Edition XVIII
EDDi May 2020
Dear subscribers
This week sees the return of a ‘normal’ EDDi. For new subscribers (welcome and thank you), amongst the specials and themed editions, regular EDDi’s offer:
A professional practice piece: this week on smartphones in schools.
A thought piece: this edition examines ‘AI, Work and the Impact on Education’.
And three short digests of peer reviewed academic papers; this week we cover:
Pre-service teachers and professional identity
Developing critical thinking
How to measure school success: academics, finance and the intangible core
We also have a guest contribution. Dr Frances Farrell has written a piece on equity issues arising from global lockdowns. If you would like to submit your own work for publication (up to 1,000 words) please reach out on: contact@eddi.ac
For those interested, last week’s FREE book chapter is still available HERE.
Finally, in case you missed them, the two (very popular) Covid-19 specials can be accessed here and here.
Happy reading.
EDDi
THE CURSE OF THE SMARTPHONE
As an adult, and no longer a young one, I like to think I am in control of my smartphone usage.
Which is probably an illusion.
Apple regularly inform me of my daily usage and it is invariably over three hours, sometimes four. But then, I’m neither studying nor having to hold down a full-time job, so the only problem I experience is strained fingers from too much scrolling.
Not so for children.
The problems they are likely to encounter from smartphone over-usage are only now becoming apparent to the educational community. From experiencing online bullying to suffering mental health issues, being subsumed under an avalanche of fake news to fretting that the end of the world is nigh, children around the world are living a very different childhood to that which you and I enjoyed.
A recent UK survey of 2,167 UK five- to 16- year-olds, revealed that 53% of youngsters owned a mobile phone by the age of seven. By the age of 11, 90% owned a phone, and by secondary school age phone ownership was ‘almost universal’.
What is more, these children cannot live without their phone.
57% take it to bed with them. 44% are worried if they cannot get a signal, and 42% keep their phone with them at all times and never turn it off.
Generation Z are spending an average 3 hours and 20 minutes a day messaging, playing games and being online. Indeed, typically, students around the world are sending thousands of messages a month.
YouTube dominates the UK childhood usage market, followed by Snapchat, Instagram, Tik Tok and Whatsapp. Interestingly, Facebook doesn’t even make the top 10 of favourite sites.
And for those adults who might innocently imagine that a child being on Snapchat is healthier for them than being on some pornographic site, research shows that mid-teens upwards are accessing porn not on dedicated pornography sites but on Snapchat and Whatsapp.
Which reinforces the finding that most parents of teenagers are completely oblivious as to their child’s viewing habits.
Whether or not this revolution in childhood life has any bearing on the continuing global drop in the onset of puberty, now down to eight to ten years of age, one can only speculate, but what is obvious is that ‘innocent’ childhood is now over in less than a decade.
But should we be worried? After all, technological change is ubiquitous and if anything, speeding up.
As educationalists, yes, I think we should be concerned.
Research conducted at Swansea University and the University of Milan has shown that students who use digital technology excessively are less motivated to engage with their studies, and more anxious about tests. This effect was heightened by the sense of increased loneliness produced by overuse of digital technology. This research is supported by similar studies which found that the more time students spend online, the lower their grades are.
Educationalists might wish to console themselves with imagining their students are accessing the internet in order to study and acquire advanced knowledge and useful information, maybe even reading books. But that would be a mistake. They are mostly watching videos, messaging, playing games.
In short, smartphones have become a serious distraction to learning, not an aid. Moreover, over-use is also undermining student mental health, self-confidence, sense of community.
In response to this ‘crisis’, schools around the world are having to adopt increasingly stringent rules on mobile phone usage, especially in primary and middle schools. And where the rules are heading is a total ban.
Adopting a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy to smartphone usage in schools would result in rules and guidelines looking something like this:
No student allowed to use their phones in school, not even during lunch breaks. They can bring them to school but are not permitted to use them.
Permission to use a smartphone during school hours can only be given by a teacher who wishes the student to use their phone as a learning aid in the classroom.
Parents are fully informed of these policies and expected to support them, e.g. by monitoring their child’s phone usage, especially at night.
Teachers have to ensure students are not wearing earbuds and listening to music. Students now have hoodies with built-in earbuds instead of drawstrings so that they can wall themselves off with little chance of detection. Hoodies should be banned from school and indeed most international schools would not allow them anyway.
