The National Voice for All Primary School Principals

2011 APPA Conference - Adelaide

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A report from the conference will be published on this page during the next week as material becomes available from the presenters. The report will consist of:

  • Audio recordings. Click on the small green arrow below the speaker's name to listen to the address.
  • Session notes. Click on the Session notes link after the presenter's name to go directly to the summary notes from that address.
  • Presentations - published as PDF files.
  • Photographs from around the conference. Click here to go to the gallery of 145 photos. Click here for another photo gallery of photos from the Dinner and Welcome Function.

Theme:

A Brilliant Blend… Cultivating Primary Leadership

Venue: Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, S. A.

Dates: 22-24 June 2011

Addresses:

  • Opening and Welcome - Norm Hart, APPA President. Includes the presentation of Life Membership of APPA to Leonie Trimper.

  • Official Opening - Jay Weatherill, Minister for Education, S.A.

  • KidsMatter Lunch Address - Peter Garrett, Minister for School Education. Address.

Concurrent Sessions:

  • From Times Roman to the Time Traveller - Mark Sparvell.

  • Looking through a Primary Scottish Classroom Window - Tony McGruther. Presentation.
  • Staff Health and Wellbeing - Jo Mason, Principals Australia. Presentation.
  • The National Professional Standard for Principals - Allan Blagaich. Presentation.
  • Formerly Friendly Schools and Families - Shane Thompson. Presentation.

  • Engaging New Frontiers in Pedagogy and Curriculum - David Adams-Jones and Brett Rangiira. Presentation.


Session Notes:

