Category — Books & Library

In late October, the educational world lost two disparate giants from the world of education. On October 21st, we learned of the death of the quintessential educational reformer, Theodore Sizer. A native New Englander, Sizer dramatically influenced the instructional practices of thousands of educators including those of yours truly.

One day earlier, we lost Gerald Bracey, a longtime education researcher who had the audacity to truly analyze statistics. Bracey, considered one of the foremost defenders of American public schools used long-term international comparisons to demonstrate that America’s public school actually performed much better than critics would suggest.

Ted Sizer

Ted Sizer was the founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, a group that boasts about 600 members. These schools have adopted a specific school reform concept that construct learning experiences for students by focusing on a core set of principles.

Instead of the traditional comprehensive approach to high school Coalition schools focus on ten core principles:

• Learning to use one’s mind well
• Less is more, depth over coverage
• Goals apply to all students
• Personalization
• Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
• Demonstration of mastery
• A tone of decency and trust
• Commitment to the entire school
• Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
• Democracy and equity

Those of us who never taught in a Coalition school wondered aloud about some principles until we had the chance to read his groundbreaking book, Horace’s Compromise. Page by page, the book revealed the shortcomings of the 1980’s high school construct, offering a set of ideas that collectively had one wondering how we were able to accomplish anything of note in the factory model of education.

Though I never met Mr.Sizer, after reading Horace’s Compromise and his later follow-ups, Horace’s School and Horace’s Hope, I felt somehow like I actually knew him, or at least had a sense of what he was all about. At times, Mr. Sizer took on the image of his character, “Horace,” the fictionalized English teacher doing his very best to provide a meaningful educational environment for some 100 plus students a day. At other times, I was Horace, the one making all the compromises to survive, and Sizer my administrator, deftly observing and pointing out that I too was often settling for good enough.

My understanding is that Ted Sizer was the epitome of what an educational leader should be. The former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and headmaster at Phillips Academy in Andover was a brilliant yet reflective practitioner. He clearly subscribed to the Robert Kennedy school of thought, seeing things as they could be and wondering why not.

People spoke highly of his style and his propensity to listen to teachers. His respect for the educational process also meant he spent time with students seeking to determine their views on school and what they had learned.

Most importantly, Sizer’s work represented the antithesis of the current NCLB push, that somehow educational reform can be simplified and codified. Sizer understood real learning was not linear and that mastery could and should be demonstrated in multiple ways.

The current emphases on making larger schools feel smaller and on high expectations for all students were fundamental to Sizer’s principles. Other concepts like the change in teacher role from the “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” were fueled by Sizer’s teacher as coach model.

Gerald Bracey

Reportedly fearless in the face of power, Bracey was often described in very different terms than Sizer. Adjectives like pugnacious and abrasive were generally used to describe the man who saw Washington as being ignorant and intellectually lazy.

In 1991 he founded the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency or EDDRA. To most folks it did not seem to matter the subject – whether it was charter schools, teacher merit pay, or high-stakes testing — Bracey stood in opposition.
Even when it came to the concept of standards, Bracey stood in opposition. He was reported as offering this as one of his last Tweets:

“Thinking that the light at the end of the education tunnel is a standards freight train coming our way. Gonna hurt bad.”
Bracey taught the non-statistical world about Simpson’s paradox and the concept of averages. The concept reveals the possibility that data collectively could contradict what happened within subgroups creating the total.

Such was the case with American SAT scores. While minorities and white majorities were each increasing their scores, the large number of minorities now taking the test meant the overall average test scores were decreasing.

Once a person begins to understand Simpson’s Paradox, any thought of supporting NCLB and its various subgroup expectations goes out the window.

Bracey also pointed out in his book, Reading Educational Research, How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered, the workings of former President George Bush and his tax cuts. Bush used the concept of average to create the illusion that Americans as a group were seeing significant tax reductions, about $1500 per person per year.

However, Bracey pointed out that was “on average.” Citing the work of the Washington Post, Bracey noted how the typical teacher would receive a tax reduction equal to the cost of a new television set while someone earning a million dollars a year received a tax break that was roughly twice as large as the typical teacher’s salary. But when these amounts were averaged, every American appeared to receive a substantial break.

Each year Bracey would offer his annual Rotten Apples in Education awards and with it he would take no prisoners. It must be noted that while an enormous critic of George Bush and a one time advocate and campaigner for Barack Obama, he was quick to call Obama to task earlier this year regarding his assertions that three-fourths of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma.

“Not really,” Bracey was quoted. “Look it up.”

It was classic Bracey who had one consistent response to many of the claims being asserted regarding public education, “Show me the data.”

There was a large touch of irony in an August NY Times post discussing the demise of a fixture in the world of education, the school textbook. The article, In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History, predicts the death of an industry that is becoming “antiquated” with each passing tech innovation.

Though always considered exceedingly expensive, textbooks were once deemed as fundamental to the classroom learning experience as the teacher. These tombs were the source of knowledge, the drivers of curriculum, and the teacher’s most important resource.

But all that has changed in the digital world. According to experts, there are two critical factors.

First, there is the assessment of the value (learning produced per dollar) of these texts:

“They are expensive,” writes Seth Godin. “$50 is the low end, $200 is more typical.”

Yet,

“Textbooks have very little narrative,” writes Godin. “They don’t take you from a place of ignorance to a place of insight. Instead, even the best … textbooks surround you with a fairly non-connected series of vocabulary words, oversimplified problems and random examples.”

And of course, in today’s lightening-fast world, they are out of date before the ink is even dry.

Second, while the books are essentially considered less than ideal, we are seeing an enormous change in students based on the fact they have grown up with technology. From the NY Times:

“Kids are wired differently these days,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, La. “They’re digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.

“They don’t engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote,” Dr. Abshire continued. “Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikis that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks.”

Beyond Textbooks

Today we offer a Q & A with Andy Chlup of the Vail School District. With experience as a classroom teacher and technology coordinator, Andy is a perfect choice to head up one of the digital learning movements cited in the aforementioned NY Times article, Beyond Textbooks.