Before establishing a no-cell phone policy, make sure school administration are fully informed and involved. Expect to have to send repeat offenders to the Principal’s office and have incremental penalties for continued infringement.
Ensure every teacher is on board with the total ban policy. Some may not agree or wish to be more flexible, but to be effective the rules must be universally and consistently applied.
Do walk-in lesson observations during which any visible use of unauthorised smartphone usage is immediately dealt with.
Have smartphone usage rules posted up around the school and fully communicated to parents with regular updates.
Teachers and administrators will have to maintain constant surveillance as they walk around the school and premises.
Some schools may simply decide to remove smartphones from students as soon as they arrive in a morning, returning them when they depart in the afternoon. Alternatively, the phones are handed to the teacher at the start of each lesson and placed in a basket. Every classroom as a ‘phone deposit basket’.
Enforcing the ban is one thing, but explaining to students why it is necessary is equally important. Ideally, the school needs to get the students on side with this ruling so spend time doing that and getting the students to recognise the problem for themselves. Indeed, this issue would make an interesting research project especially for secondary students. Perhaps get older students to explain to the younger ones why the ban is essential. So co-opt mature students into enforcing the rules.
Finally, what about the older students, heading to university? And, indeed, university students themselves? Should a total ban be adopted with them? With research showing that more than 75% of undergraduates report texting during lectures, then a universal ban seems inevitable. If students cannot control their usage, then educationalists have little alternative but to do it for them.
Educationalists can adopt a more mediated approach, a softer line. Some may even wish to give students the agency to apply their own individual controls. But the research is clearly indicating a problem, indeed, it is showing that children’s smartphone usage around the world, is now an addiction. Recognising such, and accepting there is no antidote, the only option left to educationalists is to apply ‘cold turkey’.
Many students will experience acute withdrawal symptoms – nervousness, anxiety, irritability, perhaps even fear – when their smartphone is taken from them. But this merely confirms the scale of the problem. Few parents have the will, skills, confidence, to really confront their child over smartphone usage. Too readily they will simply concede in order to keep the peace. Educationalists don’t have that luxury.
Whatever your personal views on this issue, ignoring it no longer seems an option.
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WHAT ARE YOU WORKING FOR?
Over the past decade, the global unemployment rate has done something quite interesting.
It has gone down - from 5.6% in 2009, to 5.0% in 2019.
You might judge that statistic remarkable, given the global financial crisis of 2008. However, in contrast to the average, global youth unemployment has marginally risen (12.9% to 13.2%) and this at a time when Generation Z, now representing 33% of the global population, are starting to stream out of secondary schools and universities.
Which makes global youth unemployment nearly three times greater than that for adults. Add in the fact that some 1,500 million workers are in unstable jobs, with at least another 114 million workers living in extreme poverty, then quality working lives will be at a premium for all young people.
That simple fact should be of concern to all countries and those charged with continually updating and delivering educational curricula. Indeed, one might argue that it should be of concern to anyone interested in the stability of global society.
Because if youth unemployment doesn’t benefit when there is global decline in overall unemployment, then when will it benefit?
If educationalists cannot hold out the prospect of gainful, secure employment to their students, then what is the purpose of education?
End of Work?
Predictions regarding the ‘end of work’ have been around for some time.
The French philosopher, Andre Gorz, argued in his seminal book, ‘Paths to Paradise’ (1983) that work would in the future need to be rationed; with everyone doing a little, no one doing a lot.
This thesis fitted well with the late 20th century concept of the ‘leisure society’; a world of technological advancement in home and at work, leaving humankind with much more time to spend watching movies, visiting Disneyland, or simply going for a jog. However, by the end of the 20th century, economists such as Jeremy Rifkin and influential US politicians such as Robert Reich, were becoming much less optimistic about the social and economic impact of the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’; a world without mass secure, employment.
‘We are entering a new age of global markets and automated production. The road to a near-workerless economy is in sight. Whether that road leads to a safe haven or a terrible abyss will depend on how well civilization prepares for the post-market era that will follow on the heels of the Third Industrial Revolution.’ (Rifkin, 1995, p.292)
During the last 25 years we’ve experienced the Third Industrial Revolution and are now heading rapidly into the Fourth. Global society has not broken down. The ‘abyss’ has been avoided, so far, and indeed the burgeoning global middle class now dominates and drives economies from China to Brazil.