Session 1: Cultivating for Success - Tony Sharley

  • Was Manager of the Banrock Station vineyard/winery in the Riverland for 10 years.
  • Talked about the experiences that enhanced his learning. Shared the challenges they they faced at Banrock Station – was Manager there for 10 years until 2 years ago. Commented on leadership, change, opportunities and threats that he experienced.
  • Success = "regional authenticity". About the values that we hold dear - the things that are very difficult to change, but that we can hold onto in this changing world.
  • When he lived in Cornwall, he was surrounded by all things Cornish – landscape, history, food, art, buildings, etc. It is the only place where you can have a Cornish experience. When you realise that, and build on that, you realise that the global brands – the ones that try to make everything the same (e.g. in shopping malls) – they diminish, and local things grow in stature and profile.
  • Regional authenticity:
    • About community – people, activities, scapes.
    • About culture – history.
    • About environment – is different everywhere. And we must know about that.
    • About climate
    • About industry.
    • Can then identify your strengths as a region (or an organisation such as a school).
  • Our point of difference. Riverland = Murray River (drains 1/7 of the continent). Fruit bowl of Australia. Hot dry climate. Paddle steamers to houseboats. Low humidity - perfect for fruit growing.
  • Challenge is to embrace the differences. Banrock Station. Warm climate - good for ripening fruit and gives a high sugar content in grapes. Clean water. Healthy environment. When you package those, you get the point of difference.
  • The differences are critical and become the identity.
  • Identity gives pride that you can feel. Good for the community.
  • Our identity becomes our brand, and schools have brands as well. Brand-building is a very important skill. Whatever you build has to be relevant and credible. Can then promote your brand. Tells other people who you are and why you are different. Have to be different. Values are so important.
  • Strong brands create a vision, identity, unity, confidence (we know what we can do and what we stand for), trust, loyalty, respect, inspiration, generate pride, generate fans and advocates. Leaders have to have followers.
  • Strong brands create resilience. Resilience is very hard to undo.
  • Changes = threats and opportunities.
  • Changes that threaten leaders:
    • rapid change (e.g. growth of social media; growth of internet)
    • centralisation (of control)
    • intrusion on our core role = to lead (no consultation)
    • continuous reporting
    • time to broaden understanding
    • doing more with less resources
    • neglect of team
    • losing touch
    • losing our followers.
  • Change can affect:
    • Professionalism, resulting in frustration and emotion.
    • Identity, resulting in becoming a budget statistic.
    • Leadership, resulting in no time to nurture, listen and engage.
    • Vision, resulting in confusion over direction.
    • Motivation, resulting in being too tired to challenge.
    • Passion, resulting in you questioning your relevance.
    • Creativity, resulting in losing the fight.
  • The opportunity is to find the solution. Their solution was built on regional authenticity. There was pressure on him to hide the name of the region from which the wine came – Riverland – perception of a poor reputation for wine. The Riverland can’t do what other regions do with wine, but it can make easy-drinking, fruit-driven wines – 1 in 4 glasses of Australian wine drunk overseas is from Riverland. Slide 15 shows the location of Banrock Station.
  • It was a degraded landscape when he arrived - see slide 16. 1700 hectare property. 250 hectares of vineyards. 12 km of river frontage. Settled in 1907 as Banrock Station. Lock 3 on the Murray was built in 1925 to hold back the Murray River water.
  • Inherited the Wine and Wetland Centre – was their cellar door. Marriage of wine production and the riverine environment. Very efficient building in 1999.
  • Brand vision = "Good earth, fine wine". Broad enough to combine the environment with the wine that helped to promote the brand.
  • Made a donation from every bottle sold to an environmental cause – Landcare. Packaging was “earthy” – plain brown box with a panel of seeds to be planted. Amazing gimmick, but had the potential to spread weeds and plants = reduced biodiversity around Australia – so stopped doing that one.
  • Used the space on the box to promote the environmental work on the property.
  • Challenge – water. The wetland was too wet. It had been flooded for too long by the weir – 1925 to 2006. Needed to be fluctuations in water level to trigger the breeding cycle of animals and birds and other organisms. Had to dry it out. Had to do it when the vineyard did not need the water – pumps located in the wetland – had to move them to the river - $1 million. Government agreed to match funds. Drying out killed 60 tonnes of European carp – noxious fish. Drying out (slides 26-29) allowed other plants to germinate and ended up with a heavier cover and more wildlife. Universities carried out research, plus schools.
  • The benefits of the dry-wet cycle can be seen in slides 31 and 32.
  • Challenge – community. It is a remote area – only 300 people live in the area. Banrock Station was not seen as a threat to businesses in other towns, so the locals came to it. Staff were recruited locally and trained – based on their personality, not on their initial skills – wanted welcoming people.
  • Challenge – food. Kitchen was designed by a architect and not planned for busy times (unexpected). Found a chef and set up a cuisine that would attract locals and others – local produce.
  • Challenge – access. Had to provide access to the wetland. Issues – potential health risks for the vineyard – had to fence it. Had to build a walking trail further back. Now has an 8 km trail with 800 m of boardwalk. Grew from 2001 – 40,000 to 2002 – 100,000 visitors. Guided walks. Bird hides.
  • Challenge – eco-tourism. Slides 26-39. Nature tourism with interpretation. What made it special and different? Drew on the history, culture, river, Indigenous heritage, etc. Got eco-certification. Gave credibility and gave them confidence that they walked the talk. Every aspect became part of the certification. 
  • Slide 43: Foreground of etching = Banrock Station.
  • Challenge – conservation. Company was profit-driven, so the environmental program was vulnerable. RAMSAR listing gave credibility, and placed the company under an obligation to protect the wetland. But the PR opportunities far outweighed the problems.
  • Re-introduced species that had become endangered or extinct – bilbies (2005) and brush-tailed bettongs. Predator-proof fence (yellow line on slide 48). Fence crossed roads that were important to the vineyard, especially during harvest. Used automated gates – remotes in every truck.
  • Challenge – "sponservation". Landcare sponsorship – wanted to replicate that around the world. Had to do the same sorts of programs as at Banrock – restore wetland and similar – re-introduced Atlantic Salmon into lake Ontario. Led to slow growth in  sales, but built loyalty and respect by showing how the company helped the market country. Made Board nervous – maybe quicker through normal advertising for the same amount of investment. Netherlands = Banrock Marshes.
  • Success? Slide 55. Banrock Station was the 12th most powerful wine brand in the world in 2008. 4 million cases were sold each year in 40 countries. Sponsorship partnerships in 14 countries. Won a prize for wetland management. Won prizes in wine, tourism, food and business. Staff - 5 to 18 people growth. 100,000 visitors per year. High staff retention.
  • Created regional pride. Locals brought their visitors.
  • Brand respect. Helped to raise the profile of the Riverland.
  • Brand loyalty.
  • Community advocacy.
  • Authentic in everything that they did.
  • Resilient. Banrock Station, the brand, is very resilient.
  • The changes I endured:
    • 2 state governments, but 1 federal during the whole 10 years.
    • 2 company owners.
    • 3 CEOs, 4 band managers, 6 line managers, 1 division change.
    • Decentralization and centralisation.
    • Empowerment and marginalisation.
    • Worst drought of the River Murray.
    • GFC and wine industry oversupply. But Banrock Station sales dropped by only 10%.
    • Financial cutbacks in company.
    • Job uncertainty.
    • Redundancy – affected him.
  • But resilience is very hard to undo.
  • How to build a strong brand.
    • Value regional euthenticity.
    • Community.
    • Environment.
    • History.
    • Climate.
    • Industry.
    • Culture.
    • Value your strengths.
  • Strong brands have a point of difference, vision, identity, unity, confidence, trust, loyalty, respect, inspiration, pride, advocates.
  • Think about your brand. Is it based on those things? Does it increase your resilience?