Andy notes he has been passionate about utilizing technology in the classroom from the first day he walked into a classroom. His interest in digital learning was spurred on by the wide-spread availability of open-source web-based tools such as WordpressMU, Moodle, DekiWiki, and many more.

Below, Andy discusses the move to a digital learning model, one that actually transcends any discussion of textbooks.

What would you categorize as the three biggest advantages to moving away from textbooks and replacing that tradition with a digital learning model?

* Instant updates. Our superintendent, Calvin Baker, proudly sent out an email message to the school board when Pluto was demoted. In the message he said, we are one of the only districts in the country who’s textbooks are not obsolete.

* Collaboration. At this phase the primary collaboration is happening between teachers but as the tools become more familiar students will be working with each other, their teachers, and the community more and more.

* Costs. While the technology that enables digital learning still costs slightly more than a set of textbooks, it can do so much more. A digital device provides access to content and gives students a platform to create, share, and work.

Do you share the view that the digital world will be the real driver of educational innovations moving forward (as opposed to the concept of vouchers and charter schools)? Why or why not?

I’m sure that I see technology as an alternative to these on-going debates. What I’ve learned is that technology is an accelerant. If you use it on a system that isn’t very good it just allows you to do a bad job faster and more efficiently. I believe that technology should be used to accelerate things that are already working well. For example portfolio assessment is great, unless you’re the teacher trying to keep it all organized. Take that content and put it on a blog server and you’ve not only got an organized structure built into the system but a way to add pictures, videos, and audio to the portfolio.

The same can be said of digital instruction. If the instruction/pedagogy is poor then you are just being better at teaching badly. However, if the instruction is about understanding and connecting then technology can enable and accelerate that process by orders of magnitude.

While everyone has some sense of what is meant by a digital textbook, can you explain to readers the fundamental differences between a traditional book format and a digital text? And can you explain what is meant by a flexbook?

I’m not familiar with flex books. Alternatively, we aren’t even using a true digital text. Our teachers are connecting and/or creating their own content to meet the learning needs of their students. In my opinion, the major differences between a traditional text and digital text are:

* It is easier to copy/distribute digital texts. There are virtually no transactional costs beyond appropriate copyright compensation.

* Digital texts can be living documents with video and sounds plus hyperlinks to outside supporting materials.

* Digital texts can be more easily appended and modified either by students taking notes or teachers choosing exactly the right resource for a given lesson.

It seems that folks today have begun truly questioning the concept of a textbook, that such a resource is finite and linear yet real learning is infinite and multi-pronged. Are today’s tech-savvy kids the driving force behind the digital move or are educators finally seeing the light?

For me it is about economics. The simple fact is that it will soon be cheaper to buy a device that can be used to access digital content freely available on the web than it will be to purchase a set of textbooks. This fact has driven our Beyond Textbooks program. We want to be ready to fully embrace this dream.

We are going about it in two ways. The first is identifying subscription resources that meet our instructional needs and begin categorizing them so that they are more accessible to teachers and students. The second is to begin creating the instructional resources that will be needed to teach with these devices. That means Moodle courses, portfolio blogs, wiki projects, etc…

As schools head into the digital age, what will this new digital format do to the fundamental structures of school: grade levels, subjects, and the units of time (class periods)?

I think that as long as there is standardized testing and traditional schools it will be hard to escape these boundaries. Unless we get to a point that students no longer attend their school, I just don’t see there being much change. The systemic changes necessary to bring down these boundaries is well beyond the power of one public school district.

That being said, there is a glimmer of hope. As the instructional tools continue to develop and students become more adept at academic learning with technology tools, I think the relatively arbitrary distinctions we currently use in education will fade away.

The key is finding transformative technologies and pedagogies. At this point, it seems that teachers and students are still utilizing many web 2.0 tools in superficial ways. It is like the PowerPoint phase all over again. What I mean is teachers are impressed by the technologies that students demonstrate, not what students actually do with the technology. We’ve got to make sure that the technologies adopted positively affect student learning outcomes.

I know a lot is made of teachers making the adjustment to the digital age but how are you finding parents adapting? The idea of a course without a textbook must be troubling to parents who attended schools where the text formed the framework of every course?

It can be very difficult because parents may not be particularly computer savvy. A teacher can post their entire day as a podcast, but if a parent doesn’t understand how to access the content then they are frustrated. For the most part, parents just want to be able to help their child with school work so you have to be sure that those resources are still available.

The teachers that teach without textbooks all have course blogs that contain the content they use to teach during the day. These are run on WordpressMU and have a wide variety of access controls depending on the grade level and teacher preferences. Parents have access viewer access to these blogs, so they can see the materials their children are using.

One major concern for many is the number of students who may not have access to computers at home. Do you share the concern that the digital model could further widen the gap between the children of affluent families and those who are not able to afford such technology?

I do. The bright side is that personal computing devices are quickly dropping below the $300 mark.

What we see is a future where every student has a minimum spec device that is provided by the district. As one of my co-workers said, “It is like the bus….if you don’t have a car or your parents won’t let you drive you ride the bus.” We’d like to get to the point where all students have the option to either use the district minimum spec machine or bring their own. We feel this gives the best opportunity to both underprivileged students and those who have the means to have more.

The content and applications that we are developing as our standard are all wrapped around the web, so it doesn’t really matter if you access those application via a netbook running linux or a hot-rod Macbook pro. Obviously, those that bring their own computers still have an advantage, but to realize the potential benefits of a digital curriculum you don’t need a super fast machine.

The move towards Opensource materials has folks insisting that educational costs should drop considerably – is that so? Will there not be significant technology costs as schools attempt to stay up-to-date on the tech side?

While I’m a huge fan and proponent of open-source, it isn’t necessarily cheaper to run. For example, while Linux if free, finding somebody that understands how to set it up and keep it running is not. I think regardless of the approach you take, be it Windows, OS X, or Linux an organization needs to determine the TOC before making any big decisions.

If you have the talent to tap into open-source projects then I say go for it. Just realize there are research and development costs that cannot be ignored.

As for refresh, I have two thoughts.

First, this is where having a technology team that doesn’t understand education can be detrimental. The Tech industry is on a 12-24 month cycle and education is on a 36-60 month cycle – this causes more problems than any other tech issue I can think of. Just when a teacher is finally comfortable with a program something new comes down the pipeline.