In which case we can all relax, and book that trip to Disneyland, Tokyo, confident that our job will still be waiting for us when we get back?
Well, not quite.
Jobs under Threat?
You don’t need me, or indeed anyone else to tell you that Artificial Intelligence is no longer just around the corner, but already in your office and sitting room. How close it is to actually sitting in your office chair is the big question.
But it is close.
The first wave of AI impact on jobs is already happening; wiping out any job which is repetitive and easily done by a machine. So basically, we are talking about factory work. Many thousands of factory workers (mostly male) are already sitting at home imagining a life without full time, or indeed any, employment.
Next in line to go will be those jobs which require some level of human ingenuity but not enough to stop a machine learning how to do it. For example, most types of driving jobs.
So, don’t plan a career as a lorry driver.
The third wave will be when AI becomes a partner in a job, not necessarily removing the job for a human, but becoming a human’s working assistant. This is already happening in teaching, medicine, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, banks, finance, and in theory could spread to any profession. To what extent this will remove jobs or simply enhance the effectiveness of existing jobs, we don’t really know.
But we are soon to find out.
Of course, given that many serious commentators have predicted the end of work over the past half century and yet global unemployment continues to decline, then one can be accused of ‘crying wolf’. Not according to Daniel Susskind:
‘If those who worried in the past about the future of work were wrong to be concerned, then surely those who worry today are wrong to be anxious, too? Yes, people did tend to find work after being displaced by technology – but the way this happened was far from being gentle and benign.’ (2020, p. 18)
As Susskind argues, even if AI doesn’t wipe out employment, it is most definitely going to change it.
‘Technological change may affect not only the amount of work, but also the nature of that work. How well-paid is it? How secure is it? How long is the working day, or the working week? What sort of tasks does the work involve? (p. 21)
Already I can see that impact here in Thailand. Thai factories are not closing, but they are replacing thousands of humans with robots. And what are many of these ex-factory workers doing? They are working for Grab and FoodPanda on zero-hours contracts delivering restaurant food on their scooters to middle-class families.
Implications for education
Education works on hope. It is all about promise. Work today for tomorrow. Build your knowledge and secure your place in society. Deferred gratification. Without hope why become educated? Why bother with the expense of university? The whole contract between teacher and student resides on this singular assumption: the effort will pay off.
Susskind has a frightening scenario, at least for educationalists, within which this absence of hope is powerfully contextualised:
‘When confronted with the threat of technological unemployment, the most common response from those who think about the future of work…is that we need more education…the problem is [therefore] ultimately a skills challenge…For the moment, this is indeed our best response, and the most pressing task is figuring out what “more education” actually means…However, as time goes on and machines become ever more capable, education will be of diminishing help. The idea that education can indefinitely solve the employment problems created by technological progress is pervasive and largely unchallenged; it is also a big mistake.’ (p. 154)
What I find disturbing about this quote is that I sense it is presenting an accurate if brutal appraisal of education and work.
We cannot out-think the robot. We cannot out-perform the robot.
We are less reliable and more-costly than a robot. And even with those skills assumed to be innately human (e.g. creativity, empathy and emotional intelligence) as Susskind argues, the robot will simply bypass them, reinventing the job to match its own unique abilities.
Which raises a simple question: If education cannot offer hope to the millions of young people expecting, indeed demanding a future of secure pensionable, life-long employment, then as an educationalist, what are you working for?
Implications for Educationalists
I offer no answers to this conundrum. Better brains than mine are struggling with it. But I do know this, if we educationalists are to stay relevant to this and future generations, then we have to change the narrative.
We cannot change the politics, and we cannot change the education system, well, not fast, but we will have to change immediately how we present the future to our students.
We cannot in all honesty continue to promote a narrative of full-time careers for life. Professional identities will have to be entrepreneurial, fluid and flexible. People will experience serial careers, not a singular one. Nor can we pretend that by becoming ‘global citizens’ with all the attributes such entails will our students be the ‘leaders of the future’. For one thing, most will have no one to lead. We cannot even assure them of a job after university. And as for being middle class for life, well maybe. But growing numbers of educated middle-class millennials are now finding they cannot afford to buy a house, even with a full-time job.
