Education Review NZ Teacher 2015 by NZME. Educational Media

EDUCATION REVIEW series

Part of the

NZTeacher Incorporating Teach International

2015 / www.educationreview.co.nz / $10.95

Charter schools one year in

- are they working?

Assessment models under the microscope:

National Standards, NCEA, Cambridge and IB

Raising expectations: Findings of the Teacher Expectation Project

IES

- moving on from stalemate

Part of the series:

>> Leadership & PD >> Postgrad Education >> ICT & Procurement >> Postgrad & Research

Arm yourself with contemporary digital and collaborative teaching practices ENROL NOW FOR MARCH Designed for teachers at all levels, the Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital & Collaborative Learning) is a 32-week part-time NZQAaccredited qualification that will build your knowledge of emerging digital technologies and teaching methodologies. We offer: >

Flexible timetable

Collaborative learning

Ongoing support Highly progressive assessments

NEXT Generation Teacher Scholarships 2015 We are proud to be partnering with NEXT Foundation to provide 800 public school teachers a $2000 scholarship towards their $2750+GST tuition fees.*

For more information and to apply visit themindlab.com Terms & Conditions apply. For full terms and conditions, please refer to themindlab.com

“The course has been valuable, inspiring and interesting. The classroom specific tools are easy to use, easy to implement and have resulted in huge improvement in student engagement and deepened learning. It is a ‘must have’ for the modern teaching environment, and for those who wish to be on the cutting edge of digital skills to best prepare our students for the future.” Kelly Daniel Albany Senior High School

“My colleagues are inspired and motivated about the new digital innovations that I share with them on a regular basis. I’ve been in and out of my comfort zone in ways I never imagined and this has been invaluable for my career, my classroom and my own children.” Natasha Taylor Belmont Primary School

Newmarket, Auckland Waterfront, Gisborne Petone, Wellington 0800 MINDLAB (646 3522) postgrad@themindlab.com themindlab.com

Go to The supplement everyone's talking about Sector Voices: The biggest challenge currently facing New Zealand education Go to www.educationreview.co.nz/ news/2014/sector-voices-the-biggestchallenge-facing-education

A sense of déjà vu Here we go again, another school year beginning. I must confess to a slight feeling of déjà vu buying the school stationery, washing the school uniform and all the usual prep that comes with the new school year. At times it also feels like déjà vu when it comes to education policy. No doubt like many others, my summer reading was interspersed with Bali Haque’s Changing our Secondary Schools (see Dr Helen Anderson’s review in this issue). Haque reflects on the various reforms New Zealand education has undergone over the years, and notes what has and hasn’t worked. He draws comparisons between initiatives over the years including Tomorrow’s Schools, NCEA and National Standards, and it is fascinating to see the same issues keep cropping up, particularly around policy development and implementation. The 2015 school year has started with considerably less drama than last year. Twelve months ago, teachers and principals were still reeling from the news of the Government’s Investing in Educational Success (IES) initiative, and coming to terms with the opening of the first five charter schools. Both IES and Partnership Schools bore many of the same hallmarks as previous policies – of being introduced with insufficient sector consultation, insufficient New Zealand-based supporting evidence, and at great speed. However, as a much-tweaked version of IES is rolled out this term in tandem with the Ministry/NZEI working parties agreement, it certainly feels like an effort is being made on the part of the Ministry to work constructively with the sector. An external evaluation of the Partnership Schools process is also underway with the first report expected in the middle of this year. The report will certainly be of great interest to many sector groups, and particularly the Ministry as it considers whether to roll out more charter schools. We look at both IES and the charter schools evaluation process in depth in this issue, as well as school assessment and decile funding, and much more. We remain keen to get your thoughts on these topics and your contributions on anything that impacts on our education system. Jude Barback, Editor editor@educationreview.co.nz

www.educationreview.co.nz Education Review’s print edition is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to in-depth coverage of education in New Zealand. Go to www.educationreview.co.nz for web-exclusive content, including thought-provoking opinion articles from sector leaders.

EDUCATION REVIEW series

INside: 2

IES – moving on from stalemate

Charter schools: are they working...and for whom?

Use it or lose it – Countering the ’summer reading drop’

Beyond the decile system

So far, so awesome: Profile of a new teacher

Raising the bar: The Teacher Expectation Project

Is it time to reassess assessment?

NCEA and the alternatives

NCEA Pal a hit with students

Techno Me in ECE

A Kiwi teacher in Saudi

A shady issue for secondary schools

Extracurricular activities: do they add value?

Let’s talk about sex

Targeted teaching: new research in special education

Changing our Secondary Schools: a review

Want me to be a critical, creative and innovative thinker? Then let me play!

An education at home

Using learning technologies to best effect

Editor

Jude Barback

production Aaron Morey David Malone

Advertising & marketing Manager Belle Hanrahan

NZTeacher

Vol 6 Issue 1

NZME. Educational Media

Publisher & Level 1, Saatchi & Saatchi Building general manager 101-103 Courtenay Place Bronwen Wilkins

Wellington 6011

Contributing writeRS New Zealand Helen Anderson, Andy Ellmers, Cathy Herries, Annajane Laird, Elizabeth McLeod, Stephanie Menzies, Annette Milligan, Marci Powell, Joy Pratt, Filipe Prieto, Todd Roughton, Christine Rubie-Davies & Kate Russell

IMAGES

Thinkstock

PO Box 200, Wellington 6140 Tel: 04 471 1600 © 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISSN: 1173-8014 Errors and omissions: Whilst the publishers have attempted to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information, no responsibility can be accepted by the publishers for any errors or omissions. Education Review is distributed to key decision makers in the education sector and its distribution is audited by New Zealand Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC). Distribution: 6450

Education Review series Publication title 2015

IES

IES With the Government’s Investing in Educational Success (IES) policy now underway, JUDE BARBACK takes stock of the loose ends, most significantly how the NZEI’s new initiative will work alongside a policy it has rejected.