So, if your tech department is pushing out updates every 24 months, teachers haven’t had time to fully integrate the technology into their teaching. This can eventually lead to teachers being frustrated with technology.

Basically, I encourage other ed tech professionals to start thinking about the educational cycle and not get wrapped in the technology cycle. Sometimes, it pays off. Just compare Vista to Windows 7.

Next, districts have to accept that tech costs money. I do believe that these costs will be offset when you stop buying textbooks.

While much is being made of the move away from traditional textbooks, the program you are involved with, Beyond Textbooks, seems to be far more sophisticated than simply removing a text from the equation. Can you briefly discuss the initiative?

To start with it is about moving away from the textbook as a metaphor or schema, whether paper or digital.

Beyond Textbooks is really about looking at learning objectives independent of a text. The whole approach involves using the learning objective as your starting point, then choosing the most effective resource to teach that objective to your current class.

Teachers are able to focus on what is the best way to creatively teach the learning objectives. So, often teachers are limited to teaching with the resources they have. We aim to leverage the nearly unlimited potential of the Internet to give teachers access to virtually any resource they can dream up. This includes materials created by other teachers, subscription services, and many incredible free resources out on the web.

The key is organizing these resources in a way that allows teachers to connect them to their learning objectives.

Is there anything I did not touch on that you think is a key element to the digital learning or Beyond Textbooks movement?

I think the most important thing is that BT is a grassroots, “For Teachers, By Teachers,” approach to school reform. Each of the steps involved have required input and guidance by teachers. One of the biggest problems with many educational resources is that they are written by academics or professional writers instead of professional educators.

With the passing of Frank McCourt, remembrances are understandable. His brilliant Angela Ashes, of course, marks him as a literary giant, but to many kids he was far more important, he was their teacher.

What a superb teacher he must have been. As with most of the great ones, he could create a lesson out of anything imaginable, including the art of forged notes and excuses for missing school or unfinished homework.

The true brilliance of course lay in his ability to first reach kids where they were at, then take them someplace they would never have gone on their own.

He doesn’t just get these kids to review the notes they forged, he takes them on a creative journey, having them write such notes for some of the world’s most famous historical figures.

A brilliant author.

An equally brilliant teacher.

The release of the latest version of the Kindle has many waxing poetic on the future of books in the digital age.

While books seem to gather the most interest, perhaps a more important and certainly more sophisticated notion is to examine what it will mean to be called a writer/author in the age of new media.

Current Status

Tim O’Reilly of RadarOReilly.com describes the idea of putting a book on an electronic device as analogous to “pointing a camera at a stage play, and calling it a movie.”

While that might have been the initial thrust of Hollywood, O’Reilly points out that the “tools of production and consumption actually changed the format of what was produced and consumed. Camera angles, pacing, editing techniques, lighting, location shooting, special effects: all these innovations make the movies (and television) of today very different from the earliest movies.”

Likewise, we are in the early stages of a new world, one that is shifting to an online medium featuring greater and greater portability. The question thus arises, how will books change in the digital age?

To get a sense of the basics, we turn back to the latest version of the Kindle. The device features the ability to display a wealth of different document styles and formats. As one would expect, the Kindle 2 provides access to and readily displays books, newspapers, and magazines. However, the latest version also displays a vast array of other document formats: Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI files. Therefore the Kindle now has the potential to be a document repository and full-fledged library.

Perhaps an even more exciting option, albeit still in its infancy as a polished product, is that the Kindle 2 can turn a traditional book into an audiobook. There is still much work to be done before the device can be considered a perfect swap for the audio created by a soothing and polished human voice, but the device offers an amazing step forward in the overall reading process.

As proponents tout, one can use the Kindle as an ebook reader on a train or airplane just as you could pull out a book to read. But then later, the earbuds can be connected and you can continue to read (as in listen to the audio production) as you walk through the station or airport.

Of course, the new ereader means that no book has to be printed and therefore there is no such thing as a truly finished product. The ereader concept certainly makes nonfiction works more practical as updates can be easily uploaded to ensure that the book available for purchase always represents the latest edition.

Mixing Platforms

Of course, one of the beauties of the internet and thus the Kindle is the ability to provide documents that then hyperlink immediately to provide a relevant citation or reference. Perhaps even more importantly, nonfiction works can consist of fewer collected chapters as some of the text that would normally be incorporated to build upon or explain certain concepts can instead be simply linked to.

Readers without expertise can peruse the linked material at their leisure while those who have a grasp may forgo those links and delve directly into the new material.

According to O’Reilly, such a concept likely means we will need to develop useful modular formats. In such cases, many books could become more of a collection of loosely-related pages allowing for greater depth and breadth of issue exploration.

Therein comes the real challenge: how does one actually write material for the potential to cross platforms? How can the author ensure her book translates well to an ereader or iPhone application?

As but one example, what happens if a writer uses hyperlinks instead of footnotes but the reader doesn’t have internet access? And even when the reader does have such access, how can writers ensure such cross-referencing links are still active and reliable at the the time the reader examines the link?

Scott Meyers, an independent author and consultant, examines the notion of cross-platforming in “Authoring Challenges in a Multiplatform World.” To the right we present a visual of one of his slides that depicts some of the existing challenges (click to enlarge).

Currently, the conventional manuscript from an author is often designed for the traditional book format. Later, that document is translated where it is viewed on a computer or laptop, an ereader, or PDA or listened to on one of those same devices.

While most everything that works in printed form will work on these devices, simply translating existing documents fails to take advantage of the new technology available. As Meyer notes, text, diagrams, tables, photographs, etc. all work with new media, they just might not work as well.

At the same time, new media offers so much more: color, video/animations and audio are what make the newer platforms so enticing. It is truly as O’Reilly notes, the stage when movies were simply still films of stage plays.

Author Issues

Meyer notes that effective multi-platform publication will require greater author cooperation. It will also mean that writers may well need to develop additional skills if they are to ensure the portability of their work to different platforms.

