblies at the end of term 1 2021. I hope you have the patience to read to the end, it's not too long.

Te Rito Toi 6 - creativity as a thread running through all that we do

I love flash mobs. You know, those things where a single person starts a performance in a public place, and then another person joins in, and then another, more and more people join in until you get this amazing  .. thing .. this 'happening'... performance.. you get the idea. This is one of my personal favourites, and if you know what they are you will no doubt have your own favourite from Youtube too.

So anyway, I had this crazy idea. We want everyone in our community to see themselves as readers. It was part of our thinking about how we promote reading in our community, with our tamariki, and how we get them reading. After all, the only way you improve your reading is by ... yep.. reading, right?

And that was how our 'reading flashmob' was born. The idea was that a large group of children from across our kāhui ako would appear at our local shopping centre The Hub, sit down, and read. Simple.  And that's what they did, about 150 of them. 

They read silently for a short time, and then they got together in groups for some reading aloud and story telling sessions. The City Libraries team were a hit with their interactive storytelling in Te Reo Māori, and Samoan.

The storytelling was variously in English, Tongan, Samoan, Te Reo Māori, and Tagalog, key languages in our kura.

The session finished with some amazing slam poetry (a live performance) from Dietrich Soakai. The quality of his work was astounding, world class, captivating, entertaining.. I know that I was personally spellbound by Dietrich's skill as a storyteller, a performer, a poet, a magician with words.

Dietrich Soakai performing some captivating slam poetry

We didn't film Dietrich on the day (we were too captivated by his powerful words), but here is a Youtube clip of Dietrich performing his powerful poem 'Cultural Turtle'.

The event was shaped with the idea of 'windows and mirrors' in mind. We want learners to see themselves in their learning material and experiences, like looking into a mirror, rather than see others, like looking through a window. As I said earlier, we want Hornby learners and whānu to see themselves as readers, because they ARE.

I also think that there is another way of thinking about the whole experience.

At Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School we aspire to be a centre of creative excellence. We want creativity to thrive in ALL aspects of our kura, not just the traditional creative arts and technologies but also in the ways we approach solutions to other problems. 

The reading flash mob, I like to think, was an example of creative problem solving. We took a couple of existing ideas, getting children to sit and read, and a flash mob, and we put them together in the simplest possible way to create something new. I'm not quite sure if this is true, but I've certainly never heard of a 'reading flash mob' before. The approach I reckon is also consistent with our Manaiakalani definition of 'Create' and our 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy. combining existing ideas in new ways. A centre of creative excellence, he puna auaha.

We aim to embed creativity in all that we do, we want creativity to be a thread that runs through all of our endeavour. Are we there yet? No. Are we on our way? Hell yes!! In our own way we are planting seeds in the best spirit of Te Rito Toi in our approach to problem solving.

The event was also part of the Learning City Christchurch Learning Days, an exciting body of work hoping to connect us all on Ōtautahi as learners living , working and learning. in a networked city.

Our special thanks to Jason Marsden, centre manager, and The Hub, for being such supportive hosts for the event. We were ably supported by the team from City Libraries who created a pop up library in The Hub, and also had several of their team members lead some mazing interactive story telling in Samoan and Te Reo Māori. We had other storytellers and readers, including a number of our very own senior stunts .. tuakana teina!!! I'd also make a special of our very own Nicole Sowman who organised the work on the ground. People like me who have grand ideas need people like Nicole who make things happen. Thank you, Nicole.

Te Rito Toi 5 .... cultural diversity, the sense of self, and creativity

We were in  Blenheim supporting our daughter running the St Clair half marathon (she managed a PB.. ka mau te wehi, Natasha!!). 

As we wandered in the vineyard area after the event I came across an artist in the process of creating art (painting) as people went about their business of celebrating, eating, and drinking. I plucked up the courage (I don't normally approach complete strangers quite like this) and asked her 'what do you feel as you paint? She looked at me, and I clarified 'not what do you think, what do you feel?' She replied "actually that's a really good question, I haven't thought about it quite like that before". As the conversation progressed it became clearer to me that she had thought about it before, but perhaps not in those terms. I also realised that I had perhaps asked a stupid question; this quote from 'Te Rito Toi Replanting creativity in post normal times' sprang to mind:

Gordon was trying to say the unsayable, struggling with thoughts that lay beyond the capacity of mere words to express. Pavlova, when asked what she meant by her interpretation of Swan Lake replied, ‘if I had been able to say it in words, do you think I should have gone to all the trouble of dancing it?’

(Clarence Beeby, Director General of Education, at the funeral of Gordon Tovey in May 1974).

I told her that, as best I could recall the quote (as a story rather than a quote, my memory isn't that good.)

Anyway, our conversation progressed, and she spoke in terms of her own inner self and her sense of self, how she 'felt' about herself, and life, about the world in which she lived, and her desire to say things that she couldn't say in words (in precisely the way that Pavlova is reputed to have done).

Professor O'Connor and his team have identified 11 dimensions that potentially activate creativity, and I have listed those before.

I have another 'wondering'. Whatever drivers we might be able to describe in our schooling systems, our innate creativity perhaps cannot be activated unless we have a level of self awareness, a level of confidence, in who we are. Specifically I wonder if we need to have a sense that we are culturally located, that we have at least some connection with our whakapapa, before our creative potential can be unleashed. I'm not suggesting that being 'culturally located, culturally safe', generates creativity per se. My wondering is if being in such a state and place is one of those 'necessary but not sufficient' conditions, and therefore if we could avoid some of the tendency to 'kill creativity' if we were better at this?

If so, this adds another dimension to the already overriding moral obligation on schools to ensure that they build and maintain culturally responsive and sustainable environments. Every child ought to be able to bring their cultural back pack inside the school gates. I'm sure all kura try. How well do we do? How well is Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School doing?

Is it also possible, in my own wondering, that creativity comes from an inner conflict as we struggle to see, to know, to come to terms with our own inner self, our place in the world, and our whakapapa? It was interesting to read in a recent edition of 'The Listener' (May 8-14 2021) about the role of conflict in creativity, particularly in group settings.

I'm not proposing that we set students up in conflict in order to generate creativity. It's just interesting.

I have also thought about the role of stress. I wonder if creativity is perhaps more likely to occur in some settings when we are close to the edge of our comfort zone. Is that the 'place' we have to be to find the motivation to seek new solutions, to find new ideas? Is creativity enhanced when we experience eustress (as opposed to distress .. "Eustress is a word used to describe stress that is positive, motivating, and enhances functioning while distress refers to bad and overwhelming stress that impairs functioning." https://www.choosingtherapy.com/eustress-vs-distress/#:~:text=Eustress%20is%20a%20word%20used,overwhelming%20stress%20that%20impairs%20functioning. )

I wonder if schools that support diverse cultural identity more effectively end up seeing higher levels of creativity from students (regardless of curriculum area or kura activity)? Is it possible that schools with more culturally diverse student and staff populations are more predisposed to greater creativity, assuming the other drivers of creativity are activated? How would/could we find out? Difficult, I suspect, if it is (as I suggest) one of those 'necessary but not sufficient; conditions. Mind you, could this be an interesting application of the CAST Creative Schools Index?

None of this is any sort of 'claim', there is no suggestion that any of this is some sort of truth. It is simply what I have 'wondered'. It also strengthens the case for the Manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share', doesn't it? Our typically lower decile schools tend to reflect wide cultural diversity. Here's a thought: if any of my other wonderings are true (IF), then are our more culturally diverse schools the potential powerhouses for creativity and innovation across Aotearoa? 

Food for thought, eh!!