– moving on from stalemate

t has been just over a year since the Prime Minister boldly announced the Government’s intention to invest an extra $359 million in funding over the next four years, and $155 million a year after that, to help raise student achievement through its Investing in Educational Success (IES) policy. Twelve months on, a much-refined, much-debated version of IES has begun, with 11 communities of schools on board, accounting for 82 schools. While the Ministry of Education is reportedly delighted with the take-up so far, and expects more schools to join IES soon, the primary teachers’ union NZEI Te Riu Roa has scoffed at the small proportion of New Zealand schools to come on board, and is focusing its efforts on working towards a new initiative, as agreed with the Ministry late last year. The Ministry has now committed itself not only to IES and the Communities of Schools, but also to working with the NZEI on this new initiative, and consequently has widened the parameters of the funding initially set aside for IES. Where previously it was allocated only to those participating in the Communities of Schools, it has now also extended the $359 million pot to the work currently underway with the NZEI, which may well result in pathways and initiatives outside of the IES Communities of Schools framework. So will the agreement really result in a “viable alternative to IES”, as the NZEI suggests? Or is the union taking the long way round to coming on board the IES policy, with the expectation of changing its shape further still?

A polarising policy

The IES policy was formed partly in response to New Zealand’s slide in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings. In search of answers, the Government turned to the man behind the PISA survey, the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, who claims that countries with top-performing education systems place their most talented school principals and

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

teachers in the most needy schools. IES was built heavily on this premise, with much of the investment pegged for paying the best principals and teachers more money to spend time in other schools. The Ministry of Education claims – based on the OECD’s and other international research – that the IES initiative will raise achievement by improving teaching practice, enabling better collaboration between teachers and schools, and helping all children benefit from the skills and knowledge of great teachers from across a group of schools. The sector was caught off-guard by the Prime Minister’s announcement in January 2014. Scepticism towards the policy grew as sector groups began to question why they hadn’t been part of the discussions on how to spend such a significant amount of money to raise student achievement. Two camps emerged. Broadly speaking, the secondary school sector – as represented by the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) and the Secondary Principals Association of New Zealand (SPANZ) – supported the overarching aims of IES, but did not agree with the specific details of the policy, and actively participated in the consultation process to help shape it into something that more accurately reflected what it felt New Zealand schools needed. Meanwhile, the primary sector took a more dissenting view. The primary teachers’ union NZEI Te Riu Roa and the New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF) voiced some major objections to the policy and felt the money could be spent more effectively in other ways. When put to the vote, 93 per cent of NZEI members were in opposition. The NZEI even went so far as to devise an alternative avenue for the money, ‘A Better Plan’ which enabled schools to compare different ways that funding could be spent.

Objections to IES

The biggest issues surrounding IES appear to be related to the lack of genuine consultation with the sector; the concern that the resourcing would be linked to National Standards data; and the lack of robust, evidence-based research – particularly relating to New Zealand schools – to support the policy. The consultation argument has become an old chestnut for education and it is frustrating to have to revisit this with every new policy the Ministry rolls out. The reform of national assessment models, the restructuring of Christchurch schools, the roll-out of partnership schools and many other examples have all been tainted, by varying degrees, by a lack of transparent and collaborative engagement with the sector. In each case, when met with such criticism, the Ministry appears to either push through regardless, or concede to go back and work through with sector parties. It appears to be the cumulative effect of this that has pushed the NZEI into such a strong opposing position with IES. On speaking with Ian Leckie, principal of Tahatai Coast School in Papamoa, towards the end of 2014, he likened the way IES has been muscled in to the way National Standards were foisted onto the profession five years ago. “And are National Standards raising achievement? No. If IES is foisted upon schools in the same way National Standards are, and class size, then schools will become disenfranchised with it.”

IES

“In an ideal world we would go back to the beginning and start again.” Leckie, a former NZEI president, questioned whether IES will actually achieve collaboration among schools as it proposes. Although his school is part of an effective cluster, he believes there are weaknesses in the cluster model, harking back to Tomorrow’s Schools, which introduced competitiveness among schools. He suspects IES will simply introduce competitiveness in a different guise. Leckie doubted IES will have any effect on student achievement. “Where is the New Zealandbased evidence to support that this will raise achievement?” Leckie’s sentiments are shared widely, particularly in the primary sector. The lack of sound evidence pertaining to what is beneficial for New Zealand children appears to be the most problematic issue with IES. The NZEI claims that the evidence the Ministry presented in support of IES neglects the New Zealand context, has “little or no logical connection to the IES initiative”, and that it is “not robust and in many cases, is inappropriate”. Again this is a familiar response to recent education policy. Tomorrow’s Schools, NCEA, National Standards were all subject to poor implementation characterised by a lack of strong, supporting, New Zealand-based evidence. The research informing the IES policy takes into account high-performing school systems like Finland and Singapore, and research stemming from the OECD, McKinsey Education, Michael Fullan and others. While it strives to put this research into a New Zealand context, it skims lightly across what is working and not working in New Zealand schools. It is this lack of relevant local evidence that has attracted criticism. Leckie rejected the notion that IES will provide career pathways for the teaching profession. “It doesn’t provide a career stepping stone for teachers – they might become a lead/expert teacher for a few years on extra pay but then return to their regular position and salary. “Under IES we’ll be paying our best teachers to be out of the classroom and we won’t see the money coming into the school. It’s not the right mechanism to raise achievement.” Leckie believes the funding could be used to much better effect. He outlines how he envisages a hypothetical amount of money could be spent at his school. “With $80,000, for example, we would employ staff to work with priority learners, increase support staff, intensify programmes and provide ongoing resourcing for children with high physical needs.”