As it is currently constructed, the idea of designing and writing for traditional print formats then attempting to translate or port that work to other new media platforms makes little sense. Instead, according to Meyer, we will soon see the adoption of new expository and software tools that allow for the construction of documents that are easily ported among devices.

It will also demand new writing skills and that authors understand two relatively new concepts: how to properly express capability-dependent content (eg., displaying a table on devices that have limited viewing screen sizes) and how to apply capability-dependent formatting (eg. including colors when such an option is available, falling back to black and white when color is not present). And as we noted, there will need to be careful consideration for how cross-references and links are utilized, especially given that documents and web sites will not remain static over time.

Teachers are fond of saying that we are educating students for jobs that do not even exist today. Thanks to ereaders and other portable electronic devices, one of the world’s greatest inventions, the book, is undergoing a major review.

At the same time, the notion of what it means to be a writer or author is also undergoing a thorough look. Perhaps it will give rise to a new descriptor or title.

And to a wealth of new career options, much as we saw with the development of the movie industry.

When it comes to early literacy and the teaching of reading, Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell may well be the two most recognized experts in America. More than a decade after releasing “Guided Reading, Good First Teaching for All Children,” the number one selling professional teacher resource in the US, these two literacy experts have released another noteworthy book as part of a new program called Leveled Literacy Intervention.

Fountas and Pinnell

When it comes to reading instruction in the early grades, the names Fountas and Pinnell are likely the two most referenced authors in the country. Fountas is currently a professor in the School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The former classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and consultant currently directs the Literacy Collaborative within the School of Education at Lesley.

Pinnell, professor emeritus at The Ohio State University, is the recipient of the International Reading Association’s Albert J. Harris Award for research and the Charles A. Dana Foundation Award for contributions to the field of education. Generally considered the catalyst for bringing Reading Recovery to schools in the US, she too has an extensive background in classroom teaching and the development of comprehensive approaches to literacy education.

In 1996, the two reading experts revolutionized classroom teaching with their systematic approach to small-group reading instruction. Today, the concept of Guided Reading is a featured technique in nearly every elementary school in America.

Their latest efforts, the Leveled Literacy Intervention program was created in response to the demands of teachers and administrators for a scientifically-based, early intervention program for struggling readers. Utilizing a comprehensive anchoring text, “When Readers Struggle: Teaching that Works,” the program focuses on preventing difficulties before they become long-term educational challenges.

Featuring an A–Z Text Gradient, “Benchmark Assessment System,” LLI provides teachers critical feedback on both the strengths and the needs of readers in kindergarten through Grade 3. While some aspects involve support within the whole class settings, a critical component of the program involves small group intervention and individual one-on-one sessions.

Response to Intervention

The new work from Fountas and Pinnell comes on the heels of a new educational term causing great consternation in many corners, Response to Intervention (RTI). The phrase is a result of
recent legal language changes in special education law that have resulted in a renewed focus on learners who struggle in the early grades.

There is growing body of evidence regarding the importance of reading at or above grade level in early childhood. One of the most sobering of educational research elements is the revelation that a child not reading on grade level by the third grade will in most cases be destined for significant educational challenges for the remainder of their schooling years.

In its simplest terms, “response to intervention” is a multi-step approach to providing children who struggle with learning additional educational instruction. The process involves teachers making specific teaching adjustments to help struggling students be more successful.

Such steps differ significantly from taking a student aside and simply offering more time utilizing the same instructional techniques. RTI features a fundamental tenet that if students struggle with the initial instruction, teachers must use differentiated teaching practices for the additional sessions.

Those adjustments, referred to as specific intervention techniques, are then closely monitored to determine the effectiveness of each practice. Because the interventions are graduated and vary in intensity, teachers then have a much larger tool box for helping students master specific concepts.

The ongoing assessment process, referred to as progress monitoring, involves scientifically-validated measurement tools. Frequent and regular assessment of students helps teachers identify specific learning goals for those students.

Ultimately, the philosophy ensures that students who are struggling with learning are not doing so because they have been exposed to just one teaching technique that simply did not work for those students.

Most importantly, considering a child for special education services is postponed until such interventions have been used. At the same time, these practices can lead to an earlier identification of those children who have real disabilities and therefore require special education services.

Program Predates Current Stimulus Funding Measures

Begun entirely outside of the RTI push, Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention program is a small group, intensive, supplementary intervention system designed specifically to help struggling readers and writers. In direct response to the urgency to have students on grade level in the early years, LLI seeks to bring each student to grade-level competency in just 14-18 weeks.

Under President Barack Obama, federal officials continue to focus on accountability measures such as test scores and the use of scientifically-based research learning tools. This push towards “outcome based” education, backed now by federal stimulus funds, has many companies hard at work developing new products to fit updated literacy theories and match the Response to Intervention concept.

However, well before funds were to become available from the federal government, Fountas and Pinnell were at work on their intervention program for students and teachers. The authors clearly understood one key issue early on. For as long as educators can remember, there have been few options available for struggling students unless they were referred for special education services.

Placing a learning disability or other special education label on a six year old has always been a concern for educators. By the same token, elementary teachers, reluctant to refer a child to special education, had little in the way of proven strategies to work with students who were performing below grade level.

Most importantly, the program focuses on the students within the teacher’s classroom, not the instructional materials.

“It’s about teaching children,” states Fountas. “It is about teachers becoming better observers of the learners.”

Uniqueness of LLI

Unfortunately, the over-arching issue of greater accountability is leading towards entire canned, intervention programs that are extremely expensive. Schools seeking grant money to tackle this important issue are often required to adopt one of these specific programs.

However, with Fountas and Pinnell, the approach is more of a two-fold process focusing on teacher actions that are known to garner proven results. It begins with a focus on high-quality instructional practices that ensure teachers utilize time-tested, proven first teaching techniques.

LLI features a fairly tight framework of 300 lessons based on 300 separate reading texts that give educators an arsenal of effective tools. Those reading materials include fiction, non-fiction, story series featuring recurring characters and some classic tales.

It follows with timely and developmentally appropriate intervention techniques based on the feedback obtained from progress-monitoring students. Therefore the program is less about purchasing a canned package of materials and more about developing sound teaching practices.

