Te Rito Toi 2 - some pre-conditions for creativity

Amongst the many things about Te Rito Toi that has grabbed my attention are the 'Creative Schools Index' (a central part of this paper) and the 10 dimensions of creativity that are at its core. I prefer to think of these as possible preconditions for creativity, or perhaps enablers of creativity. 

The dimensions of creativity that informed the development of our research instruments are:
• Collaboration: To work in a group of two or more to develop shared understandings and achieve shared goals.
• Problem solving: To identify and articulate problems and devise strategies for their solutions and/or management considering consequences and outcomes.
• Critical thinking: To investigate the wider social and cultural context of ideas.
• Playfulness: To use imagination to create made up worlds and situations. This
capacity is often associated with enjoyment and fun.
• Environments: The qualities of the environment, including physical, emotional and
intellectual, and their adaptability for a diversity of classroom-based activities.
• Divergent thinking: To think differently about known problems; to evaluate the
knowledge students have from different perspectives and to find new ways of
understanding.
• Innovation: To realise creative ideas in tangible ways.
• Discipline knowledge: To develop expertise in a domain of knowledge that involves
specialised content and process understandings.
• Risk-taking: To be supported when trialling unconventional or previously
unconsidered approaches.
• Synthesis: To connect ideas to develop new understandings or approaches.
• Curiosity: A desire to explore, examine and understand how things are and how
things work.

Yes these are the basis for the evaluation, for the index, but more importantly they offer an insight into possible causal factors that we can intentionally influence within our kura to support and enhance creativity. This is perhaps the biggest issue for kura in general. I have for a long time held the view that teachers don't actively resist change or improvement. Rather they react to change similarly to most human beings in thinking 'yes, I get what you are saying, it makes sense when you describe it like that, but I don't know what it looks like. Show me and I'll give it a go.' These dimensions show teachers what this could look like.

It will please many of the conservatives amongst us to know that 'Discipline knowledge' is right there in the mix. Critics of NCEA have often argued that the qualification is symptomatic of the view that we no longer value knowledge.  I have long argued that this is nonsense. NCEA requires deeper thinking, and you cannot think in a vacuum. You require 'stuff' to think about, specifically you require content knowledge. So in fact NCEA is a much tougher qualification than what came before ... our previous iterations of qualifications appeared to focus on remembering stuff. Under NCEA you need to know stuff AND be able to demonstrate that you can think about it .. a much tougher gig. (That's not to argue that NCEA does it perfectly, but you get the idea).

So here is one way of describing what 'it looks like'. That is, these are things that we can deliberately and intentionally target to support, to grow, creativity with our rangatahi. This rubric offers ways to think about our deliberate acts of leadership, and our deliberate acts of teaching, that make use of any of these dimensions to support creativity.

These dimensions certainly mesh well with our vision at Hornby High School, and our three areas of strategic intent, for Hornby High School.

Our vision (you will hopefully recall) is 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence. Our three areas of strategic intent are:

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Our understanding of the need to develop an appetite for risk taking stands out as a signifiant area of commonality. I think I'll be asking our staff to self evaluate on the 10 dimensions. Not because the outcome in itself is useful, but because of the conversations that it might generate and more importantly the ways in which it might empower staff to progress towards our vision. 

 

Te Rito Toi - The Twice Born Seed

My explicit interest in creativity in schools began a decade or so ago when, as a consequence of working in a technology rich school environment, I began to think about the future of schools. The conclusion I reached over time was that schools in their 19t/20th century incarnation perhaps didn't have too much of a future, given that much of what they had to offer was now accessible quite independently of school institutions. My conclusion back then was that the long term future of schools lay in focussing on those things that make us human, because other 'stuff' that we thought important could and quite possibly would be replaced by technology. In that mix I placed (amongst other things) the ability to empathise and to relate to others, and the ability to be creative. At that time I could see no way in which technology could replace those attributes.

At this stage I still don't see technology doing so, hence my ongoing interest in creativity in schools. Along the way I then found the famous Sir Ken Robinson TeD talk 'Do schools kill creativity?'.  I was fortunate enough to hear Sir Ken speak in person at a couple of conferences before his unfortunate passing in 2020.