Many principals claim to have a better vision for the funding. However, others have hit back at the notion of specifying alternatives for the money. In a post published on the PPTA’s blog, Tom Haig writes: “Decreasing class sizes in Years 4–6, more teacher aides, 100% registered ECE teachers may all be worthwhile things to do, but they haven’t made the case for them being better ways to achieve the aim of the policy. And as for the claim that these would cost the same – wildly wrong, and oddly enough, would entirely benefit the members of the organisation that is advocating for it.” There are some aspects of IES that Leckie is not wholly opposed to, like the notion of a change principal, for example. He is also pleased at the Ministry’s move to take the $10 million Teacherled Innovation Fund out of IES to enable schools access to it, even if they are opting out of IES. In spite of these concessions, Leckie said that if IES were to forge ahead, some schools will opt in and some will opt out and the two camps will never meet. “In an ideal world we would go back to the beginning and start again.”

Reaching agreement with the secondary sector

And so, against a backdrop of strong opinions from the secondary sector and general opposition from the primary sector, a working group of education sector leaders was tasked to fine-tune IES and the policy underwent transformation. The PPTA and SPANZ backed the policy after securing changes from the Ministry of Education, and agreements were formed, as well as with New Zealand School Trustees Association. Among these modifications were changes to the original terminology – executive and change principals, lead and expert teachers were replaced with Community of Schools (CoS) leadership roles, across-community teacher roles, and withinschool teacher roles. Inquiry Time has been written into the policy, with approximately 250,000 hours a year to be made available for teachers to learn from each other. The key difference from the original proposal was that people in the new roles would be paid for having greater responsibility, rather than on the basis of performance. The salary allowances were altered. The original proposal stated that expert and lead teachers would receive an extra $20,000 and $10,000 respectively. This has now changed to withinschool teachers earning $8,000 more a year with two hours a week for their new responsibilities,

while those in across-community roles would be granted 10 hours a week and $16,000 more a year. Principals in a CoS leadership role would receive $30,000, instead of $40,000 as originally proposed. The allowance would also include $1,000 per annum for each school and a Principals’ Recruitment Allowance of $50,000 per annum for a fixed term in order to attract principals to challenging schools.

NZEI’s agreement with the Ministry

Reaching agreement with the primary sector proved considerably more challenging for the Ministry, but eventually middle ground was found. It would seem Leckie’s wish to “go back to the beginning and start again” may have been granted to a certain extent; an agreement was formed towards the end of 2014 outlining what the NZEI described as “a viable alternative to IES”. The new initiative is focused on successful transition through all stages of schooling and the resourcing and roles that are needed to support this. Critically, it hinges on “flexible models of collaboration” and joint working parties will look at existing and potential learning communities that encourage collaboration and transition. The working parties, due to begin work now and report back in May, will take a grassroots, bottom-up approach, pulling together effective practices to inform the necessary roles and resources. NZEI president Continued on next page >>

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Charter schools

Charter schools:

are they working...and for whom? A year since the first partnership schools opened their doors JUDE BARBACK considers what the first independent evaluation of the model should be considering.

ith four more partnership schools opening their doors this year, and more likely to follow, charter school opponents are eager for evidence to support their arguments that partnership schools either won’t work, will threaten public education, or both. Struggling Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru has seemingly provided the proof they have been seeking that partnership schools won’t work.

Whangaruru – the scapegoat

Poor Whangaruru. Besieged by infighting, bullying, drug use, poor teaching and a falling roll, there is no doubt that Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru is the weak link in the chain of the five fledgling partnership schools. It was always going to be a challenging school, given the large proportion of students who have been out of education for years. The Ministry is helping the school work through its problems, and its reluctance to set a precedent with closing a school in such a short time

IES << Continued from previous page Louise Green says it is essentially flipping the IES process on its head, and makes more sense than the “form driving function” approach initially taken by the Ministry in devising IES. The NZEI appears confident that whatever shape the initiative takes following the findings of the working parties, it will work alongside IES with the Ministry’s full support. “We have entered into this agreement with the Ministry in good faith, and we believe they have too. At the end of the day we are all here for the same purpose – to raise achievement,” says NZEI president Louise Green. The Ministry has confirmed that the funding allocated for IES will also cover the roles and resourcing that emerge from its agreement with the NZEI. “Funding of $359 million over four years and $155 million in subsequent years covers all the work we are doing on collaboration, transitions through the education system, and career pathways for teachers and principals,” says deputy secretary, student achievement, Graham Stoop. “Agreements already reached with secondary teachers and principals, as well as the work currently underway with the NZEI, will all be funded from the $359 million the Government set aside to lift student achievement and provide improved career pathways for teachers,” says Stoop. These comments show that the Ministry is prepared to fund roles and initiatives stemming from the NZEI agreement that fall outside of the Communities of Schools. It indicates a softening from the Ministry’s earlier stance on funding, that the $359 million would only be extended to those participating in the IES Communities of Schools. Indeed, its website specifies that “funding for the new roles and for Inquiry Time is available only to Communities of Schools”.