When it comes to intelligence, there has always been one fundamental question:

Is it a function of nature? Is it simply encoded in a child’s genes?

Or is it a function of nurture? Is it more about the environment that a child grows up in?

Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, addresses the topic in fundamental detail in his new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” And thank goodness for teachers, Nisbett insists that nurture is in fact paramount to intellectual development.

In fact, his message matches almost verbatim what we have discussed previously on our site:

• Praise the effort, not the achievement
• Teach the concept of delayed gratification
• Limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity.

The Nature versus Nurture Question

Nisbett takes exception to the notion that IQ is 75 to 85 percent inherited. Instead, he sees the gene implications at something less than 50 percent.

Nicholas D. Kristoff recently took a look at the nature versus nurture question and came away with enormous support of Nisbett’s book. The NY Times columnist notes the work of Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia who has conducted research that indicates IQ is minimally the result of genetics.

Kristof further cites studies that indicate that “when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their IQ’s rise by 12 points to 18 points.”

As for the importance of school, Kristof also notes that “children’s IQ’s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don’t inflict books or summer programs on them).”

In Nisbett’s book, there is a strong push for early childhood education. Here again, Kristof offers support of Professor Nisbett by taking a look at the “Milwaukee Project.”

Assigning African-American children considered at risk for mental retardation randomly to two groups, the project offers enormous support for early childhood education. The mothers of the infants selected all had IQ’s below 80 and in many cases the fathers were absent.

The children were assigned either to a control group that received no additional support or to a group that enjoyed day care and educational programming from 6 months of age until the children were to enter first grade.

By the age of six the children experimental group had an IQ average of 120.7 as compared to the control group’s 87.2

Quality Pre-School for All

We previously noted the enormous educational success of Finland. Kati Tuurala, Microsoft’s education manager in Finland, indicates that the majority of Finland’s educational success can be traced to major reforms implemented in the 1970s.

One of those reforms centered upon an emphasis on primary education for every single child in the country. In Finland, students do not begin formal schooling until at age seven, two years after most American children begin school.

However, prior to entering school, all children have participated in a high-quality government funded preschool program. Interestingly, instead of focusing on getting a jump academically, Finland’s early-childhood program focuses on self-reflection and social behavior.

The early focus on self-reflection is seen as a key component for developing a level of personal responsibility towards learning. It is a focus more in line with the original theory of kindergarten set forth in 1837 by German Educator Friedrich Froebel. His kindergarten, literally meaning a “children’s garden,” was envisioned as a place and time where children could learn through play opportunities.

Ultimately, Finland appears to focus on the nurturing process during the preschool years and that appears to be the first step to eliminating socioeconomic differences within the school setting within the country.

Presidential Support

When it comes to the question of nature versus nurture, the data clearly indicates that the latter is indeed more than 50% of the equation. That is good news for educators, but even better news for society as a whole.

Fortunately, President Obama has come out in strong support of early childhood education, particularly for those children most at risk of school failure. Investing in quality pre-school opportunities clearly helps give children from poverty-stricken areas the chance at a stronger start in school and in life.

If we are serious about helping our children succeed in school, if we are truly interested in “Leaving No Child Behind,” we will take a hard look at this compelling data and begin investing greater sums at the early childhood level.

A little while back we acknowledged the beauty of today’s blogging world, one where information is rich and plentiful. It was in regards to a great educational myth that has become known as the “Bastardization of Dale’s Cone.”

Often overlayed against Dale’s “Cone of Experience,” an intuitive model to describe “the concreteness of various audio-visual media,” are a series of percentages. They are part of what has come to be a longstanding educational assertion regarding learning processes. It begins with: “people remember 10% of what they read.” It goes on to “20% of what they see,” and so on.

While Dale’s cone serves as nice schematic to help with analysis, Dale did not conduct any research or use the research of others to construct his model. In addition, it seems that these percentages, presented to educators for the better part of 40 years, are also not backed by research.

Thus the neat or cute summary diagram that is often used as a way to describe the learning process is not backed by any meaningful research.

The Theory of Grammar

April 16th just so happened to be the 50th anniversary of the release of one of the biggest selling grammar manuals of all time, “The Elements of Style.” It is a book that virtually every college graduate has been exposed to at some point, either in advanced composition class in high school or within the first two years of college when students must meet their composition requirement.

But the standard-bearer thousands of teachers and professors have foisted upon students for so many years may not quite be the gem it is proclaimed to be. In fact, it is more of an unpolished stone, at least if you read Geoffrey K. Pullum’s assessment of William Strunk and E.B. White’s famous style guide.

Pullum is head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh. He is also the co-author of “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.”

The author writes:

“The Elements of Style” does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense.”

And of Strunk and White, Pullum adds:

“This was most unfortunate for the field of English grammar, because both authors were grammatical incompetents. Strunk had very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less.”

And as for making students better grammarians, consider this summary assessment:

“Despite the post-1957 explosion of theoretical linguistics, Elements settled in as the primary vehicle through which grammar was taught to college students and presented to the general public, and the subject was stuck in the doldrums for the rest of the 20th century.”

Some of Pullum’s criticisms:

• Some of the recommendations are vapid, like “Be clear” (how could one disagree?).

• Some are tautologous, like “Do not explain too much.” (Explaining too much means explaining more than you should, so of course you shouldn’t.)

• Many are useless, like “Omit needless words.” (The students who know which words are needless don’t need the instruction.)

• Even the truly silly advice, like “Do not inject opinion,” doesn’t really do harm. (No force on earth can prevent undergraduates from injecting opinion. And anyway, sometimes that is just what we want from them.)

Pullam takes the book apart bit by bit and offers examples from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea as well as general looks at the summary work of Mark Twain and Henry James.

Nothing Sacred

Undoubtably, the knowledge explosion is tough to keep up with. But one of the great aspects of the internet is the rightful taking apart of some longstanding myths.

Whereas I was taught about George Washington and the story of a cherry tree or that Columbus was a great man and the discoverer of America, today we thankfully see truth winning out.

Hopefully educators are on to the issues of Dale’s Cone by now. But we are not so certain where English teachers stand on The Elements of Style. Is it time to follow Pullum’s lead and relegate Strunk and White’s famous tome to the educational scrap heap as well?