One thing I have come to learn about Generation Z is that they appreciate honesty and openness. If we educationalists present a world which no longer exists, a future which is never going to happen, then not only will our students never forgive us, we should never forgive ourselves.
We need a new educational narrative for a new age.
And while we are working out just what that narrative is going to look like* we educationalists might also consider it a good idea to rethink the whole aims and purposes of education in a world where people no longer find meaning in work and where whatever work might be available is demanding, invariably poorly paid, intensely performative and highly insecure.
*Any narrative might benefit from aligning itself with Sir Winston Churchill’s observation about education and expectations: ‘Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent or vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.’ (W.S.Churchill, ‘My Early Life’, 1930, p. 81)
references
Susskind, D. (2020) ‘A World Without Work’. Metropolitan Books
Gorz, A. (1983) ‘Paths to Paradise’. Pluto
Rifkin, J. (1995) ‘The End of Work’. Tarcher Putnam
EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY AND THE LOCKDOWN: SOME REFLECTIONS
Guest article by Dr Frances Farrell (Edge Hill University, UK); originally from the journal Prism.
TAKEAWAYS
The impact of school closures will be a ‘learning loss’ with the greatest impact on the most disadvantaged children.
The kinds of parents having discussions about, and making efforts with, home schooling are likely to be middle class.
Whilst the article focusses on the UK, inequitable access to the ‘passwords’ required to access home learning is a problem in many countries.
The article challenges the UK government to step up; we challenge you to step up, wherever you are located.
In 1970, Basil Bernstein famously wrote that education cannot compensate for society.
Bernstein may have been writing fifty years ago, but recent reports on the impact of school closures on disadvantaged children and young people resonate with his conclusions. Despite decades of rhetoric about inclusion, the stark empirical reality of social inequality has been exposed by the covid crisis.
Elena Magrini (2020), describes the impact of school closures as a ‘learning loss’ that will have greatest impact on the most disadvantaged children with the result that the education inequality gap will only be widened further. Cities in the north of England, with disproportionately high numbers of adults without basic qualifications have already been made vulnerable by economic austerity and chronic under investment.
To their credit, the UK government has responded to this educational crisis, although they could hardly fail to do so given the election rhetoric of ‘levelling up’ and commitment to a new golden age of infrastructure investment. Clearly, government commitment to provide disadvantaged children with laptops, tablets and 4G routers is to be welcomed. However, the practical challenges of providing online education raises some pressing critical questions about equality and inclusion in late modern societies.
In 1992 Gilles Deleuze wrote that social inclusion is determined by possession of the ‘Password’. Nikolas Rose (2004) developed these ideas in his work Powers of Freedom. Rose draws attention to ‘circuits of inclusion’ which require constant proof of ‘legitimate identity’. Rose provides examples; computer readable passports, driving licenses with unique identification codes, social insurance numbers, bank cards. Each card provides the bearer with a virtual identity and access to certain privileges. Governments, employers, insurance companies and banks can all utilize databases to monitor individuals, provide or deny access to training, benefits or credit. To achieve an admissible existence in postmodern societies of control requires access to these circuits of inclusion, which leads us back to the issue of educational citizenship and access to educational circuits of inclusion in the lockdown.
The problem is summed up by Tom Middlehurst of the SSAT[1] in an interview for the Guardian where he states that ‘the kinds of parents who will be having discussions and making the effort’ (Middlehurst in Henry, 2020) with home schooling are likely to be ‘middle class parents’, in other words, those that have the ‘digital’ capitals and the ‘passwords’ that provide access to computers, on line learning, reliable broadband provision and technological skill amongst other things. For young people and their families disenfranchised by decades of structural inequality panicked provision of laptops and routers is hardly going to enable access to circuits of educational inclusion in a meaningful and enduring way. What is required now is a sea change in policy that leads to sustainable provision for learners and families. It shouldn’t take a national emergency to refocus politicians and public debate on issues of social justice and educational inclusion.
Perhaps this pandemic will prove to be the ultimate test of Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ rhetoric in education policy and provision? Perhaps too it is a test for all of us involved in (often elitist, usually privileged) international education. What have we done as an international educational community to support children without the required ‘passwords’?