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

Or perhaps the Ministry is still hoping the NZEI will come on board IES and participate in the Communities of Schools in some guise – even if it means adding more tweaks and changes to the policy along the way? Certainly, the Ministry does not cast its agreement with NZEI quite in the same light as the union does. Rather than reporting it as a ‘viable alternative’ to IES, the Ministry appears to view its agreement with the NZEI as a means of finding a way for the sector to participate in IES in a way that reflects the findings of the joint working parties. “The joint initiative with NZEI allows for IES to be implemented in primary schools while we continue conversations with the union on how roles and resources supporting these goals might finally look in that sector,” says Stoop. Stoop says there is considerable interest from the primary sector in IES, in spite of the NZEI membership’s rejection of the policy. He points out that of the schools already in a Community of Schools or expressing interest in being part of one, most are primary schools. “Work is also progressing to form more Communities of Schools, with a total of 420 schools either already in a Community or actively showing interest in being part of one - that’s around 17 per cent of all schools. Most of those are primary schools so there’s certainly enthusiasm in the primary sector. We’ve come a long way in just 12 months,” says Stoop. If the findings of the working parties should produce an outcome that works within the parameters of IES and the Communities of Schools in some way, then it is possible the NZEI could come on board. If the NZEI is able to work flexibility, collaboration and a focus on transition into the IES policy, then that surely is a win for all concerned. Louise Green makes the valid point that the process is far from finished. While she reiterates

that the NZEI membership has rejected IES, she also says they are not ruling anything out at this stage. “We are not closed to anything.”

Where to from here?

And so, it remains a game of wait-and-see while the joint working parties begin their work. Meanwhile, the Ministry is happy with how IES is progressing. “We’re very pleased with progress,” says Graham Stoop. “It’s a year since IES was announced and a huge amount of work has been done since then with sector groups.” The first 11 Communities of Schools cover 82 schools in several parts of the country. They are beginning work this term to identify achievement challenges specific to the community. Once a plan is drawn up to meet these challenges, funding will be released for the new teacher and principal roles, and for paid time for teachers to learn from one another. The Ministry remains optimistic about takeup of IES from primary schools, but has also committed itself to working with the NZEI to implement appropriate pathways and practices that might work alongside IES. It remains to be seen whether this dualapproach will actually work and what IES and any spin-off policies will look like in another 12 months. Will there continue to be primary sector support for IES as it stands? Or can we expect a further iteration of IES following the NZEI/ Ministry working parties’ report? Or can we expect a different channel altogether following the report, leaving the Ministry with the difficult task of working out how to divvy up the funding? Time will tell. The next six months will be critical, not only in terms of what the NZEI working groups will produce, but in terms of how the Ministry engages with the union and the wider sector.

Charter schools

frame can be understood. But how long will this approach continue before the decision is made to close the school, and direct the Whangaruru funding elsewhere? From the outset, the Ministry promised transparency around reporting on partnership schools, and it promised it would close them down if they were failing. As Rose Patterson recently stated in the New Zealand Herald, the whole point of charter schools is that innovation is fine as long as failure is acknowledged and eliminated. “The success of the charter school model is predicated on eliminating failure. Schools are given much more rope. They innovate and try new things to improve learning and serve their students. But the corollary of that is sometimes they will hang themselves with that rope.” Opposition against charter schools runs so deep that an actual example of a failing school prompts opponents to affirm their claims that the entire charter school model is, as Labour education spokesperson Chris Hipkins described it, “fundamentally flawed”. Such a claim might be considered unfair based on the successful first year experienced by the other four partnership schools to open in 2014. The success or failure of an entire model shouldn’t be attributed to the performance of one school, but rather the overall impact and effectiveness of the charter schools on New Zealand education.

Good reports – but are they enough?

The problem is, for those desperate to know the impact and effectiveness of the model, the number of schools and students is small and it is perhaps too soon to tell. That said, four out of the five partnership schools have performed well in their first year, according to their Education Review Office (ERO) reviews. Vanguard Military School is said to have made “a very good start to its operation”. At South Auckland Middle School the “small class sizes, the well-organised timetable and teacher expertise in subject areas contribute to a sense of academic purpose for the students”. However, a favourable ERO review and good results are, on their own, not enough to convince an already sceptical sector. To support these measures, it is necessary to ask not only whether students are achieving, but how well they are achieving compared to similar cohorts of students outside the charter schools system. An earlier Cabinet Paper Developing and Implementing a New Zealand Model of Charter School stated that “a strong evaluation programme will be put in place that thoroughly examines the impact and effectiveness of the first such schools”. The evaluation programme will consist of an independent evaluation of the Partnership Schools model, to support other forms of evaluation, namely the schools’ data provided to the Ministry, their ERO reviews, and the oversight of the Authorisation Board. The Ministry has confirmed that this independent evaluation has been contracted to Martin Jenkins Ltd and is underway with the first report expected to be completed mid2015.

However, information on the process indicates the independent evaluation will take a more inward focus on the schools rather than delving into the sort of comparative analysis necessary to draw any real conclusions about the impact partnerships schools are having on New Zealand education. Instead, the evaluation plan will focus, over a four-year period, on how schools are using the Partnership Schools model to deliver a different education to state schools, on how they are interacting with family, and what has helped or hindered implementation. It will then look at how the schools are developing conditions to achieve their outcomes, and by the third year whether the schools are actually achieving these outcomes.

Evaluation – outward focus needed

The evaluation process, including the schools data and ERO reviews, is bound to give a clear picture of whether the partnership schools are performing well or not. What it doesn’t look set to do is consider partnership schools’ performance in the context of other schools, which is the main concern of charter school critics. The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) is particularly perturbed by the apparent lack of comparative analysis. “We’re concerned that the New Zealand public are never going to really know the impact of charter schools,” says president Angela Roberts. “There are a couple of things that the Ministry has to do to show us their impact.” The first is to do a “high-quality, matched cohort evaluation” – essentially comparing the outcomes of the students in charter schools with the outcomes of students from a group who are, as far as possible, similar. Roberts says comparisons made on the basis of ethnicity or decile alone is not adequate. Instead, comparisons should also take into account the fact that students have chosen to attend a partnership school – the motivation factor. In the United States, it is possible to compare students on these bases, evaluating the performance of students who were granted a place in a charter school through a ballot or lottery system, against those who missed out. Recent US research compared students in regular state schools with those in schools that were converted from state schools to charter schools, thus eliminating the motivation factor. However, in New Zealand the partnership model is much too small and new to be able to make these sorts of comparisons.