It has been a while since we did a simple web walk and pointed readers to some interesting material and helpful resources. Today we offer readers four interesting link options, everything from Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy to a look at why ignorance does appear, in fact, to be bliss.

Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy

Almost a year ago we featured some of the work of Andrew Churches. The teacher and self-professed ICT enthusiast has taken the time to do a modern day mash up of one of education’s long-standing models for analyzing learning.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, developed in the 1950’s, clearly holds a place of reverence within the educational community. Using a hierarchical framework to express thinking and learning, Bloom’s offers a set of concepts that begins with what we call lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and then progressively builds to higher order thinking skills (HOTS).

In education, the best teachers have made it a point to bring their students to the HOTS level of the taxonomy whenever possible. The belief has always been that acquiring knowledge and comprehending information (LOTS) pales in comparison to being able to analyze, evaluate, and apply that knowledge.

Where Churches comes in is that he began examining the traditional theory against a backdrop of the new digital age and the use of technology in the classroom. From his efforts, educators began being able to associate specific digital techniques with the traditional categories set forth in the taxonomy.

While there is clearly still much to be done to clarify these associations and properly place digital technology tasks in each category, teachers at least now have a framework from which to start and dialogue from. In keeping with the open source movement that is defining the future of education, Churches has now published his work in e-book format over at Scribd.

Those wanting to see both the rationale and the depth of assessment Churches has employed will find a free resource, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (v212), at the site. The 44-page document is filled with information and is available for download, free, in multiple formats.

We highly recommend all teachers take the time to read this important document.

Among the Inept – Ignorance Is Bliss

An article that is now more than nine years old recently started getting tagged on Del.cio.us. As one great example of the challenge of filtering the wealth of material on the Internet, we missed the original article that takes a look at the behaviors demonstrated by people we might call incompetent.

In her article, Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss, Erica Goode cites the research of Dr. David A. Dunning. In true tongue-in-cheek mode, Goode sets the tone for the article with the following intro:

“There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear he might be one of them. Dr. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

“On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities — more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.”

It seems “that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured” because ultimately “the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.”

Given that education is a people-profession, the article is a must read for everyone working in the field, especially those working in administration. With a strong push to ensure that every classroom is staffed with a competent teacher, the research of Dunning offers great insight.

Especially in the case where feedback is absent or ambiguous – in such instances incompetents generally do not realize their level of ineptness.

Open Courseware Toolset

A summary resource that offers a list of links to open courseware materials is available at the web site Best College Rankings. The Ultimate Open Courseware Toolset: 60+ Directories, Search Engines, and Web Tools offers readers an extensive set of links to a wealth of materials now available on the web.

What makes the list so worthy is that it contains some individual tools but many of the links offered are actually to other sites or web pages that then feature more links to more resources. The site lists links in alphabetical order (not weighing in on good, better or best) and breaks the material into three distinct categories.

They begin with a list of directories of various open courseware projects. The list features 22 links (some offering lists of 100s of sites) to “books, video lectures, teaching tools and more, all labeled with the open courseware tag.”

The second category features 16 links to a number of search engines and archives while the third and final category focuses on 23 web tools “that can help teachers, parents and students.”

The sheer volume of material, however, reminds us of how important our own ability to filter Internet materials has become.

A Parental ADD Resource

Finally, in recent days we stumbled across the web site of Brenda Nicholson, ADD Student. The mother of 3 children with Attention Deficit Disorder, Nicholson is a trained ADD Coach who began learning about the disorder over 20 years ago.

Surprised that many educational professionals knew little about ADD, Nicholson found she needed to educate herself. Because of her experiences, she has set up the ADD student resource portal for parents and professionals alike.

One simple aspect that spoke volumes to us was her advice regarding students on medication. Instead of pluses and minuses regarding meds, she notes that the taking of medications at school has become a major issue for everyone involved: students, parents, and educators.

Another is her focus on diet as a method for minimizing issues with ADD children and managing their symptoms. While some of the information is on a cost basis (a 12 week email coaching program for parents), there is also a wealth of general info free for site visitors including subcategory links to specific areas such as ADD and Life Skills, Organization, School and Time Management.

Flickr photo courtesy of debaird.

First during his campaign, then later with his push to make this year’s Martin Luther King holiday a national day of service, President Barack Obama has sought to rekindle one of our fundamental American values, helping thy neighbor. That highly-publicized call for service led to a record number of Americans to honor Dr. King by volunteering for more than 13,000 service projects across the country (more than double the number from the year before).

Significant Action, Less Fanfare

Dave Eggers, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, established his desire to make a difference in the lives of others when in 2002 he launched 826 Valencia, a San Francisco-based writing and tutoring lab for young people. Under his direction, the nonprofit has branched out with other centers now located in Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and Ann Arbor.

In 2008, he received the TED Prize, given yearly to someone with the desire to change the world. He was awarded a $100,000 donation and a pledge of support from the TED Community. Upon receipt of his prize, he made the following wish:

While accepting his prize, Dave Eggers asked the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools.

“I wish that you – you personally
and every creative individual
and organization you know -
will find a way to directly engage with a public school
in your area and that you’ll then tell the story of how
you got involved, so that within a year
we have 1,000 examples of transformative partnerships.”

To gather those stories in one location, he has created the web site, Once Upon a School. From a family of educators, Eggers understands the current demands facing teachers in inner city schools. And with his site he offers a hope that we might:

“Usher in a new era
of participation in our public schools. ”

A Hope to Inspire Others

Watching the nervous presentation of Eggers leaves a viewer with a strong sense of the man’s sincerity. He, like Obama, is calling on us all for service, but with a direct call to helping our public schools.

Indeed, his site was not created for chest thumping – instead, in documenting the many stories of common folks volunteering, he hopes that the sharing of those stories will inspire others to serve in similar capacities.

While receiving less fanfare, his extraordinary commitment to helping kids and public schools has not gone unnoticed. His work led Time Magazine to state:

“Many writers, having written a first best-seller, might see it as a nice way to start a career. He started a movement instead.”