REFERENCES
Bernstein, B. 1970. ‘Education cannot compensate for society’, in Stoneman, C. et al (eds) Education for Democracy, London, Penguin Education Special.
Deleuze, G. 1992. Postscript on the Societies of Control, October, 59, pp 3-7
Henry, J. 2020. Disadvantaged pupils are given laptops to study online while schools are closed. Available at theguardian.com/education/2020/apr/19/disadvantaged-pupils-are-given-laptops-to-study-online-while-schools-are-closed (accessed 23/04/20)
Magrini, E. 2020. Coronavirus: What’s the impact of school closures across the country? Available at centreforcities.org/blog/coronavirus-whats-the-impact-of-school-closures-across-the-country (accessed 23/04/20)
Rose, N. 2004. Powers of Freedom Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
AUTHOR BIO
Francis Farrell is a Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religion at Edge Hill University, UK. He is an active researcher and is leading a project exploring teachers and young people’s understandings of British identity. Prior to joining Edge Hill University Francis taught in secondary schools and held posts as Head of Humanities and Head of RE, Sociology and Philosophy in a North West school. He can be contacted here.
[1] SSAT, the Schools, Students and Teachers Network
EMERGENCE OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY FOR THE PRE-SERVICE TEACHER
Author: Georgina Cattley (Flinders University, Australia)
There was a time when the accomplished amateur was a more desirable identity than that of the professional.
Not anymore.
Sometime during the last half century, the amateur drifted into insignificance if not contempt while the professional became the sought-after identity. Today, to call anyone an amateur is to subject them to disparagement.
This yearning for professionalisation, professionalism, the very moniker ‘professional’, covers most every work activity. Cleaners become ‘cleaning and maintenance professionals’, janitors become ‘in-house security professionals’, while shop assistants become ‘sales professionals’.
‘The term ‘amateur’, once a noble, unsullied designate, now carries with it the air of the dabbler and dilettante. To be labelled an amateur is to be condemned as lacking competence and useful knowledge: not a serious player in today’s competitive marketplace. So, by stealth, accident or design all workers can be expected and required to aspire to a professionalism.’*
All very fine, but where does that leave the real professionals? Because janitors, cleaners and shop assistants may well do a valuable and worthwhile job but they are not professionals in the truest sense of the term. A professional identity is invested with social and cultural privilege, specialism, autonomy and trust. It has cultural capital validated through a distinct and exclusive Higher Educational experience. The teacher can become a cleaner but the cleaner cannot become a teacher, at least one who enjoys Qualified Teacher Status not without having first gone through a clearly defined and rigorous process leading to professional identity validation.
But when does one acquire the professional identity of ‘teacher’? How does it emerge in an individual? And what practices help usher it into existence? What might shape a robust teacher identity?
These are all valid and important questions for educationalists to consider. In an age when performativity and the Global Education Reform Movement have united to shift education towards a more instrumental and standardized activity, leaving teachers at the risk of becoming little more than ‘learning technicians’ (especially when deploying online learning activities), then knowing more about the subjective processes of professional identity development serve to reinforce both its importance and its value to the individual teacher.
This article reports on a small study involving teacher education students at Flinders University in South Australia. It highlights the potential influence of reflective writing on the emergence of professional identity during these pre-service teachers’ practicum placements. In particular, the research links reflective writing with identity formation during a project which required pre-service teachers to reflect upon their responses to, and observations of, a number of broad elements of the teaching environment both within the classrooms and in the wider school context.
But why was reflective writing considered a key variable in the development of these pre-service teacher’s sense of themselves as educational professionals?
‘Reflective writing was chosen as the method for gaining pre-service teachers’ responses to their observations of school life [because] reflection is seen as a vehicle for considering the management of ‘uncertainty and ambiguity’ which is experienced in the wider culture of the school community with the potential for “changed dispositions”. (p. 337)
Method
The study involved eight female participants, of various ages, all undertaking BA in Education courses, ranging from junior primary to secondary.
The method required them to write their responses to situations arising during their teaching practice (practicum) element of the BA using a reflective log. The participants were given some explicit teaching about reflective writing, this being a deliberate decision to coach them in achieving richer levels of reflection, given the author’s supposition ‘that it is these levels of reflection which are most likely to enhance the development of professional and personal identity.’ (p. 340)
Such teaching logs are widely used on PGCE programmes especially in Western universities. They are considered particularly effective at providing the pre-service teacher with insights into their feelings, emotional responses, and developing sense of professional self.
