Week 27. Mind Lab. Activity 3: Contemporary issues or trends in New Zealand or internationally.

Identify and evaluate two contemporary issues or trends that are influencing or shaping NZ or international education, which you find most relevant to your practice.

Globalisation is here. More and more people are becoming connected. This is not a phase but the way our world has evolved. Our technologies allow us to contribute to the worldwide research and conversations about the changing needs of our local and global societies. Global partnerships where people in the workplace, teachers and students can collaborate on projects with unknown people around the world are game changers for education.

The National Intelligence Council 2012 Report states "We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures. It is our contention that the future is not set in stone, but is malleable, the result of an interplay among mega trends, game-changers and, above all, human agency. Our effort is to encourage decision makers—whether in government or outside—to think and plan for the long term so that negative futures do not occur and positive ones have a better chance of unfolding." (NIC 2012)

CORE education and the Kahukura cluster in Christchurch are working on a 'New Pedagogies' project in collaboration with Michael Fullan, author of educational publications such as A Rich Seam (2014), Freedom to Change(2015) and many other publications on the theme of Change Leadership. An important component of this global partnership including 1000 schools in 100 countries, is a project to which student participants from all of the contributing countries contribute. As well as shared projects, individual schools share their school based projects with the global community. This partnership is a blueprint for changing paradigms.

Ken Robinson shares an excellent animated video that clearly paints a picture of how and why our  education paradigms need to change.

This is an exciting time for educators. As we prepare our children for an elusive shapeshifting future we see some common trends emerging in NewZealand and around the world. One of these trends is the increasing use of collaborative learning approaches. This is the answer to addressing the changing needs of our children. With the accessibility of information, our role is not so much about providing facts but ensuring that we teach the competencies which the students will need in order to transfer knowledge across the curriculum and to filter the facts into information that they can work with, rather than regurgitate. These competencies are becoming more and more accepted as the skills that children will need to use in order to be able to access their future most productively.  They pose challenges for traditional educational systems as these competencies are not so easily measured as traditional methods such as tests of content knowledge.  These competencies are presented slightly differently by different educationalists.  Fullan (2014) calls these competencies the six C's: Communication, Collaboration, Citizenship, Critical thinking, Creativity and Character.

In my school context, (Start up school this year, as a result of a merger of two schools), we have begun work on what we want our student profile to look like. We are developing, through our professional development sessions and classroom experiences,  shared understandings and language about what collaborative learning approaches look like. We have had professional development on models of collaboration and what they look like in our learning hubs. Three of our four teams have brand new flexible learning spaces. The fourth team is working out of single cell classes, that are awaiting refurbishment. We are looking at what engagement of our learners looks like in our staff PD as well.  All of this contributes to our emerging vision and values.
Technology is allowing teachers to plan collaboratively and share their planning on google docs and this in turn allows teachers to easily see how they can work together and provide opportunities for students to work together on tasks that promote new learning, deeper thinking and the competencies for successful interactions. The 2015 horizon report states that research is showing how collaboration "can be used to promote achievement in reading, writing, conceptual development in science, problem solving in mathematics,and higher level thinking and reasoning" (Horizon Report 2015). Our school is on the journey.
A longer term impact that we are working towards in our school and a current trend in education globally, is the shift to deeper learning approaches. The next level in collaborative learning for our school is to make this shift. In our school, the children have made huge gains this year in terms of working collaboratively in flexible learning spaces and learning the skills of self management. The first step towards deeper learning approaches is the introduction of deep learning tasks. This is currently happening in some areas of the school. These are sets of tasks that involve the children working in small groups to research a teacher directed topic that is contextualised to: their lives, the school, local community, or world events. The tasks cross the curriculum and the children need to gain new knowledge and use this knowledge to think more deeply about issues, which they present in their chosen way. This is the first step towards our goal of project based learning. The difference between deep learning tasks and PBL for us is that the children will be working on a provocation that is given to them and they will work together to solve a problem. This will involve multi curriculum areas and will be extended over time. Rather than a set of tasks, PBL will be one all encompassing project for a particular group. The students will seek the knowledge from the teacher or other sources that is required to complete the project or solve the problem.


References:

Fullan, M & Lanworthy, M. (2014). A Rich Seam How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., and Freeman, A. (2015). NMC Horizon Report: 2015 K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf:
National Intelligence Council.(2012). Global trends: Alternative Worlds.National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved fromhttps://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf:  
Robinson, K retrieved from Mindlab: The RSA.(2010, Oct 14). RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U.