Today we present readers an in-depth interview with Ira David Socol, author of “The Drool Room” and the web site “SpeEdChange.” Our interest in talking with Ira centered upon three critical factors.

First, there is little doubt that Ira is passionate about education and the process of learning. More importantly, that passion is relentlessly focused on creating a learning process that is responsive to the needs of learners.

Second, to be frank, Ira shares some of our views on how best to reform education. He notes that there are a multitude of ways to create positive learning opportunities for students but our current school structures prevent the flexibility necessary to provide alternate paths. Like OpenEducation.net, he is also a strong proponent of the use of technology yet does not buy into the “digital natives” nonsense.

Third and perhaps most importantly, Ira is extremely courageous. He is unwavering in his support for students and is willing to step out on a limb if it means questioning the system. He is one of the rare individuals we have seen who has been willing to speak out about what he sees as fundamental flaws in programs like Teach for America and the KIPP school concept (Knowledge is Power Program).

Ultimately, we believe it is important that everyone involved in education is familiar with his work.

Can you give our readers a brief introduction to the key elements of your personal bio?

I come to the field of education from an interesting direction. I know that most in the field, be they teachers, administrators, teacher education faculty, are there because they liked school, and so they wanted to stay. School worked for them – at least on some significant level – and school made sense to them.

The key part of my bio for this interview is that none of that was true for me. From the beginning I hated school, and struggled with it. I have never seen school as a place for education, but rather as a place of compliance with nonsensical rules which have stopped me from learning.

But luckily I was shown alternatives. Early in my school life I discovered what were then “books on LP” – audio books – and I always preferred listening to reading. I had the good fortune to attend a Neil Postman designed alternative high school led by the best educator I know in America, a teacher named Alan Shapiro, and in that “school without walls” (or grades, time schedules, or requirements) I found the freedom to actually learn. I also saw, at Pratt Institute, that every subject (even concrete engineering) could benefit from flexibility, and project-based learning.

Mostly, I’ve had the chance to do many things. I’ve designed houses and been a police officer. I’ve worked on newspapers and pulled thousands of miles of network cables. I’ve programmed computers and worked for a homeless support agency. I’ve coached soccer and taught art classes. I’ve seen this very wide variety of humans learn and communicate in a very wide variety of ways. And in seeing this world, I have learned that the rules, the strategies, the technologies, and the methods typically taught in school do not match what actual humans need.

So, to educators, I’m a bundle of contradictions: the book author who seems to argue against books, for example. But outside of school, as we drive down the road listening to our audiobooks, or download our reading to our phones, people do understand what I’m talking about.

Can you talk a little bit about your book, The Drool Room? The visual with the reversed Rs in the title certainly creates a lasting impression. I am also not clear as to what is meant by a “novel in stories?”

I really worried about the reversed Rs. I fought the design at first. “Generic dyslexic humor,” as The Simpsons put it. But it does generate impact, and it tells a story in a very effective shorthand. As someone who does reverse and otherwise twist letters at times, I know the image well. “I have a kid brother, he’s six, he writes just like you.”

The Drool Room is fiction, but, yes, many parts are “autobiographically informed.” I’m not going to say which. It is not a memoir. It has experiences of mine and experiences of others assembled, tracking a – shall we say – “challenging student” through school and through life. There’s a thread – “seeing differently” is a lifespan kind of thing.

It is told as a series of short stories and microfictions which alternate through a non-linear story line. That’s a literary style: Joyce, Dos Passos, Seamus Deane, that I think really works. The straight-line novel, you know, see climax on page 312, doesn’t hold a great deal of interest for me.

Your blog SpeEdChange offers the sub-header, “The future of education for all the different students in democratic societies.” Can you provide greater insight as to what you mean by that sub-heading as well as what tends to be your focus on the site?

Let me take you back to the origins. When I began my graduate degree program many advised me to join a list-serve called “SpEdPro,” for special education academics, and I did. A month later I posted a response to some question, and in my response I suppose I betrayed my postmodern thought patterns. That is, I doubted the idea that quantitative research of groups could “prove” the best solutions for individual students. And I was immediately hammered – just flat out attacked – as if I was threatening the entire structure of society. The battle ranged across almost 100 posts, but I had, essentially, no defenders.

So, I quit that, and created SpeEdChange, a place where I might doubt, and find others who doubt. And where we might “Speed Change in Education,” especially for those labeled as “different” in our societies. It remains significantly a “special needs education” site in some ways – now, I don’t actually believe in special education, because I firmly believe that every student, every human, has “special needs” in some ways and is “gifted” in some ways – but I do believe in protecting our most vulnerable first.

The spirit of the blog lies in a couple of ideas. “Democracy” – not “majority rule” faux democracy, but actual “protection from majority tyranny” democracy, is essential for society and education. If we do not have that, we will never grant our students the right to control their own learning, and thus, we will never allow them to become effective lifespan learners. “Universal Design,” the idea that solutions in the classroom (or workplace) not be “prescribed” as if as cures for pathologies, but be offered freely to all, so that we learn to make effective choices. And “Liberation Technology,” the idea that using tools effectively is how humans free themselves from their individual and group limitations.

From your writings readers can clearly discern your strong opposition to the tenets of the Teach for America program. Can you highlight for our readers your thoughts on TFA?

Teach for America is a “colonial project.” It is a “missionary project.” It begins with the basic premise that the solution for the underclass in America is to make them ‘as much like’ rich white folks as possible. When you listen to the TFA leadership, they don’t really talk about “education,” probably because they don’t really believe in education. They talk about “leadership” instead. If they believed in education they would see education as important on the path to effective teaching, an idea they specifically reject, replacing it with the thought that since TFA corps members represent the elites (or, religiously, the “elect”), all they have to do is “lead” the downtrodden out of poverty.

This is essentially the British Colonial conversion concept. “We’ll fix Nigeria/Ireland/South Africa/India. We’ll just teach them to speak the Queen’s English, give them a Parliament, and make them wear powdered wigs in court. Then they’ll be civilized. And like the British Empire, this strategy is adopted because TFA’s board and supporters have no desire to ever relinquish power to a rising colonial population. If it’s all about “follow the leader,” the leader never changes.