Fast forward to 2016 when I was privileged to take up the positon as Principal of Hornby High School Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka. Some of my early work in our kura lay in leading Board and staff to a new vision for the school: 'A centre of creative excellence he puna auaha'. Amongst many other work streams since then we have been engaged in an ongoing conversation about what that creativity looks like in our daily work, because we did NOT mean the vision to be restricted to the traditional creative arts, although we have always seen those as an essential part of what we seek to be.

In 2020 I stumbled upon a paper that has had significant impact on my thinking. Titled 'Replanting creativity in post-normal times Te rito toi', the paper was authored by a team lead by professor Peter O'Connor of Auckland University's Centre for Arts and Social Transformation.

Even the existence of this group came as a pleasant surprise to me - it effected the reassuring notion that we were not alone at Hornby High School.

As if the universe was directing me towards this with intent, over the summer break I read the new Vincent IOSullivan biography of Ralph Hotere in which I learned for the first time of the work of Beeby, Tovey, et al,  that place arts advisors (Hotere included) in schools across the country in a move that created a richness of creative experience for tamariki.

This quote from the paper in particular resonated more than most:

Nussbaum (2010) recognises that the increasingly precarious place of the arts in education in Western schooling poses a direct threat to democracy. She contends:

the insatiable drive for increased profit is at the expense of every other indicator of human value and worth; creating people who are less than fully human:If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance. (p. 2).

The paper also built the case for the positive impact of creativity and the arts on wellbeing, on economic productivity, and on our ability to think our way out of global problems the like of which we have never seen before. As it suggests, when we think about the 2020 Covid lockdown, what was it that so many of us turned to, to get ourselves through that time? The creative arts, and the creative people, in our society. 

This week I attended a public panel discussion in Wellington in which Professor O'Connor and a panel of four were joined by what I think may have been several hundred others interested in education, where the place of creativity and the arts in education in Aotearoa was discussed. yes it was an echo chamber, we all felt the same, but yes also it gave strength to the wairua that I feel towards this work. It was a good investment of time. 

From the 'long blog posts never get read' school of thinking, I'll discuss some of the issues as I see in successive shorter posts

Creativity, cultural inclusion, and Hornby High School

With a little more time on my hands I've been thinking. I do that. Actually I've been reading and thinking, First on the reading list was a re-read of Sir Ken Robinson's book 'Creative Schools'. Several years ago I gifted a copy to every staff member, and try to continue this tradition, although supplies ran a little short this year so I have a few copies to catch up on. But the book captures a lot of what I think is important to schools. 

Before I come to my main observation, allow me to list some readily apparent points that come from Sir Ken's writing:

• Creativity comes directly from our individual cultures, so it is essential that every one of us is able to connect with our own culture and heritage
• Personalisation is essential to creativity. That is, learners need to be able to find their 'element' (Sir Ken's term for that thing which excites us more than anything else)
• Relationships are absolutely essential to this personalisation.

Sir Ken defines creativity as ".. the process of having original ideas that have value." (Robinson, page 118). He goes on to say 'There are two other concepts to keep in mind: imagination and innovation. Imagination id the root of creativity. It is the ability to bring to ind things that aren't present to our senses. Creativity is putting your imagination to work. It is applied imagination. Innovation is putting new ideas into practice." (Robinson Page 118). He goes on to attack the myth that only some of us are creative, and comments that ".. Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics, technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it." (Robinson, Page 119).

The final piece of Sir Ken wisdom I;'d like to bring to this post is this. He says "Creativity is about fresh thinking. It doesn't have to be new to the whole of humanity - although that's always a bonus - but certainly to the person whose work it is" (Robinson, Page 119)

I now want to tie this in to our Manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share'. 

Here's how we define "Create|Hanga" within our Manaiakalani context: “Combine existing knowledge with original ideas in new and imaginative ways to create a new outcome.”

(Source: Staff presentation , Kelsey Morgan, 2020)

In my opinion the important synthesis of these ideas is this: when a learner brings together the ideas that she has come to understand, and develops a new insight into a specific topic, this is creativity. From my own subject discipline, if a learner brings together concepts of supply and demand, to arrive at the notion of the market, and its role in setting pieces and allocating resources, this is creativity. As Sir Ken observes, this is not an idea new to humanity, but it is new to the learner. Alternatively, if a learner studies a dramatic role, and then performs it with his own characterisation, that is creativity, even of the characterisation simply mimics that of another.  Or if a learner suddenly understands the power of bisecting angles to slip through the defensive line of the opposing league or rugby team, this is creativity.

