Mind Lab Week 31 My Interdisciplinary Connection Map.

My interdisciplinary map shows my commitment to the value of making connections, in and outside of the workplace.

The interdisciplinary concept is multifaceted. On my professional level it incorporates all of the different networks in my life. Looking at my map I can see how much value I place personally on making connections that will enable me to grow professionally as well as to enable others to grow. I can see that what has gone on in my past is what has enabled me to grow professionally and past involvements are what has enabled me to make the connections that I so strongly value.

On another professional level, the multidisciplinary connections between subjects resonated strongly with me as I explore the possibilities of project based learning further. Crossing interdisciplinary boundaries is how project based learning will work. As was stated on the video  “The road to success academy model” (Week 31 Mindlab) the pursuit of crossing interdisciplinary boundaries “ allows individuals to focus on the collaboration and participation in finding solutions to increasingly complex problems occurring in the world today.” (Lacoe Edu (2014, Oct 24).

As was stated on the video (Mind Lab Week 31), interdisciplinary crossover allows for a curriculum approach that consciously applies methodology and language from more than one discipline, in order to exam a central theme  (Lacoe Edu (2014, Oct 24). My Goal for the future in my school context is to explore further the cross curriculum interdisciplinary connections within the project based learning approach. I can see how the benefits of this approach would make learning so much more authentic as students access the discipline that they need (and the teacher who has those skills) in a much more natural and timely way as they work together to solve real life problems viewed through a social / emotional lens. In this way students will become better equipped to develop the necessary competencies that will sit alongside their knowledge acquisition. These competences are tools such as creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and citizenship. This is project based learning.

David Wiley in his TEd Talk ( Mind Lab Week 31) talks about crossing interdisciplinary boundaries in the sense of “enabling educational opportunities for all” In this way he presents the opportunities that free online sharing of knowledge enables for the student. He raises an appealing analogy about educational innovation comparing it to a musical remix or mashup of ideas - not necessarily new thinking but putting ideas together in a different way. In his Ted Talk, Wiley quoted Eric Raymond as saying “to solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you”. My Goal for our school is to work with the senior leadership team (of which I am a part) and the staff to enable educational opportunities for our students. Just as I am able to access the opportunities that being globally connected affords me, so too do I want to be able to make that possible and safe for our students. There are tensions associated with being globally connected when you are are a young person and these need to be addressed in a timely and safe manner.

The interdisciplinary environment that our students will have access to will enable them to have the benefits of free online material. They will have access to information and be influenced by people that may help shape their thinking and actions. This same environment can also have challenges in terms of unfiltered knowledge and influence. As teachers we share the responsibility with whanau to educate our students in the ability to filter information in a way such that they can process the information safely and connect globally with people in a positive way.  

References:

Videos:

Ted Talks:

David Wiley talked on interdisciplinary thinking that leads to innovation.Source: TEDx Talks (2001, April 6). TEDxBYU - David Wiley - An Interdisciplinary Path to Innovation. [video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ytjMDongp4 (via Mindlab Week 3)

Lacoe Edu (2014, Oct 24) Interdisciplinary Learning [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA564RIlhM

(via Mindlab Week 31)

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.

Project Based Learning

"Project based learning (PBL) is a student centred teaching method.  It involves students selecting, planning, investigating and producing a product that solves a real life problem or answers a question. This is generally carried over an extended period of time." This is taken from the literature review that Jo Earl and I have recently written on PBL. It is the concise version of an explanation of what PBL is. There is a wealth of material on the description, benefits and challenges of PBL. (see reference list at the bottom of this post for some of these)
It took me some time and much thought to get my head around Project Based Learning. I knew that it sounded innovative and exciting and would promote student agency, but I just couldn't get my head around a few things:

1. How do you organise it?
2. How do you make sure that the children are contributing equally( that the less confident or harder to engage children are engaged?
3. How do you assess it?
4. How do you know that 'the curriculum' is being covered?
5. How do you find suitable projects?
6. How do you cater for different abilities? and many more questions..

I knew from what I had read and was beginning to hear, that PBL is a way that we will engage our students, make education more applicable to life, promote the competencies of the future (Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Citizenship Critical thinking, Character) as Michael Fullan (2014) promotes in his 'A Rich Seam'. 

I already had self regulated learning happening in my class, (I was feeling pretty self satisfied) my team was engaging in some effective but still sylo based collaboration (within subject areas, literacy, numeracy, Inquiry, Independent projects,) and I knew without really knowing how, that PBL was where I wanted to be heading. I even found myself saying in staff PD that in the future when our students have even more agency and our learning is more project based (but not in the 80's and 90's way of 'doing a project - doing Fiji' or 'doing Japan') that we will really be catering for our children in so many ways. I still didn't know how it would work.