Discussion and Findings
The participants enthusiastically engaged with the reflective log writing, producing some insightful and revealing reactions to what was in effect for them, immersion in a new, strange and often challenging professional space:
“…the more I get involved the more I realise just how much teachers really do. It is certainly not a profession you can leave at work!...However, the more effort I put in the more I get out of the job and the more I love it! I find teaching so rewarding. The best part of the job is the relationships with the students.”
“I was surprised by my feelings of inadequacy when questioned by parents…However, as my relationships with the parents grew I soon became caught up talking to them in the mornings and listening to them.”
“The students are not really engaging or responding to my questions. I wonder if they sensed my own internal fears about not being able to teach this subject adequately…I guess I have gained a certain level of comfort with admitting that I do not always know the answers to everything.”
“I feel I need to gain a high self-awareness and self-worth before even attempting to teach in a school where parent liaison may not be a pleasurable task.”
“I know now that I can gain attention effectively without feeling stressed about it. I guess the stress factor is caused by fear that one may never be able to effectively gain attention of students. I am very, very pleased I have overcome this fear.”
“At first I felt uncomfortable with parents watching my teaching, however, as I became more confident with my own abilities I realised they were wanting to know how I relate to their children.”
“Reflections have helped me to look at how certain situations actually made me feel and how experiences can allow new teachers to build on understandings. It is very easy to handle certain interactions and forget to look at how we decide on these actions or strategies in our practice.“
“I think written evaluation forces you to acknowledge your new found understandings about education and relationships and this is extremely useful in establishing your professional identity.”
The article and its underpinning research clearly demonstrates the importance of reflective writing in the emergent professional identity of pre-service teachers. They are able to record, witness and trace their reactions to a range of situations and note their developing confidence and self-awareness as professionals. In so doing, their association with the profession enhanced and eventually validated.
A further observation is the tenuous character of professional identity. It is not grounded in biology but in the social environment, notably the school setting. It is not fixed and predictable but in a state of flux. One wonders therefore, whether it would be valuable if more experienced teachers undertook the writing of a reflective log at different points in their careers?
At the very least it will provide the teacher with a record of their journey in the profession.
*Dent m. and Whitehead, S. (2002) ‘Managing Professional Identities’. Routledge. P. 3
reference
Cattley, G (2007) Emergence of Professional Identity for the Pre-Service Teacher, International Education Journal, v8 n2 p337-347
link
https://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v8n2/Cattley/paper.pdf
(direct link to PDF)
DIGEST II:
STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN A THAI ICT SCHOOLS PILOT PROJECT
Authors: M. W. Rumpagaporn and I. G. N. Darmawan (University of Adelaide)
One South East Asia country has that long recognised its education system to be in urgent need of reform is Thailand. Despite receiving a massive 20% of the government’s total annual spending, it continues to languish at the bottom of all global educational league tables.
One specific area of need is improvement in students’ critical thinking skills.
As far back as 1999, the Thai government proposed major action to improve critical thinking skills specifically through the use of technology in education.
‘It was anticipated that the adoption of new technology would enhance higher-order thinking skills, critical thinking skills, systematic, and other relevant thinking skills for all students…Through teacher-student interaction, it is also expected that students should be assisted to learn critical thinking skills, such as gathering knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation in classrooms where supportive learning environments are presented.’ (p. 125-126)
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this new technology, the Thai government established the ICT Schools Pilot Project, involving selected primary and secondary schools in Bangkok and eventually extended to other cities and provinces. The purpose of the project being to provide a model in teaching and learning by integrating ICT through the teaching and learning process directly into classrooms.
This article reports on an investigation to examine how effective the initiative has been at enhancing Thai student’s criticality.
Methods
The authors used a mixed-methods approach involving questionnaires (150 students and 16 teachers from eight IC schools), interview surveys (30 students and 5 teachers from 10 ICT schools), and computer-based classroom observations in 22 classrooms from all 13 ICT schools.
Findings
Overall, the findings showed that students could be assisted to develop critical thinking skills through the Thai ICT programme. However, this is fundamentally dependent on teaching roles (ability and knowledge of the individual teacher) and school management, especially regarding allocation of budgets for ICT, the use of classrooms” ICT infrastructure, and the establishment of effective school organisational structures.