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Session 2: Learning Innovation: The Challenge Facing Educators Now - Valerie Hannon

  • Series of strands – looking to the future while living fully in the present.
  • Her organisation wants to see public services that deliver significantly better outcomes for lower costs. They receive no government funding. They used to be a part of the public service. Want to help the public services to innovate in a way that is disciplined, radical, scalable, and sustainable. Practical innovation projects. Influence policy on public services.
  • 4 horizons of innovation leadership (slide 5):
    • Short (fire fighting – get it right or die);
    • Medium (1-3 years, efficiency, effectiveness, incremental):
    • Long (3-10 years, necessary, radical); and
    • Legacy (generational, profound, essential). Many feel disabled from addressing the longer term ones.
  • Drivers of innovation in education pressing in on organised learning (slide 6):
    • new technologies,
    • world recession,
    • demography,
    • globalisation,
    • distressed environment.
  • Change is coming, ready or not. How to adapt to make them tolerable and triumphant.
  • Technology: the changes in this are accelerating. Impact has been marginal at best – use as glorified blackboards, same pedagogy. Mediocre but quicker results. It should have a seismic impact. It is transforming all aspects of our lives.
  • "Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD)." Gonzalez (2004), The Role of Blended Learning in the World of Technology
  • The exponential explosion of knowledge must alter the role of teachers.
  • Social networking: scale and speed of growth - slide 8. Facebook now has 500 million users – the over-55 age group is now the fastest growing age group of Facebook users. 43% of age 9-13 have a profile on a social networking site. It is now a platform that can foment and enable revolution – e.g.  in the Arab world last Summer. Major organisations now have a website plus Facebook plus Twitter.
  • Khan Academy (their website) – 2100 videos on tutoring Maths downloaded over 23 million times. Example of "Napsterisation" – what used to be available only through an intermediate is now available to all for free – MIT courseware - over 2,000 courses.
  • The world of apps has exploded in the last 5 years. More every day. There has been a shift of who is making resources available and who has access to them.
  • Watson – named after the founder of the IBM Laboratories – tools that can answer questions posed in natural language. “This will cause us to re-consider what students do.” (Herbert Chase, slide 13). No longer need to have a memory-based curriculum.
  • What will the world be like when everyone has an iPad-like device which is always online?
  • Quest to Learn – school for digital kids in New York City – how the use of games and new technologies can be used in the classroom. Critics – Nicholas Carr: “The Shallows”. How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember. From Amazon: "Carr—author of The Big Switch (2007) and the much-discussed Atlantic Monthly story “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”—is an astute critic of the information technology revolution. Here he looks to neurological science to gauge the organic impact of computers, citing fascinating experiments that contrast the neural pathways built by reading books versus those forged by surfing the hypnotic Internet, where portals lead us on from one text, image, or video to another while we’re being bombarded by messages, alerts, and feeds. This glimmering realm of interruption and distraction impedes the sort of comprehension and retention “deep reading” engenders, Carr explains. And not only are we reconfiguring our brains, we are also forging a “new intellectual ethic,” an arresting observation Carr expands on while discussing Google’s gargantuan book digitization project. What are the consequences of new habits of mind that abandon sustained immersion and concentration for darting about, snagging bits of information? What is gained and what is lost? Carr’s fresh, lucid, and engaging assessment of our infatuation with the Web is provocative and revelatory."
  • Misgivings are not new – there have been these sorts of reactions about every new technology. Including Socrates, who did not like writing – “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks”.
  • 2nd pressure – world recession. Map of proportion of GDP which is debt (slide 18) – it is already out-of-date. No country can afford to be smug about being out of the woods. Greece, Ireland, Portugal. The global interdependency of our financial systems leads to flow-ons. Leading to huge cuts in public services, e.g., in the UK. Searching for new models for arranging public services using the idea of more for less, not worse for less.
  • Globalisation: implications are huge:
    • Integrated world markets (IT & containerisation mean new lower-cost producers in the world market).
    • Jobs can be quickly transferred from one side of the world to another.
    • Consumers /researchers look across the world for the best.
    • Higher order skills at a premium.
    • Education itself globalising: mobile students, distance/online learning, competition between providers.
    • Understanding identity, core values and cultural practices more important than ever.
  • Centenarians: in the UK, 25% of current 16 year olds will live to be healthy centenarians. Demographic pressure different in different parts of the world. In developing world, pyramid bottom-heavy; in developed world pyramid is top-heavy - slide 23.