What made the penny drop for me was when I attended the Maths Symposium in Christchurch in 2014. I attended a workshop on rich learning tasks in maths. All of a sudden the answers to all of the questions above popped into my head. The facilitator had us using sample problems from the Figure it Out series and converting them into open ended, multi strategy level problems. She showed us how to set the driving question, and then monitor the way the children set about solving the problem in their mixed ability groups. She showed us how to provide workshops that her observations picked up as next steps for groups across groups. Suddenly I could see how this could work with bigger, longer lasting contextualised problems. The light came on! I went back to my then staff and ran the same workshop. I was delighted to see the same penny drop with several of the staff. Some of us started with rich learning tasks, which then led on to the project based learning approach.

It is interesting to me that in this country, the early adopters for innovative learning tend to come from primary. Secondary schools are beginning to adopt innovative learning practices with their year 9 and 10 students as these students are coming as a wave out of primary. Secondary teachers say that the constraints of NCEA make innovative learning too hard beyond those two years. I say it is coming. (PBL in secondary) ECE teachers will tell us, correctly, that this 'innovative' learning is the way they have always believed education should cater for learners' needs, as some visitors from local ECE's recently pointed out to us. Yet Fullan and Couros (Posts from The Principal of Change and Innovative Mindset ) and many others began their PBL journey in high schools. Some years ago, Jo and I studied and presented about a school that Fullan worked with on PBL called the Mary Ward School in Canada. These students worked on real life problems in a hub where multi discipline teachers were together and where the students could access the help of the teacher that they needed to learn the relevant knowledge and skills from.

Through our ongoing studies, we can see the benefits to the students of PBL: engagement, relevance, 21C competencies, (6 C's) and using technology for new learning and global communication. This is exciting.

Buck Institute for Education, (2015). Adapted from Setting the Standards for Project Based Learning; A Proven Approach to Rigorous Classroom Instruction, by John Larmer, JOhn Mergendoller, Susie Boss (ASCD 2015)

Bell, S. (2010). Project-Based Learning for the 21st Century: Skills for the Future. The Clearing House, 83:39-43. doi:10.1080/00098650903505415

Catapano, S., & Gray, J. (2015). Saturday School: Implementing Project-Based Learning in an Urban School. PennGSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 12(1). Retrieved from: http://www.urbanedjournal.org

Clark, A. (2006). Changing Classroom Practice to Include the Project Approach. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 8(2).

Diffily, D. (2002). Project-Based Learning: Meeting Social Studies Standards and the Needs of Gifted Learners. Gifted Child Today, 10762175, 25(3)

English, M., & Kitsantas, A. (2013). Supporting Student Self-Regulated Learning in Problem- and Project-Based Learning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning. 7(2)

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1339

Galvan, M., & Coronado, J. (2014). Problem-Based and Project-Based Learning: Promoting Differentiated Instruction. National Teacher Education Journal, 7(4)

Hertzog, N. (2007). Transporting Pedagogy: Implementing the Project Approach in Two First-Grade Classrooms. Journal of Advanced Academics 18(4)

Holm, M. (2011). Project-Based Instruction: A Review of the Literature on Effectiveness in PreKindergarten through 12th Grade Classrooms. InSight: Rivier Academic Journal, 7(2)

Lee, C. (2015). Project-Based Learning and Invitations: A Comparison. Journal of Curriculum Theorising, 30(3)

Lin, T. (2016). The Evolution of Education. Your Weekend The Press.

Loyens, S., Madga, J., & Rikers, R. (2008). Self-Directed Learning and Problem-Based Learning and its relationships with Self-Regulated Learning. Educ Psychol Rev (2008) 20:411-427. DOI 10.1007/s10648-9082-7

Ministry of Education. (2013). Ka Hikitia Accelerating Success 2013-2017. The Maori Education Strategy. Wellington, NZ.

Rangahau: Principles of Kaupapa Maori. (n.d.) Retrieved from: http://http://www.rangahau.co.nz/research-idea/27/

Robinson, K. (2008). RSA Animate | Changing Education Paradigm. Retrieved from: https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/videos/2010/10/rsa-animate---changing-paradigms/rsa-lecture-ken-robinson-transcript.pdf

Sungur, S. & Tekkaya, C. (2006). Effects of Problem-Based Learning and Traditional Instruction on Self-Regulated Learning. The Journal of Educational Research, 99(5).

Tamim, S., & Grant, M. (2013). Definitions and Uses: Case Study of Teachers Implementing Project-based Learning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning. 7(2)

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1323

Thomas, J. (2000). A Review of Research on Project-Based Learning. San Rafael, California 94903. Retrieved from http://www.bie.org/reserach/study/review_of_project_based_learning_2000http://www.michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3897.Rich_Seam_web.pdf