Creativity may well be seen directly in the 'creative arts (painting, music, drama, dance) but it can also be seen regularly in all other areas of human endeavour and study.

A group of students planing, and initiating, a community impact project that has them go out and plant 200 trees in a wetland is creativity if it represents a shift in their understanding that allows them to understand the importance of those trees to the local environment.

Our Hornby High School experiences along the path of being 'a centre of creative excellence' encompass a broad spectrum of what might be termed creative activity and experience.

There is the aspect of 'creative teaching' Staff at Hornby High School are part the way along their own journey as we explore new and more effective ways of causing learning. A significant driver behind the changes that we have made is the desire, nay the absolute necessity, of increasing student engagement in their own learning. As Sir Ken says "The real driver of creativity is an appetite for discovery and a passion for the work itself." (Robinson, Page 120). We have so far restructured the school experiences of our Year 7-9 students, so that subjects are by and large not taught in isolation, but rather in a connected way. Our 'Hurumanu' are not yet perfect (and arguably never will be) but as we adapt and change we are modelling an essential ingredient of creativity, the willing ness to take risks, and to fail. We have already evolved our practice in this area in response to what has worked and what ha not. I continue to advocate for staff being prepared to take risks, and to fail. I continue to make the point that failure is more than OK, it is essential to everyone's learning.

We have carved time out of the week to build more meaningful relationships, relationships for learning, that will support student agency and efficacy. And we continue to work hard to build our cultural competence as a kura. "Cultural diversity is one of the glories of human existence." (Robinson, Page 49). All learners have a right to be themselves, to be able to express themselves as their own true authentic selves, at all times they are in our kura.

Then there is the quite different issue of teaching creativity. While on the surface this may have seemed to be the easiest of the two tasks, it is I suspect the more difficult. However when I see mathematics teachers encouraging students to have a go, focusing on method rather than the right or wrong answer, I know that even in what traditionally some might think as the most staid of disciplines we have the essential elements of creativity. After all the beauty and creativity implicit in mathematics is boundless.

Encouraging insight and imagination, encouraging risk taking and the willingness to put those new ideas out ther efor others to see, is essential to this work. As I write this I am sitting at a local suburban library where, right in front of me, are Year 3/4 students visualisations s of wintery trees. Look at this:

The sad thing is that we become less willing to do this as we grow older. There is a delightful story in one of the Sir Ken's TeD talks where he describes talking with a 5(?) year old who is intently drawing. He asks what she is drawing and she replies that she is drawing a picture of God. He responds that no one knows what God looks like, to which she says 'They will in a moment'. This unbounded willingness to take risks is something that we need to nurture and sustain as we grow.

My purpose in writing this is to try and give my colleagues the benefit of the brief time I have had to step back and look at what we are doing, what we are achieving. Are we 'a centre of creative excellence'? No. Are we on a journey that reflects pursuit of that as our vision? Yes, as we seek to try new things, as we seek to support our learners to take risks, as we undertake to be risk takers ourselves.

As I write this yet another report has been published criticising our schooling system, claiming that it has failed to improve results for learners in Aotearoa. In my opinion it reflects much more the degree to which the authors are out of touch with the new reality of the world around us in 2020, and the demands of that world as we embrace technologies that weren't even imagined beyond the minds of science fiction writers 20 years ago. That technology is rapidly replacing so many previously human tasks, in fact anything that is repetitive and at all predictable in our daily work. This is already accelerating in our current Covid world, as businesses are pushed ever faster to find new ways of doing things.

As the technology progresses we increasingly need to focus on those things that technology cannot replace, on those things that make us uniquely human, and it has been my contention for a number of years that one of those things is our creativity. Another of course is our ability to understand ourselves as human beings (to be introspective), and to empathise with each other. This requires a connection with who we are, what our origins are, our culture and our sense of belonging. These are the big jobs of our kura as we continue to forge ahead into this century.

The cultural component of this challenge is perhaps the most pertinent. The new report cites PISA data (something that I am frankly NOT enamoured with). My understanding of our PISA achievement data is that we are a population of two halves. Those of European origin in particular continue to perform as well as any students in the world. Our issue is our tail of under achievement, in which Māori and Pasifika learners are over represented. The challenge for us at both a systemic and a kura level is NOT the quality of the 'instruction' per se, it is a question of the cultural capability of our schools, one that I suggest goes back to our underlying structures. The current system does not work for all, it works for some. I would go as far as to express the opinion that it works for the privileged few. To persist with the system we have had, as the report writer might have us believe, is in my opinion little more than structural racism, as historical systems have continued to fail our Māori and Pasifka learners.'What's good for Māori is good for all'. 