  • In developed countries now, there are 4 economically active people for each 1 who needs care. In 30 years, that ratio will be 2:1. That will unlivable, so we have to create lifelong learners, who will be working into their 70s. They will need new skills as the jobs change.
  • In developing countries, there is a youth bulge. New demand for learning there – education is seen as the access key to better life. Won’t be able to have the same sort of education system that we had – new forms of organised learning. Won’t have the school as the centre for that.
  • Distressed environment: most controversial part of the presentation. What does climate change have to do with educators? 2010 – hottest year on record; human race became urban (global population now greater in cities than in rural areas); more extreme natural events than ever before. So what? The dream of wellbeing is now not sustainable for all, and we have to change. We have to learn to live better, consuming fewer environmental resources and regenerating the contexts of life. Have to move from the industrial model to a new one – have been ecologically illiterate. It is about values, skills and knowledge.
  • "The dream of wellbeing dreamt until now by a few is not sustainable for all. We have to change. We have to learn how to live better, consuming fewer environmental resources and regenerating the contexts of life." Ezio Manizini, Politecnico of Milan
  • That is the macro level. Now what about the micro level?
  • Last 5 years, our life has changed by things like – Google, Skype, Spotify, Wikipedia, iPlayer. Slide 29. Consider the changes in some basic activities - see list on slide 30.
  • How we buy our consumer goods and how create relationships and sustain them. Blurring the boundary between “real” life and life online – for many people, there is now no difference. Need to shift in education.
  • Slide 33 shows the questions that she asked thable groups to discuss: what are the most powerful arguments for change? Are there any important ones omitted (changes in family structure; current sense of instant gratification)? Which drivers do you think are significant and important – but least taken account of by educators (new technology; use it in a shallow way)? Which drivers do you think primary educators are best placed to address and respond to?
  • Radical change is coming – ready or not! Prepared or not. So why do we need to adopt or adapt? But then there will be losers and winners – polarity of impact on young people – what about equity then?
  • Will there be an "Institutional by-pass"? New wants and needs are solved faster than existing constitutions can adapt to. Examples: Obama by-passed the institutions of the party to use new ones to raise funds. Craigslist. ElderPower (Maine, US). “It happens when the old regime is clogged with overheads, outdated assumptions, and value-destroying practices.” (Shoshana Zuboff, 2009)
  • 3 scenarios for “Beyond Schools” – Richard Elmore. May 2011, R Elmore and E City. Slide 36.
  1. Fighting for survival. Learners will turn away for their learning.
  2. Controlled engagement. Brokers alongside the learners.
  3. Open access to learning. Lots of service providers. Lead to great social polarisation.
  • If as leaders, we believe that these developments are real, what will be our response: create a dialogue. Example:  “Do you realize … New Brunswick public schools” video. NB3C21. on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjJg9NfTXos
  • Imperative to rethink our priorities and set about realising them with passion, urgency, and determination.
  • Which ones?
    1. Connect with global learning innovators. Easy now – blogging. Weblogg-ed.com buck Institute for Education. High Tech Elementary. Teach Meet. Slide 42.
    2. Apply holistically the knowledge about how humans learn and translate. OECD research-derived principles - slide 44. The Nature of Learning – book. Personalisation of learning. Where learning is social and collaborative.
    3. Rethink what should be learned. Skills vs knowledge content - slide 45. Given the explosion of knowledge, is it smart? Better formative assessment. Changes in demand for skills graph on slide 46. Skills that are easiest to teach and are the ones that are easiest to automate. 8 consistent themes about the new skills for the new world - slide 48. We need the collaborators and orchestrators; synthesisers; great explainers; versatilists (vs generalists and specialists); personalisers (revival of interpersonal skills that have atrophied; enable kids to develop those skills); localisers (what are the global implications). Slide 49-50.
    4. 4. learn with young people as never before – mobilise the demand side of education.
  • Harris Federation of Schools in the UK. Has a Student Learning Commission on Learning. 7 schools linked, 3 were "failing" schools. Did the fire fighting bit. Then moved to how to bring school improvement techniques to improve outcomes. Then how should we organise learning to make it powerful? 7 kids from each school, surveyed schools, brought in 11 experts (tell us what you know will make learning powerful in our school). Guarantee from the school leadership team: “After 2 years, we as leadership team will put the findings into place.” Final report is done now.
  • "Do not confine your children to your own learning; they were born in another time." (Hebrew proverb)