The second thing that Roberts says the evaluation should be looking at is the impact on the other schools near the charter schools. “If the charter schools are getting great outcomes for their students, but the surrounding schools all have worse outcomes, then what we’d be seeing is simply that the motivated students are changing schools. This doesn’t seem to be what anyone wanted from the policy.” Under this logic, it would seem partnership schools are doomed whichever way you look at it: better outcomes than neighbouring schools mean they are damaging state education; worse outcomes mean the partnership schools are failing, and the same outcomes mean the schools are pointless. So, despite the first measure – comparing student cohorts – being almost impossible to evaluate, and the second – determining the impact on other schools – likely to result in only negative outcomes for charter schools, the PPTA claims that without a thorough analysis of these two measures, any evaluation of the partnership school model will fail to expose their true impact on New Zealand education. The fact is that the PPTA, like many sector groups, remains strongly opposed to charter schools. At times over the past 12 months its opposition has taken an ugly presence, but more recently the union appears to be focusing less on direct attacks on individual schools, and more on the ideological arguments against the model. Charter school critics believe that partnership schools are robbing New Zealand’s state schools of students, resources and funding. The main argument is that the funding per student is considerably higher than state schools. It follows that the more aspiring families in low decile areas are likely to choose the partnership schools, removing role models from the nearby state school and further disadvantaging the community. Meanwhile, proponents don’t perceive charter schools as an attack on state education, but rather a means of providing an alternative option to students who may not be achieving under the current system. No one can feel bad about an increase in students’ achievement, and hopefully this is what the independent evaluation of partnership schools will reveal. However, whether or not students’ achievement is to the detriment of students in nearby state schools is a valid concern. It may well be difficult to probe these issues in any evaluation of partnership schools, but if the model is to work alongside our state education, it must be addressed.

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Reading

Use it or lose it –

Countering the ’summer reading drop’

KATE RUSSELL explores what is being done in several New Zealand schools to keep students motivated to read over summer – and term – holidays.

or Kiwi children, the summer holidays are all about five weeks of sunshine, holidays and spending time with family and friends. But those five weeks away from the classroom environment mean that children can forget some of what they have learned over the year. This is what is commonly known as ’summer learning loss’, or the ’summer slide’. This is especially true when it comes to reading, because when children get out of the reading habit over the summer holidays it can set them back the following school year. For many primary and secondary school-aged children in New Zealand, there is often little or no opportunity to read and maintain their literacy skills and reading habits over the summer holidays, especially in lower socioeconomic areas, where children have limited access to reading material. Paul Wright makes the observation in his article” An initiative to counter the ’summer reading drop’: An iterative process”, that lower decile schools tend to face greater hurdles in reducing summer learning loss than higher decile schools. From his experience as principal of Clayton Park School, a decile 2 primary school in Auckland, Wright perceives this to be due to a number of factors: there is typically limited access to learning materials in the homes in low socioeconomic areas; parents often have less time to spend with their children on learning activities; there are more one-parent families; there is a tendency – particularly among Pasifika parents – to work longer hours; parents are often not as well educated; there is a higher rate of domestic violence, and other poverty-related issues.

Collaborative strategies

Clayton Park School has been battling the summer learning loss for several years now, but has had notable success in improving student reading achievement. They have done this by introducing strategies to support reading at home during the holidays through a summer reading contract, working with parents and increasing teacher effectiveness. The school now runs a successful ‘summer reading contract’ programme, which was first trialled in 2006. A home-school partnership was established, which became a key tool in combating summer reading loss, according to Wright. Homeschool partnership meetings are used to inform parents and teach them strategies they can use with their

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

children to support their learning over the summer holidays. Parents play a big part in this programme and receive all the information and support they need to help their children. Although it got off to a slow start, the programme gradually took off through the use of the home-school partnership meetings. Research by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at The University of Auckland also states this importance for parental involvement when it comes to summer holiday learning. Parents should play an active role, discuss with their child what they are reading, and focus on interest and enjoyment over summer rather than success at school. “The key to success is not just for each student to read every day during the holidays, it is vital that they then talk about the things they have just read with an adult, someone who is interested and helpful. Kids cannot do this by themselves,” says Wright. “The summer reading contract sets out goals and expectations for parents and students and provides a structure for reading strategy acquisition practice over the summer. These contracts are sent home at the end of the year and contain an individualised plan for appropriate and regular reading over the summer.”

Encouraging results

Over the years the programme has been running, the proportion of students returning completed reading contracts has steadily increased. “After eight years, over 65 per cent of all students and their families keep up their contracts every day during the holidays,” says Wright. “The programme has been extended into the short holidays as well. Many children have now read with an adult for 1,000 nights in a row, without a break.” For these students there is no ‘catch-up’ effect when they come back to school after the summer holidays – they do not lose any of reading gains they have made. Also, children who complete their contracts experience an average year-on-year gain in reading achievement which is greater than that of children who do not complete reading contracts. Teachers’ effectiveness, in the area of reading, is also something Clayton Park School has addressed to combat summer learning loss. This includes focused professional development, quality assurance and the use of reading achievement data.

Secondary schools join in Secondary schools are

also encouraging students to partake in holiday reading to fight summer learning loss, but in slightly different ways. Mahurangi College in Warkworth, a decile 7 secondary school, has been working hard to reduce the loss of reading levels through the use of their school library. The school library has put in place a programme called ‘Book Break’, where students are allowed to borrow up to six books to read over the summer holidays. They have a special ‘Book Break’ borrowing day and guided help for students from the school librarians to select suitable books for their reading level. The librarians also educate students about the importance of summer reading and practising a skill in order not to lose what you have learned. This is a simple, yet effective way to keep students learning over the summer holidays.