Examples include the school principals’ ability to bring together the appropriate types of school staff necessary to balance the teachers’ technological knowledge, skills and capabilities regards initiating and integrating ICT. School administrators and structures need to be effective at supporting subject teachers to set or manage their classrooms’ ICT infrastructure.
For the teachers, they need to increase more cooperative learning among students. This is achieved by supporting students working as group members, group interaction, and teamwork. In this way, student would better understand what they were learning through sharing and exchanging their computer experiences with others.
Recommendations:
Thai teachers need to transform their teaching roles from information delivery specialists to guides and facilitators of learning. This means that teacher roles must be changed from lecturer to consultant, guide, resource providers.
Teachers need to be proactive in assisting their students by supporting their ideas or creating projects that expand their imagination and creative learning abilities.
Teachers need to enhance the opportunity for cooperative learning among students. This is achieved by encouraging group interaction, teamwork, and discussion.
Teachers must encourage and assist the students to construct their own knowledge and share it with other students.
The unspoken subtext to this research is the challenge of changing the Thai teaching and learning culture. This is the fundamental barrier to creative and critical thinking in Thai classrooms, not only at university level but throughout the Thai education system.
The lesson to be learned from the Thai experience of trying to bring a state education system into the 21st century, is that money and resources alone won’t make it happen. Certainly, from this research and the tepid success of the Thai ICT initiative, technology also is of limited value in and of itself. Without the necessary inspired and forward-looking leadership in schools, colleges and universities, the habitual response of Thai teachers and their managers will be to slip back into time-honoured roles of ‘fountain of all knowledge’ both in the school and in the classroom, resulting in didactic teaching, instruction not imagination, boring lessons, bored students, all with inevitable educational outcomes.
Schools around the world may consider the Thai experience to be unique, not least because of the conservative and reactionary character of Thai culture. The truth is, most countries suffer from a similar ailment: cultural constipation. That is, while the leading brains of a country may well be only too aware of what needs to happen to bring about advancement in educational achievement, especially critical thinking skills, any real improvement is stymied by the inability of professionals, leaders and teachers, to slip the reins of their own cultural thinking and responses.
In other words, if you want to change the student then you first have to change the teacher.
Reference
Rumpagaporn, M.W and Darmawan, I G.N. (2007), Students’ Critical Thinking Skills in a Thai ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Schools Pilot Project, International Education Journal, 8(2), 125-132
Link
DIGEST III:
BALANCING PRIORITIES AND MEASURING SUCCESS
Author: James MacDonald (Yokohama International School, Japan)
No doubt you have experienced success in your educational career. And likely there have been failures and disappointments too.
Some of those successes and failures will have been noted by others, no doubt your bosses, charged with evaluating your performance. Perhaps you are a school leader or school inspector responsible for evaluating the work of others? Almost certainly you’ll have been subject to appraisal, assessment and formal observation and at various times in your career. Indeed, perhaps this is a regular aspect of your professional life in education?
If you have never been at the sharp end of professional evaluation then you are a rare case, for sure. Most everyone nowadays, from the Starbucks employee to the Global 500 CEO is subject to performativity; target setting and measurement against achievement.
And it doesn’t take a business genius to guess what the Global 500 CEO is being assessed on: profit. Indeed, as the author of this paper notes, ‘traditionally the only measure of organizational success has been profit’.
Which is fine up to a point, but surely in the 21st century there is more to running a business than simply securing and increasing the financial bottom line?
And surely there is more to running a school (private or public) than simply protecting and nurturing its financial well-being? Indeed, if anyone reading this who works in education can come up with a single yet over-riding measure of success for a school (or college or university) then we at EDDi would love to hear of it.
Certainly, James MacDonald the author of this article, believes it is impossible if not unwise to attempt to apply a single measure of success for education. Writing as a (then) Principal of a leading international school he is in a good position to make the case for more expansive and nuanced assessments and which reflect both the complexity of international education and its uniqueness. At the same time, MacDonald is drawn to adopting the concept of ‘bottom-line’ evaluations for schools.