This includes an acceptance and celebration of the 'Māori world view' in science and maths, in literature and performing arts. We would be conceited indeed if we denied the power and efficacy of Māori mathematics and astronomy for example when as a people our Polynesian forebears were navigating and voyaging across vast tracts of the Pacific Ocean in ways Europeans dared not across their own oceans and seas, and mostly at times often well before Europeans were prepared to try. As I quoted above - "Cultural diversity is one of the glories of human existence."

So, for my colleagues at Hornby High School.. ka mau te wehi, he waka eke noa. Our progress has been significant, and I thank you for and celebrate your work, and your willingness to imagine and try new things. 

As I often say, I am not interested in revolution for its own sake - revolutions all too often leave blood and bodies in the streets, I would much rather we take the path of evolution, as I am keen that we are all standing together along the way of this journey. One step at a time.

Ehara taku toa, he takitahi, he toa takitini (My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective). 

WE are the collective.

Robin Sutton

Tumuaki

Bibliography

Robinson, Kenneth 'Creative Schools", Penguin Books, 2015

Does Creativity thrive under the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy?

I'm not sure if it's even a hunch. Maybe it's more of a 'wondering' (as if 'intuiting' happens along some sort of sliding scale), but you see there's this amazing piece of work that three of our Year 13 students completed as a Media Studies assignment. It tells the story of the dangerous state of Waterloo Road, the road onto which our kura fronts.

My 'wondering' sits with the efficacy of our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy in the creation of the video.  Does creativity thrive under the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy? Specifically my wondering is: did this delightful piece of work come about because of The Manaiakalani programme, and our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy?

You see, pieces of work like this are not the sole prerogative of TMP schools, and pieces of work like this don't just happen. Work like this is created when there are motivated students, or when there are amazing inspirational teachers, or when whānau values, support, and upbringing in general, are incredibly strong, or (most likely, I think) some combination of these.

And in the case of Zoe, Caleb, and Kim (the students who created this work) my opinion is that all three of these are present.

BUT - my wondering is still about the part that 'Learn Create Share' played in leading up to this point where three students felt inspired, equipped, enabled, and supported, to produce something of such quality, and what's more something that has and is sending shockwaves through our local community. The video has pricked the consciences of local civic decision makers, and has become a clarion call to action. We showed it in assemblies, and there were audible gasps as students watched some of the scenes of pedestrian/vehicle conflict that the team so competently and effectively captured.

My 'suspicion' (my hunch, if you like) is that this piece of work, and some of the other amazing pieces we are increasingly seeing from students now, have come about because we have a clear school vision (A centre of creative excellence), and an increasingly consistent and coherent pedagogy (Learn Create Share).

Our Year 13 students have seen, been exposed to, and used, this pedagogy for the past 5 years of their schooling (our Kāhui Ako is in its 6th year of participation in The Manaiakalani Programme), and as the next few years go by we will increasingly see students who have used this pedagogy for a significant part of their schooling career. Such is the benefit of the cluster wide application of the pedagogy. 

So, is the creation of work like this the result of 'Learn Create Share'? I cannot say for certain. Do I feel that 'The Manaiakalani Programme', and it's 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy, have been instrumental in these higher levels of creativity? Does creativity thrive under the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy? My opinion: 'Hell Yes'!!!

The answer lies in pushing diversity and creativity

There is a lot to be learned from our 7 weeks of 'learning from home', and the ether is alive with speculation on what education might look like as we come out of our home learning time. There are lots of ideas and opinions out there, but the trend I think I see (one which fits with my own thinking about 'undergraduate and postgraduate' models) is that our desirable next state might be a blended environment in which students mix face to face/synchronous/relational time with online/distance/asynchronous time.

Of course what perhaps matters more than anything right now to to gather the voices of the key stakeholders or participants in this whole education thing. In common with (probably) every other kura in th country e are planning on gathering that voice, to hear what our whānau, our students, and our teachers all think. I think tis will be a largely qualitative data gathering exercise, one in hich we need to be quite deliberate and intentional in our work.