Libraries help out

Public libraries around the country are also doing their bit to encourage children to keep reading over the summer holidays, many of them holding summer reading programmes in a bid to reverse the summer slide. The Association of Public Libraries of New Zealand highlights that summer learning loss can have lasting effects on educational outcomes and it can set children back by one month on average from before the summer break and can have long-lasting effects. “Low literacy levels can trap kids in a cycle of poor health, limited employment opportunities and reduced income levels. This often continues as their children in turn lack access to reading materials,” says Tim Antric, director of Public Libraries of New Zealand. Preventing this can be as simple as encouraging kids to read five books over the summer break. Mahurangi College has already put in place something similar and has had notable success with it. Primary and secondary schools also work in liaison with public libraries so children know what summer reading programmes are available to them, and are encouraged to attend and make use of the free services that public libraries offer. Summer reading should be encouraged as an enjoyable task, not a chore. According to findings from research by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at The University of Auckland, results show that engagement in reading over summer relies on students selecting and enjoying texts as part of leisure activities. Children need to engage in text that is suitable for their age and is about something that they are interested in. Then, the learning will happen, all while having an enjoyable Kiwi summer break.

Deciles

Beyond the decile Many in the education sector believe the decile system isn’t working. Even the Minister of Education calls it “a blunt instrument”, and says she’d like to ditch it. Exactly what’s wrong with deciles, and can they be fixed? asks ELIZABETH McLEOD.

he Minister of Education Hekia Parata declined to be interviewed for this article, and has refrained from predicting what shape her planned review of the decile system might take. However, in a written statement she stresses “it would need to be done alongside the profession and sector groups”. Last November, as decile ratings were reset for the first time in seven years, Parata told Radio New Zealand’s Kathryn Ryan she thought deciles should go, “because they are wrong, they’re inaccurate”. The decile system aims to level the playing field by providing extra funding for schools with high numbers of disadvantaged students to reflect the higher costs of educating them. Decile 1 schools get up to $905 per student, while decile 2 schools get around half that, decile 3 schools up to $350 and decile 10 schools no extra funding at all. Despite popular perceptions, a school’s decile rating doesn’t represent the overall socioeconomic mix of the families attending that school. It indicates only the proportion of its students who come from the poorest, lowest-skilled and least-educated 20 per cent of households – but tells us nothing about all the other families at that school. Why is this a problem? Firstly, it’s a crude indication of need: not all children in low-decile schools are poor, and highdecile schools have poor kids. Secondly, a school’s socioeconomic mix directly impacts on its capacity to attract ’locally-raised funds’ – which include school donations, fundraising and fee-paying international students. “The decile funding is only a small proportion of what goes into schools,” says Papatoetoe High School principal Peter Gall. “In high socioeconomic areas, schools have far more cash available to them than anywhere else in the system. We’ve got high-decile secondary schools in Auckland with huge numbers of international students – 300-odd in a couple. They bring millions of dollars into their school community.” A 2013 NZEI survey of five decile 10 and five decile 1 primary schools found the high-decile schools’ total funding (including locally-raised) averaged $1,000 more per student than the poorer schools’. Not only can low-decile schools not ask for large donations – they’re much less likely to receive any at all. Hamilton’s Insoll Avenue School asks for $10 a term, “and probably about 25 per cent [of families] pay,” says principal Linda McCabe. By contrast, some high-decile primary schools in leafy suburbs ’request’ annual donations of up to $475 to offset their lack of decile funding. Meanwhile, mid-decile schools get hit at both ends; not only do they attract less decile funding, but they miss out on programmes aimed at low-decile schools, including social workers in schools, Duffy Books, and KidsCan food, shoes and raincoats. Then there’s the stigma. Papatoetoe principal Peter Gall believes “the overt labelling of schools by socioeconomic factor is the worst thing we do in our education system. It’s led to all sorts of unintended consequences.” Not the least of these consequences is the use of decile ratings as a shorthand, erroneously, for quality. Some schools – and real estate agents – use them as a marketing tool. McCabe says people visit her school “and say ‘oh it’s lovely’, and they get a real surprise when they find out we’re a decile 1. And then they become quite tentative and say ‘not

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

sure I want to come here’.” Some then head for the decile 3 school further away. Gall says low-decile high schools have trouble attracting international students because the overseas agents recruiting them fixate on decile. “They’re not interested at all in how good a job your school is doing.” A 2013 NZCER survey of 1477 secondary school parents found that 40 per cent sent their children to a secondary school that wasn’t their closest school – usually a higherdecile one. “White flight” allegations have been around for years, but were lent some credence by the New Zealand Herald’s revelation last November that the number of Pakeha in decile 1-4 schools has nearly halved since 1996. However Parata is “determined to protect” parents’ rights to choose schools. Parents need to be educated in how to assess quality, rather than just looking at decile, she says, and the Public Achievement Information data on the Ministry’s Education Counts website is helping with this.

What are the alternatives?

The Minister won’t be drawn on what she’s considering, saying she has nothing to add to what she’s already said publicly. What she’s said seems ambiguous. Parata told Radio New Zealand any new system needs to be “both needs-driven and outcomes-focused”. She wants to add the greater data now available – including factors like CYFS notifications, transience and truancy – to the existing socioeconomic data, to build a more detailed profile of schools and target resources better. But she’s clear this targeting will no longer be just about identifying need. “I’m much more interested in ‘how do we get a really good set of indicators that create a dashboard for a school to tell a fuller story about how well they’re educating their kids’ – other than simply ‘this is the level of need, therefore the funding we get somehow is correlated with the quality of teaching and learning’.” Parata caused a furore last March when she appeared to suggest to the Herald on Sunday she was considering linking differential funding to student achievement. She’d looked overseas and “the systems that have been most successful in closing the equity-excellence gap are the ones that have strongly incentivised a focus on ‘what difference have I made in my teaching and learning in this sixmonth period?’ Not just ‘what’s the final result?’” She subsequently distanced herself from the comments, saying in Parliament “there are a number of options available to us, and those will be the options we will be looking at once we undertake the review”. Parata has expressed interest in the top-performing systems of Shanghai and Singapore – both of which feature performance pay. However, neither country bases this on quantified student progress.