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Session 3: Competing Narratives: Making Sense of Different Accounts of Young People’s Health and Wellbeing - Richard Eckersley

  • After his 1975 world travels, he found that the hardest cultural adjustment was when he came home – travel allowed him to see his culture from the outside. "Ours was a tough culture – socially isolating, spiritually impoverished." We tend to ignore those things when we measure how we are going as a society.
  • Myths prop up our belief system: poverty = squalor is a myth but one we tend to maintain.
  • When you talk about health and happiness, you need to look at all the things that impact on society. Health is not just the property of the individual.
  • He uses two parables in his thinking:
    • Parable of the boat people: detention centres have been shown to be breeding grounds for mental health problems. To address the problem, we need to deal with the issues of detention and further back to why they took to the boats in the first place.
    • Parable of the drowned: Hurricane Katrina devastation. Assume that the people drowned – what do we do about it? Improve techniques to reach and resuscitate – those are the normal responses. Look beyond those: they were in the low areas which are the cheap housing = poverty areas. Look back further, look at the filling in of the wetlands and the building of the channels – government decisions. None of these address the basic cause = hurricane = climate change. So global causes must be investogated, and global responses are needed.
  • We can use climate change as an analogy for the cultural changes that we need.
  • Graph on slide 2: college students were asked whether their main goals were about meaning or money? – surveys of college students 1965 to 2010. 2 lines. The goal "develop a sense of meaning" went from the highest to mid-point. Note the rise of the money graph – they are a more materialistic society now. This is common in Western countries. It began with the Baby Boomers, and the pattern was set by the time of Gen X and Y. Consumer culture now. From hippies to yuppies. GFC led to a drop in both graphs.
  • Ruth Park quote: from her biography. ‘…it was the way with all of us young ones. Whatever hardship came our way was all on the outside. Inside we knew, without doubt, that Life was aware of us and somehow had us in its care.’ Writer Ruth Park writing about the 1930s Depression in "A Fence around the Cuckoo" in 1992.
  • She said that the hardship was on the outside, and in the inside life is aware of us and has us in its care. She was not talking about God or religion. There has been a shift from intrinsic values and goals to extrinsic ones. She was talking about intrinsic worth and existential certainty – helped to cope with the hardships of the Depression. Dalai Lama talks about keeping the problems on our outside.
  • We focus on ‘people who are looking to make sense of a very complicated world, and find a place where they feel comfortable. Which isn’t easy for most of us.’ Filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden in "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" in 2010.They are talking about how young people are now finding it hard to go through life.
  • The official story about young people’s health now is that it is the best it has been. So the story is that we need to focus on those lagging behind – poor, Indigenous, rural and remote. “Island of misery” idea.
  • He wants to challenge that view – "that story is wrong". It neglects the growing importance of non-fatal problems such as obesity and mental health issues. These are not confined to oppressed or disadvantaged minorities. All groups in society are affected – "it is the tip of an iceberg of suffering".
  • We have always used mortality levels.
  • Death vs chronic illness:13 per 100,000 aged 1‐14 die each year, but 14,000 per 100, 000 (14%) aged 4‐14 are suffering mental disorders. This has risen a lot over generations. Where to get the better picture?
  • Happiness vs wellbeing: 89% of 10,000 students aged 4‐18 say that they are ‘happy’. But 40% rated low on social and emotional wellbeing. There was little difference across social groups.
  • Student social, emotional wellbeing – 20‐50% say they: Worry too much (42%); Are very nervous or stressed (31%); Have felt hopeless, depressed…stopped regular activities (20%); Lose their temper a lot…are mean to others (35%); Have difficulty calming down (48%). These are indicators of wellbeing. It is not always obvious to another person that the kids are suffering – neither teachers nor parents.
  • New story: from US evidence. Half of those who experience mental disorders have first episode before age 14. Over 50% of young Americans today suffer a mental disorder by age 21. This is a fivefold increase in psychological problems in college students since 1930s.
  • The onset of the problems is becoming earlier and earlier. We now have to focus on childhood as the time when they start.
  • We are now diagnosing and treating the problem. There is a temptation to label it as an illness and then prescribe drugs to treat it. Medicalisation is not explaining the trends.
  • Why are we seeing these increase? Whole range of factors with growing scientific evidence. 
    • Developmental: biological and social mismatch – ‘Adultification’ (clothing, high heels, make-up), prolonged adolescence.
    • Psychological: changing psychological traits – More neuroticism, extraversion, self‐esteem, narcissism; less control.
    • Behavioural: trends in risk factors – Diet, sleep, inactivity & play, drugs & alcohol, violence & bullying, media use, etc.
    • Social: broad societal changes – Poverty & inequality, family & parenting, education, mass & social media, religion, environmental degradation.