‘Unlike the business world, there is no single, widely accepted common denominator (that is, a bottom line) for evaluating a school’s performance. Perhaps, instead of trying to identify a single measure as traditionally businesses do, might it be feasible to borrow from the business world and gauge a school’s overall performance using a multiple bottom line framework?’ (p. 81)
The author’s contention is that ‘bottom line’ theory works well for international schools, but not in the singularly simplistic way deployed in traditional business contexts and organisations.
‘It has been suggested that international schools are multiple line organizations with one educational bottom line and one business bottom line and that one can only see a true picture of a school by looking through both a business and an educational lens.’ (p. 86)
However, the author goes on to suggest that the educational bottom line can be further disaggregated, thereby aiming to ‘provide an effective framework (and mindset) for school leaders.
In effect, what the author is proposing and testing in this article is the veracity of a ‘triple bottom line framework for analysing and assessing the performance of international schools’. Drawing on a wide evidential base, including previously published research into educational assessment, the author contends that international schools can be broken down into three bottom lines: one ‘financial,’ one ‘academic’ and ‘the intangible core’.
Fiscal bottom line
This bottom line is measured by traditional financial statements, the application of generally accepted accounting principles, and the setting of and success in meeting, financial and budgetary targets. Within the international school setting, the communities most likely to be interested in this bottom line are the owners, the directors, the governors and the senior management team.
Important as the fiscal bottom line is, it remains the weakest area for most international school leaders, indeed it is often the bottom line which has less of their attention, with most Principals relying on owners and Directors to ensure the school’s financial well-being.
Educational bottom line 1: (the academic)
This comprises the assessed, evaluated and reported outcomes of the formal curriculum. Results here are generally compiled as discrete numbers and statistics, offering means of comparison with other schools (and students). Test, external examination results, academic assessments, and all academic-related measurements of ability and outcome are included in this bottom line. For all educational leaders, this is their primary focus of attainment. Academic results are what they go to first both to judge a school’s value and performance, and that of an individual teacher, manager or student.
This extreme and undiluted focus on academic results is partly due to the fact that they are public in some form or another, thereby influencing parental choice and long-term school reputation. As the author speculates, it is entirely possible that league tables for international schools will emerge around the world, as they already have in some countries (e.g. UK).
However, the question the author raises is; ‘should performance judgements about a school not aspire to reflect the full spectrum of learning (academic and otherwise) that can take place in a school setting?’ Addressing this question takes us to the third bottom line.
Educational bottom line 2 (the ‘intangible’)
At this point we are into messy more subjective judgements which despite being messy and subjective, people still tend to apply with some vigour. Accepting that international schools, by definition, are more than simply conveyor belts churning out exam results, then what are they about? One can look at IS mission statements and see phrases such as ‘promoting global understanding, respecting fellow citizens and having a tolerant and open attitude to others’sprouting most everywhere nowadays. ‘Educating for the 21st century’, developing global citizens’, ‘creating a learning community’, developing tomorrow’s leaders’, are all similarly common-place aspirations among international schools, from Mexico City to Shanghai.
But how to quantify these objectives?
As the author notes; ‘not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts’.
The article goes into some depth trying to square this particular circle and makes brave progress, but ultimately it seems the pseudo-scientific measures of performativity don’t work quite so well when applied to amorphous concepts such as ‘global citizenship’ and ‘tolerant and open attitudes’.
Does this mean we should give up trying? Should we therefore retreat to the double bottom lines of profit and results?
I think not.
And I think most, if not all, international educationalists would agree with me.
At the very least, and as the author notes, ‘the proposed triple bottom line concept provides a practical mechanism for the discussion of school priorities’. And yes, just getting owners, directors, SMT and teachers, indeed parents and students, to recognise that there is much more to education and learning than profit and results would go a long way to enhancing the quality of school’s climate and its wider reputation. Moreover, maybe such thinking will permeate beyond the school gates once those students are themselves leaders, charged with bottom line accounting and assessment.
For myself, I offer one possible solution to this conundrum of the ‘intangible bottom line’ and that is simply ‘happiness’. Get all those working and studying in the school to periodically record their ‘happiness level’.
Now that would be an intangible worth aiming for.
reference
MacDonald, J. (2009). Balancing priorities and measuring success: A triple bottom line framework for international school leaders. Journal of Research in International Education, 8(1), 81–98
link
https://doi.org/10.1177/1475240908100682
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