It was fantastic to receive, entirely unsolicited, this email from a Mum of one of our junior boys. It is copied here with permission, with anonymity preserved.

I am writing in regard to my concerns of XXXX returning to school.
While being home & doing the online work, I have been able to see firsthand how he works & I must say I was & wasn’t shocked.
XXXX as we know is not a fan of school (never has been) due to struggling, being overwhelmed by the work and he just doesn’t enjoy it.  Hands on work however is a difference matter entirely as we know!
I noticed with the online work he was more engaged and interested in the work.  He also got the work done.  Not completely (math’s) but he did it.
I asked XXXX how he enjoyed this work.  He replied with its more interesting for me and I also don’t have the feeling of having to get it all done in one period.
With this is mind I was wondering if there was a way that we could incorporate something similar for XXXX while at school.  Meaning he doesn’t feel the overwhelming feeling.  When he gets that he shuts down, becomes uninterested and the work & lesson is wasted on him.
..... as you know he has been like this all the way thru school and we only want him to do his best.
I will be the first to admit he could try harder at school & we have told him that.
We are concerned considering he only has a few years left at school before he can leave & it terrifies us that he will leave with not education or qualifications.
I would love to be able to discuss this with you asap as XXXX is really not interested in returning on Monday (which he will be) and already that is a wall going up.

Now, don't get me wrong. At the moment I don't think there is one single answer to how we might want our kura to evolve, but I do think there is a pretty strong mandate for some of our students at least to have greater agency in their learning. This Mum's email brought me straight back to the writing of  Young Zhao, an educator of whom I hold the highest opinion, a theorist and a pragmatist (I don't think that's a contradiction in terms?), a voice of moral and educational commonsense.

Source: http://zhaolearning.com/

In a great lecture/slide show titled "Redefining Excellence" he described our current system in this way:

He then went on to say that especially now in the 21st century we need to do the opposite, that we need to do this:

Huh? That is, we need to stop constricting students' thinking and creativity, we need to celebrate and support growing divergence. We don't need more people who think the same, we need more people who think differently. This doesn't happen when we push students into boxes, it doesn't happen when we try to force students into the SAME box. It happens when we allow students to be themselves -  culturally, intellectually, emotionally.

Our job is to allow students to be themselves more than ever before. The question in most peoples' minds I suspect is not should we, but HOW do we? What does this look like on the ground within our kura on a daily basis? I think it will look different from kura to kura, but what do we think will be the general trends? Here's my speculation:

1. More flexibility in time, with kura timetabled in a different way to what we have been used to 
2. A blend of face to face and online learning, requiring a redefinition from the Ministry on what constitutes attendance
3. More time spent allowing students to pursue their passions, meaning that at senior level in particular our key task is to attach assessment to work and learning, not the other way around
4. Less didactic 'lecturing from the front', but acknowledging that the power of direct teaching, of deliberate acts of teaching, should never be lost
5. An imperative for schools to ensure that they have a clear pedagogy around how we cause learning, both face to face and distance. My suspicion is that when you ask educators what their underlying pedagogy is, they will give you a blank stare. Last year I challenged a class of teaching grads with that very question, and saw far too many of those blank stares for my own liking. In this regard our work with Manaiakalani leaves us well placed with our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy, leveraging the affordances of digital technology. The underlying factors of distance learning have been through our work with Manaiakalani

If we accept Yong Zhao's view (clearly I do), then the need to promote a focus on creativity is vital. Our Hornby High School vision 'A centre of creative excellence' captures the essence of Yong Zhao's philosophy of developing human diversity, not constraining it.  It is more important, and more urgent, than ever that we drive ahead with this work.

I want to hear at least some of the many voices on this. What is your view? To our community, to our students, to our staff, what do you think? Does this truly sound like, look like, feel like, the sort of educational future that you want for your tamariki, for your whānau, for our communities, for our nation of Aotearoa New Zealand? And are you with me on this?

Robin Sutton
Tumuaki

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

Is this distance learning stuff working?

We have now been in distance learning mode for between 4 and 6 weeks (depending on whether or not things stopped for the 'term break'. For Hornby High School students we offered up work for the break, but still treated that 2 weeks as a break before proactively seeking to re-engage. I first priority was hauora and relationships, and only after we'd focussed on that did we shift to more traditional 'back end of the curriculum' learning. We continue to maintain a focus on hauroa, with Deans monitoring student wellness though regular contact via Wānanga and Form Teachers.