  • Religious belief is very important for wellbeing, because it packages many things that are important to people’s wellbeing = provides an anchor and a context. The USA stands out for the strength of its religiosity, but it performs poorly on measures of social wellbeing. Australia less religiosity, but it performs better on measures of social wellbeing. So it depends on the social context in which the religion practises.
  • Risks of materialism and individualism:
    • Increased risk, uncertainty, insecurity.
    • Lack of clear frames of reference.
    • Onus of success rests with individual.
    • ‘Tyranny’ of excessive choice.
    • Autonomy confused with independence.
    • Shift from intrinsic to extrinsic goals (status, money, admiration). 
  • "… a cultural focus on the external trappings of ‘the good life’ increases the pressures to meet high, even unrealistic, expectations, and so heightens the risks of failure and disappointment. It leads to an unrelenting need to make the most of one’slife, to fashion identity and meaning increasingly from personal achievements and lifestyles and less from shared cultural traditions and beliefs." Richard Eckersley, 2011.
  • It is more complex than just the desire to get more stuff. The importance of the impacts of social media is that it ramps up the pressure for young people to define their lives by their appearance, etc., the pressure of expectations on them to be successful and popular.
  • The Root cause being the defining features of our society. How to respond?
    • Increase research, healthcare;
    • Rethink purpose of education;
    • Extend corporate regulation (macro);
    • Strengthen citizenship;
    • Widen use of human rights;
    • Emphasize values; and
    • Transform our culture.
  • We need to take major steps – e.g. dropping tax deductibility for advertising; banning political donations from major companies.
  • The Convention on the Rights of the Child … spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have (including) … to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation … The four core principles of the Convention are nondiscrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. UNICEF.
  • We are in breach of that statement – we are not acting in the best interests of the child. We need to think of how it applies to the whole of society, not just the oppressed groups.
  • St Thomas Aquinas – see slide 15. How society has changed – virtues vs vices have swapped now. Evidence from science supports this. Social vs anti-social behaviour. Temperance = self-restraint. Anathema to modern consumer culture. Moderation is now a vice.
  • ‘Big businesses in the United States now spend well over a trillion dollars a year on marketing. This is double Americans’ spending on all public and private education, from kindergartens through graduate schools.’ Michael Dawson in The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life, 2003. This shows the power of the market. This is why we are in this harmful situation. It is now about marketing a way of life, in public policy even.
  • But is there a shift in our world view happening now? At least 25% of people in Western nations are ‘cultural creatives’: This is up from less than 5% in the 1960s. They are disenchanted with consumerism, status displays, social inequalities, hedonism, and cynicism. They care about the environment, relationships, peace, social justice, spirituality, and self‐expression. There is a coalescence of social movements that is changing how people understand the world .
  • People are responding to the problem. Making the shift for personal reasons, for their own sense of wellbeing. “Downshifters” also called. Often they feel isolated – not much in the media. Contrast with the graph of the changes in college students’ views.
  • Examples:
    • AVAAZ: In 2010: What an incredible journey together -- in 3 years we’ve become the largest global web movement in history with almost 5 million people and rising fast! And we've only just scratched the surface of what's possible together... In 2011: AVAAZ IS ON FIRE. The pace of our activity, our growth, and our victories is intense! … THERE ARE OVER 8.2 MILLION OF US NOW, growing by 100,000 people per week! AVAAZ delivers mass petitions on a wide range of issue. Huge growth in participation.
    • Fairshare’s 5.10.5.10 formula for taking actions that matter: Give 5& of gross income to charities, environmental groups etc. Reduce resource use to 10% below national averages (and keep reducing). Spend 5% of leisure time in voluntary work. Take democratic action 10 times a year.
  • Role of education. ‘The purpose of education is, as it has always been, to initiate the young into those aspects of our culture on which their (and our) humanity depends.’ Lewis, White, Chandler in ‘Education – revolution or resilience’ in S Cork, Resilience and transformation, CSIRO, 2010. This gets to the core of the issue. If this is true, is it what the system is actually achieving? Or have we focused too much on measurable indicators? Do we know what sort of culture we should be initiating our kids into, given all the factors? These are central to dealing with the challenges at the scale at which it needs to be dealt with.
  • ‘Were I to distill a single message from these Massey Lectures it would be that culture is not trivial. It is not decoration or artifice, the songs we sing or even the prayers we chant. It is a blanket of comfort that gives meaning to lives. It is a body of knowledge that allows the individual to make sense out of the infinite sensations of consciousness, to find meaning and order in a universe that ultimately has neither.’ Wade Davis in The Wayfinders: Why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world, 2009 (2009 Massey Lectures).
  • Culture is not just mere window dressing. We require stories, myths, values to make life worth living. We have surrendered control of our culture to commercial interests. We need to get it back.