Deciles

system Instead, both have sophisticated incentives that promote teacher development, rather than punishing poor performance. The Government’s Investing in Education Success (IES) initiative certainly seems to be more along these lines; however, Shanghai and Singapore haven’t linked their teacher capacity-building with school funding in the way Parata is possibly contemplating. The Post Primary Teachers’ Association’s Angela Roberts would be “very nervous” if funding levels hinged on achievement. “We’ve seen how that has absolutely decimated the American public education system: if you don’t do well enough in the national assessments, you lose funding. It’s not working because teachers are only teaching to the test.” However, Parata talks about measuring “progress” rather than simply “achievement”. It may be she’s considering something like Value-added Modelling (VAM), which measures teachers’ contribution by comparing students’ test scores with their previous year’s scores. VAM has been used controversially in some American states to reward teachers and make teacher retention decisions. (Incidentally, the US continues to achieve mediocre PISA results: out of 64 countries, they rank 36th in maths, 28th in science and 24th in reading). Roberts believes it’s a positive sign that the Minister wants to have a conversation about a more nuanced way of resourcing schools. “But ahead of that I’d say ‘you can’t just be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’. There is no fat to trim. Any new model has to recognise that no student or school can be worse off.” NZEI’s Louise Green observes that the range of data the Ministry now collects may help paint a better picture, “but what about the children who don’t fit into any of that, where their parents are working, but the kids are still poor?” South Wellington Intermediate School moved from decile 7 to 8 in the latest round. It’s a school that slips slightly through the gaps of the current system; around two-thirds of its students come

“The overt labelling of schools by socioeconomic factor is the worst thing we do in our education system. It’s led to all sorts of unintended consequences.”

from affluent Island Bay, while the rest mostly hail from Berhampore and Newtown, which feature some state housing and a large immigrant population (nearby Berhampore School has 20 different ethnic groups). Board of Trustees chairperson Sylvia Moe says a more detailed profile “would definitely work in our favour. If they looked at us as an individual school and what we’re actually made up of, they’d be resourcing us for our particular needs – and SWIS has particularly different needs because we take in such a range of families.” Of course, many educators say decile is part of a wider problem; there’s insufficient investment in the whole sector. NZCER’s 2007 snapshot of primary schools reported 95 per cent of principals said their funding was inadequate to meet their school’s needs. The latest OECD figures show New Zealand spends far less per student than most comparable countries. In 2010 we spent US$8170 per student per year, compared with Australia ($10,350); the United States ($12,464), Ireland ($11,380); the UK ($10,452). New Zealand might emulate Australia’s Gonski Report. It recommended that the Government identify a few high-quality schools and use their total resourcing – including locallyraised funds – to set a per-student funding level for schools, with extra loadings for disadvantage including disability, indigenous student numbers and lack of English proficiency. “There needs to be an absolute minimum – or even better, an optimum level – of funding set,” says Gall.

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

New teacher

So far, so awesome:

Profile of a new teacher

Education Review asks new teacher JOY PRATT about her first year teaching and what advice she’d give to others starting their first teaching roles.

What is your current job and how did you find yourself in it?

Joy: I am TiC (teacher in charge) drama at Rangitikei College. I also teach English here. I did my BA at Massey University and my postgraduate degree at the University of Waikato. I was keen to start my career as soon as possible, so I moved down to Christchurch for my first teaching position. I completed my first year as a PRT at Avonside Girls’ High School. However, I wanted to move back to the Manawatu/Rangitikei, as all of my family is from this area. So I was very grateful that this job at Rangitikei College came up on the Education Gazette last year.

Have you always wanted to be a teacher? What attracted you to the teaching profession? Joy: YES! I always saw teaching as a means to create change. I really want to make a difference in the lives of my kids, and it’s really exciting to be in a position where that is a possibility. I think it’s awesome that I get to do what I love and get paid for it.

Joy: Yes I was. I decided that I would make life easier for myself by being willing to travel for employment.

What has your experience been of the teacher registration process?

Joy: I had no trouble with it. The process could be a little bit quicker, just to ensure that all teachers are set up before teaching begins, but no real complaints.

Did teaching meet with any expectations you formed while studying to be a teacher?

Joy: My university did an awesome job at preparing us for the intensity of first-year teaching. I think that the University of Waikato was pretty awesome, actually. Most of what I learnt there was

“I think it’s awesome that I get to do what I love and get paid for it.”

Did you or any of your peers experience any difficulty securing your first teaching job?

Joy: I was unemployed until a week before the beginning of the school year (2014). It was a bit of a nerve-racking time! Some of my peers did not get employment in that first term. However, most got some kind of relief work.

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

What is the most rewarding part about your job?

And the most challenging or frustrating aspects?

What are your professional development or career aspirations?

Joy: There are lots! I love the moments when you see the lights go on, and a student has just figured out what you have been trying to teach them. I like it when a student will make reference to something you talked about ages ago. I guess the best experience that I have had was when I saw my students’ e-asTTle results soar after I completed an inquiry.

In recent years many New Zealand teachers have struggled to find jobs; were you worried about getting a job prior to starting your job search?

easily transferrable. There have been a few things that uni hasn’t prepared me for (like report writing, for example). However, my schools have done a great job at filling in the gaps.

Can you briefly describe a typical day teaching?