I have taken some time to think about what I may be seeing, and have developed a hunch, a working hypothesis if you like. The hunch is based on a small amount of observational data only. Our staff are collecting engagement data each day, each week, and at some stage soon I hope I may get the chance to take a more detailed look at it to see whether or not it bears out my hunch.

Here's my hunch.

We can divide our learners into four groups.

1. Those high flyers who will be just that, regardless of how we 'deliver' or 'cause' their learning. Here is an example of that from Jessica. We have many others.
2. Those students who sit in the middle, whose engagement in school is variable, from whom we get the usual range of work from poor to great results, dependent on how successful we are in grabbing their attention and engaging them (in my opinion their range of engagement is more a result of what we do .. as a system .. than what they do)
3. Those students who attend school some or most of the time but with whom we struggle to get much meaningful engagement
4. Those students who do not engage, and with whom we work hard as we support them through a range of social and psychosocial issues created by anything from poverty, to mental or physical health challenges, to those who have beens seriously damaged by societal problems that are beyond their control

Groups 1 and 2 seem to be engaging as they usually do.

Group 3, so often disengaged 'at school', is now engaging in greater numbers and with greater enthusiasm, because the distance learning paradigm gives them more of the agency that they want. Without someone standing over them saying 'do your maths now', they are more likely to engage in their maths when it suits them, and just as successfully if not more so than they do in the conventional 'school' setting.

Group 4 continues mostly to be disengaged, and I stress through no fault of their own.

I also want to stress that this is my 'hunch', this is what I think I may be seeing emerge as a first set of outcomes from our distance learning.

Now teachers across the country are quite possibly saying that they worry because of the lack of engagement evidenced by attendance (or not) at GoogleMeets (especially with my Group 3). I have anecdotal reports of attendances on class GoogleMeets ranging from 2 out of 25, to 25 out of 25, in various class and year groups. However I would like to suggest that we are fundamentally wrong in our assumption that when students are present in front of us they are fully engaged .

There is a research backing for this. In a longitudinal study (one that takes place over a long period of time) the late Professor Graham Nuthall (University of Canterbury) conducted some powerful research in which he and his team 'wired up' students and recorded what they were saying during their classes. The results were published posthumously as The Hidden Lives of Learners .

One of the profound findings was that even when present in class, levels of student engagement are far lower than teachers think. So we shouldn't assume that things are worse in this virtual environment than they were in the physical environment.

In fact my hunch is that many students in Group 3 are better engaged and are in fact thriving in this environment because of the agency that they now have. They were not thriving before.

This is a 'win'. Instead of having only groups 1 and 2 engaged in their learning, we now have groups 1, 2, and 3, more engaged in their learning. I am not prepared to speculate on relative %'s of our student body. I am doing enough speculating with my hunch as it is, without trying to sound in some way numerically authoritative.

That still leaves us with Group 4, and their loss to the system, while not new, still drives ongoing inequity in society as those children fail to access the education that could liberate them from their status. The very cool thing is that (again anecdotally) we have students from that group too who are producing some amazing work in the distance learning state when they were NOT doing so even when they are physically present at school. It seems that it is whānau support that is the critical success factor for this group. Mind you that it is probably the case with most learners.

Much of this has been made possible because of our 5 year engagement with The Manaiakalani Programme. The underlying 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy, the benefits amplified with the use of digital technology, has been a true tāonga for our learners AND our teachers. The transition to the distance learning paradigm has, I suspect, been much easier for our amazing team because of the preparation that they have participated in over those past 5 years. Their familiarity with digital tools has been a wonderful enabler.

So, is distance learning working? My hunch is that it is definitely not delivering anything worse than we had before, and it might just be delivering more engagement and therefore, over time, better learning for our rangatahi. We'll look at the data over the next little while, but I think we need to get used to this 'distance learning'.. not only might the pandemic mean that it is with us for a while longer, but I suspect it offers opportunities that benefit a greater proportion of our society than we ever did before.

Education is not for the privileged few, those who have traditionally been the 'winners'. It is for everyone. And as a society we cannot afford to write off a significant proportion of our talent. We need EVERYONE enabled to be human and to contribute to our collective wellbeing.

Never waste a good crisis. BRING IT ON!!!

Robin Sutton
Tumuaki