Abstract of article: "Young people’s health is continuing to improve in line with historic trends. Death rates are low and falling, and most young people say they are healthy, happy and enjoying life. For most, social conditions and opportunities have got better. Health efforts need to focus on the minorities whose wellbeing is lagging behind, especially the disadvantaged and marginalised. This is the widely accepted story of young people’s health. There is another, very different story. It suggests young people’s health may be declining - in contrast to historic trends. Mortality rates understate the importance of non-fatal, chronic ill-health, and self-reported health and happiness do not give an accurate picture of wellbeing. Mental illness and obesity-related health problems and risks have increased. The trends are not confined to the disadvantaged. The causes stem from fundamental social and cultural changes of the past several decades. Which story is the more accurate matters. Stories inform and define how governments and society as a whole address youth health issues. The usual narrative says interventions should target the minorities at risk. The new narrative argues that broader efforts to improve social conditions are also needed."

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Session 4: From Lesson Coverage to Learning Culture: Building Borderlands between Disciplinary and Digital Worlds – Erica McWilliam

  • Bob Hawke: “If you can’t ride two wild horses at once, you should not be in the circus” = coverage culture (“this is mandated”; not what kids bring to the class) and learning culture (not at liberty to do this shift totally). There are some things that you need to know at age 8 = social contract to cover certain things. But can’t spend whole time on coverage, in spite of what teachers say that they have to do. Pencil and paper rules in the school = underused technology. Some high achievers can do both cultures. Not many of them. 7% from their research. Not many more teachers can do it.

Slide 2

  • Learning culture = the things necessary to the new order – e.g. employability, global citizen.
  • Challenge for leading learning is how to ensure that both cultures happen. It is easy to collapse the coverage culture and do the other. But we want them to be self-managing as well, with a personalised learning journey. How do we help teachers to do the borderland work and do both cultures?
  • Coverage culture = externally measured - NAPLAN.
  • We need to acknowledge the competing cultures. It is not an awful thing to be a sage on the stage (slide 3). But we should also be the guide on the side. There are times when one or the other need to be done. Time to use the best of the sage on the stage – non-punitive ones. Fascism works at times, e.g. at an athletics carnival, wnhere you need good clear instruction.
  • But when the guide on the side collapses into warm, fuzzy stuff = bad teaching. Young people need structure. It is not the role of the teacher to keep them happy. The enemy in the classroom is passivity, not bad behaviour. The guide on the side is a Western phenomenon; it is not present in Singapore. It can dumb down the role of the teacher. Teacher as therapist. Black crayon used in a kid's drawing does not always = suicide ideation; it might just be the closest crayon. The guide needs to know everything about the kid.
  • We need to move to the meddler in the middle. These people know what to do when they don’t know what to do. They can use the skills of the kids that the teacher does not have. They welcome error and model that.
  • We need all three models – sage, guide and meddler.
  • More active teacher is needed. More interventionist teacher role.  Need to help teachers build the skills to know which to use when. New, related and different skills.
  • World of young people = flikr, youtube, etc. It is a real world to our younger and younger people. Need to help teachers build routines that work in the digital world. Need e-routines that are understood by teachers. ICT can’t teach that; pedagogy can do that.
  • Literacy e-shift:

Slide 5

  • Shift from single reader to reading as a team sport – a form of social belonging. Good librarians are like gold in schools – they know how to support learning – they ask kids: where do you want to go with your learning. User-led learning.
  • There is an ecology of interruption and distractability in the e-world; not control and command.
  • Every innovation is an invading species – we need hybrid ways to dealing with them. How to support and direct without frustrating.
  • Reading is spoken and shared. It is belonging.
  • “We have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self‐esteem in today’s children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise.” Baumeister et al, 2005
  • Every eye on me – self-esteem. We want kids to feel good about themselves, but we can’t take self-esteem away from achievement. They can feel good about themselves, but they can also be under-skilled. Korean kids and US kids = US high in self-esteem and low in achievement in Maths; opposite for Koreans.
  • We can’t lower the bar on challenge while raising their self-esteem. Culture of patronising – takes the place of helping kids feel good about themselves.
  • Research messages:
    • "A bizarre disconnect between perceived self‐worth and provable skill."
    • "No correlation between how people feel about themselves and how they perform."
    • "Self‐efficacy does not come from compliments, or being spared failure. It comes from evidence of achievement."
    • "Self‐control predicts all those things researchers had hoped self‐esteem would, but hasn’t."
  • We have the "Little Emperor" syndrome - kids that are spolied, demanding, protected, etc.
  • They need to be able to tolerate discomfort in the short term to get long-term gain. This does not have a place in our current world.
  • Self-efficacy does not come from endless compliments.
  • Sales of oranges are declining because kids can’t be bothered to peel them.
  • How to help kids to be in the world of “not yet”. Challenge-rich and structure-rich learning environments. Can end up with low-threat, low-challenge.
  • Carol S. Dweck, in Self Theories, shows how examining people's self-theories illuminates basic issues of human motivation, social cognition, personality, the self, mental health, and development. Learning and Performing: The Difference. Dweck is an early childhood researcher. Kids want easy things because they are trophy-driven – want instant success. When they hit the environment where they don’t get that, they shrink the things that they can do – they say: “I can’t do that.”
  • Judgment on achievement of performance goals is made by others while learning goals require meta‐cognition & self‐regulation. Performance goals are what others judge you by – NAPLAN.  Learning goals are about what you would like to do – require metacognition and self-regulation. A 50/50 focus on learning and performing. Like the coverage / learning culture ratio.
  • Knowledge work – two sorts – mandated (curriculum) plus dynamic (often misses out but must not lose).
Slide 11
  • Teaching in truth mode:
    • Knowledge is an accumulation of known facts and concepts.
    • Facts are best organised through disciplines.
    • Instruction is the most  promising strategy.
    • Memory and imitation are useful.
    • Answers are right or wrong.
    • Test results measure success.
    • Best evidence of learning = exam results.
  • But we need to ensure that we have time to teach in design mode. "Fofo" mode – fly off and find out, and then come back to us. Break the rules of mandated knowledge. (e.g. the Ikea development of the flat pack). What is a rainbow made of? Open-ended and not testable.
    • What is this idea good for?
    • What does it do and fail to do?
    • Does it have a future?
    • How could it be improved?
    • What is the value‐add?
  • Put a design-mode question at the end of the test = if the answer is 27, what is the question? Look for innovative answers. Give 5/5 for 5 processes in answer. Give 1/5 for" 9x3".
  • If you value something, you’d better assess it. Put it in your tests. If you value open-ended thinking, put them in.
  • Need kids who are able to be good at both. Need aesthetic and skill to come together, and that kids can feel that they can be good at both. Have to be able to work with people who are not like them.
  • Daniel Pink “The Whole New Mind”. Video clip.
  • High concept / high touch capacity = necessary for creative employment.
  • High challenge pedagogy:
    • High cognitive demand environment.
    • Clarify and share explicit learning intentions.
    • Obligatory engagement – no opting out, no 'hands up’ except to question.
    • Questions/statements that ‘cause’ thinking.
    • Practise designing tests, not just doing them.
    • Formative assessment to feed forward.
    • Students work harder than teachers.
    • Broad and deep learning tasks ‐ portfolios.
  • 200 years ago, the classroom was designed – industrial classroom is a very resilient model. 
  • “If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain is good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom” (John Medina, Brain Rules, 2008, p.5)
  • It is a passive environment. It was designed for training, sorting, credentialing. Now, research shows that kids who move when they do Maths do better.
  • Now, we need something like the café meets the classroom. The antecedents of lifelong learning were the cafés.  History of aspirational people (men).  Café is a place where people opt to learn, where they came to learn.
  • Example: the change in shape and space of libraries.
  • Building borderlands:
    • Acknowledging competing classroom cultures.
    • Teacher skilling in the sage‐to‐guide‐to‐meddler shift.
    • Equal status for virtual and ‘real’ in planning for learning.
    • New literacies mean new learning preferences and habits.
    • Kids need less patronising and more pedagogical power.
    • Explicit goal setting for learning and performing.
    • Engagement in both ‘truth mode’ and ‘design mode’.
    • High concept and high touch curriculum design.
    • Obligatory, non‐punitive engagement for all staff and students.
    • Café‐meets‐Classroom – Library a more pivotal space.
  • Lifelong learning is not about studying for exams forever. That is the last thing that young people will want to do.
  • National curriculum is a condition in which teachers do their work. Don’t have the choice to forget it, but have to do the best that they can to build the learning culture and build the skill set.

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