Beyond that, TFA is a “cover up.” Rather than enlist our elite universities in the fight to reallocate resources, or improve democracy, or build equality of opportunity, or even simply to improve teacher pay, support, and status, we use them to offer the fig leaf of charity to deflect any actual movement within society.

And beyond that, TFA is a “good enough for those kids” effort. I say, over and over, that if TFA wants to prove itself, replace the faculties of the schools in Scarsdale, NY or Greenwich, CT, or at Groton and St. Bernard’s, with TFA corps members. And let those teachers – holding their current salaries – go to the TFA placements. If TFA improves the education in those wealthy places, it will have proved itself. If the teachers from those top schools have better impacts than TFA teachers do in the impoverished districts, we’ll know that better teacher training, better teacher pay, and redistributing resources is the way to go.

By most accounts, the TFA program seems to be immensely popular. According to what we have read, the program is turning away large numbers of applicants. In your estimation, why is the TFA program so popular?

Of course it is popular. It is marketed as a great way to build your resume while assuaging liberal guilt at the same time. It offers the perfect entitlement, a job without the need for real commitment or the effort which goes into real training. As banking jobs shrink, this seems the perfect two or three year placeholder.

You also have frequently shared your opposition to the Knowledge is Power Program (the network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools, called KIPP). Can you share with readers your position and why you have taken such a stance regarding this program?

Let me put it this way. Let’s go to those “best schools in America” in the wealthiest suburbs of New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles. Why aren’t they run like KIPP Academies? Always ask this when rich people offer “solutions” for poor people which those rich people would never accept for themselves.

Oh yeah, the rich parents want creativity and flexibility and diverse curricula. They want individualized discipline (if they want discipline at all). They’d have very little patience for chanting in classes and being told what to do with their children at home. But, you know, “those people,” they’re not “like us.”

Again, we’re back at the brutally low expectations, and the inherent racism and classism of colonialism. So, sure, convert Scarsdale High into a KIPP Academy, show me how it works there, and then offer it to those “less fortunate.”

Today, everyone is interested in improving education, there just seems to be real disagreement as how to best do so in our country. If you were to advise the incoming Secretary of Education on a couple of must areas to consider, what would be the two aspects of education you would most want to see reformed moving forward?

I’ll start with two words: Technology and Flexibility. We need to rethink the technology of our schools, from the shape of our classrooms to the schedules of our days, weeks, and year, to our text systems. Right now we are stuck in buildings quite literally designed in the 1840s (when chalkboards, desks, chairs, and books printed on rotary presses were all “scientifically” introduced). We are stuck with quasi industrial timing, and the industrial processing notions of “grades” (not marks, but the years in school). Only when we break those bonds, and use the technologies of our time to break through our geographical and knowledge boundaries, can we begin to find the flexibility we need to create education which finally works for more than one third of the population.

That flexibility means not assessing for “expected” (based on group averages) progress. It means teachers having “instructional tolerance” for differences in student learning styles and behaviors. It means project-based, interest-based learning which responds to learner needs. It means Universal Design in both technology and practice so that students learn to access and work with information in the ways most effective for them. It means accepting – finally – that “what you learn” is far more important than doing it in any exactly prescribed way.

That is “the change we need.” If we do not begin there, it is all tinkering around the edges, and honestly, that is worthless.

In your two posts last April on teachers and technology, you clearly took a strong position on the issue of technology in education. Could you highlight for our readers your general view of where technology fits in the 21st century classroom?

I believe that, in many ways, we define our human cultures by our technologies. This is because we are, above all else, tool users. Without tools, humans as we know them could simply not exist. So we say, “The Bronze Age,” “The Iron Age,” “The Stone Age,” now, “The Information Age,” because that is who we are.

Right now our classrooms are based in “Age of Steam” technologies. From the desk, to the time schedule, to the mass-printed ink-on-paper book, to the machine made pens and pencils. It is as if we are running “heritage academies,” producing people ready for the jobs, and the higher learning, of 1890.

That is disastrous on so many levels, not just as job prep. In my PhD program the ink-on-paper book is stunningly rare. Research is on line, communication is on line. I need to know how to Skype or Google Chat with distant colleagues, to glean data from blogs and list-serves around the world. I read many newspapers, but none are on paper. I convert reading which is difficult for me from text-to-speech, and my phone converts voice mails from voice-to-text. In every place I go, if I look around, the communication devices and “learning containers” are different from those we focus on in schools.

More important, technology liberates, it breaks boundaries. You have a non-reader? They can still grab the world of literature, and do it independently. Someone who can’t hold a pen? They can still express themselves to the world, without waiting for a scribe to help. Have a child in a distant rural area? They can access every one of the world’s greatest libraries. Have two communities separated by issues of the past? Join them digitally first, and let them build connections.

More practically, students need to know how to use email, Google, mobile phones, texting, blogs, online newspapers, and how to use them appropriately and effectively simply in order to survive. Don’t buy the “digital natives” nonsense. These are skills like any other skills, and they have to be learned. We are either teaching them, or we are not giving our kids the tools they need.

Schools which fail to embrace these technologies leave their students behind. No, their rich, majority group students will be fine, those technologies (and, say, Blackberry strategies) will be there at home. But the vulnerable students will be left in the dark.

So, any insight as to what is next for education?

Education ‘as we know it’ is about social reproduction. We are trying to produce students who are “just like the teachers.” And there is a sad feedback loop in this, educators see, in the students who succeed in these reproductive schools, people just like themselves.

But we need to be better than that – not because our standardized tests “prove” that only about one third of our students “achieve proficiency” (or ever have, you can look back at the stats at least to 1867) – but because our society needs to change, because it is changing, and schools need to support that.

But it is very hard for teachers to support learning which does not look like their own learning. Very hard. It requires levels of tolerance, of empathy, which are rare. It requires flexibility and a dramatic change in the role of the teacher. And it requires information and communication technologies which can offer pathways that the teacher can not.

It also requires more respect for teachers, more freedom for teachers, and much more support, in terms of ongoing educational opportunities and much better initial teacher training.

It isn’t easy, but I think it is essential.

Flickr photo courtesy of LGagnon.