Joy: I try to get into school early to set up my classroom for my first lesson. I find that the more prepared I am, the more structure my lesson will have. This usually keeps students on task. I write learning intentions up on the board and wait outside my classroom before each class to meet my students. I try to find the time to do this before each lesson. However, this can be difficult at times, as I teach English and drama and this means I have to move across the school. My non-contacts are spent either planning or marking. I try to take as little work home as possible.

Joy: When I see kids with massive potential refusing to use it, despite all the time spent and attempts on my part.

Joy: My first goal is to become fully registered. I’ve just become TiC drama and I see that as being a pretty big deal. Completing my masters is something that is on the cards for me. However, I’m taking baby steps at this point.

Would you ever consider teaching abroad?

Joy: I think that it would be an awesome experience. I would most definitely consider it. Not yet though! What advice would you give new teachers about to embark on their first teaching job?

Joy: Use your non-contacts wisely. Try to take home as little work as possible as it is vital to make time for yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Research

Raising the bar:

The Teacher Expectation Project The Teacher Expectation Project arose from earlier work by CHRISTINE RUBIE-DAVIES. Here she discusses the research and how it reveals the impact that grouping students, class climate, and goal setting can have on achievement.

esearch leading to the Teacher Expectation Project found that teachers who had high expectations for all their students also incorporated three key elements into their classrooms, resulting in consistently higher achieving students. These high expectation teachers did not group their students by ability for core subjects such as reading and mathematics, especially for learning experiences. Instead, a variety of learning experiences was made available to all students and they chose which activities they wished to pursue and who they wished to work with. This meant that all students had the opportunity to engage in challenging learning opportunities. That is, the low-level, repetitive activities often assigned to low-achieving students were not evident in these classes. The class climate of high expectation teachers was more positive than that of other teachers. They managed behaviour positively and worked to prevent poor behaviour. Further, because all

students worked together and changed groups regularly, a cohesive class environment was created which resulted in students supporting each other. High levels of teacher care were also evident. The final area of goal setting had several elements. First, teachers used assessment information to set goals regularly with each student. Second, they monitored student progress frequently and provided feedback in relation to the goals. Third, student interests were taken into account in planning activities and this promoted student motivation and engagement. Fourth, because students were given some autonomy in the activities they could complete, this also helped to promote student motivation and engagement.

The project

These core elements formed the basis for the Teacher Expectation Project. Teachers from 12 different primary and intermediate schools were randomly assigned to either work with the researchers (intervention teachers) or to continue

with their schools’ regular professional development (control teachers). The 43 intervention teachers attended four full-day workshops where they learned about the beliefs and practices of high expectation teachers in the three key areas outlined above. In the afternoon, at each workshop, they planned how they would implement the practices into their classrooms. Before the first workshop, the intervention teachers were filmed teaching a lesson and were then taught about the kinds of non-verbal behaviours that convey high or low expectations to students. They then analysed their own videos to look for the messages they were giving students. During the three years of the project, they were filmed a further three times and sent their DVDs to self-analyse. Following the workshops, the researchers visited the teachers a further three times in the first year of the project. Teachers from two schools came together each time to share what they had implemented that was working successfully. Continued on next page >>

s y contain Creativit of thriving ts the secre nt times le u b in tur

ering of tional gath . Share a rn te in t nge bigges vity Challe nces to Zealand’s NZ Creati e rie Join New e th p t x a e s l expert ractica p d n a – your n o creativity s spirati busine s in r , u ts o h y ig – s r their in ur caree ction. urself – yo creative a to in – launch yo fe li y – your communit . open now istrations g re d ir b Early

Go to www.tlc.ac.nz or call 0800 278 769

Hosted by the TLC Educational Trust

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Research << Continued from previous page In the second year, the intervention teachers trained the 41 control group teachers in the practices they had learned the previous year. This enabled the researchers to determine if the practices could be effectively passed on by teachers without the need for researcher support. The final year involved monitoring of teachers and students when the researchers pulled back from the classrooms to see if teachers maintained the practices and to measure student gains. The results of the project were very encouraging. In the first year of the project, when only the intervention teachers were engaged in implementing the practices of high expectation teachers, students in their classes made much greater gains in mathematics than students in the classes of control group teachers – who it is to be remembered were engaged in their school’s and their own professional development. The students with intervention teachers gained the equivalent of a whole term’s additional learning in just one year when compared with students in the control group teachers’ classes. Put another way, they gained 28 per cent more learning than students in the control group. Teachers were very enthusiastic about the project. When asked if they would recommend it to other teachers, 97 per cent agreed that they would highly recommend it. In terms of moving to different and more flexible forms of grouping, teachers made comments such as:“I grouped less confident readers with more confident readers and I found that both groups really enjoyed this. The struggling readers had buddies to support them and the more capable readers thrived with the responsibility.” Other teachers

believed that flexible groups improved student self-esteem. One said: ”Flexible grouping in all curriculum areas dissolved the notion of ‘top’ group or ‘bottom’ group which was very positive.”

Ability groups questioned

There is a very strong research base that shows that teaching students in ability groups has few, if any, benefits for learners. On the other hand, there are also studies that have shown, firstly, that a large percentage of students are misplaced and secondly, that when supposed low-achieving students are placed with their high-achieving peers they are soon performing at much higher levels than previously. Among OECD countries, New Zealand has one of the greatest disparities between our highest and lowest achievers and we ability-group from school entry. Finland, on the other hand, has one of the smallest gaps between their highest and lowest achievers and they have a policy of mixed-ability grouping throughout schooling. One reason that ability grouping exacerbates differences between students is simply opportunity to learn. Once students are placed into ability groups, teachers develop different expectations of the top and bottom groups and provide them with different learning experiences. Those in the top group are often given challenging activities requiring high-level thinking, whereas those in the low group are given tedious, repetitive activities requiring only surface-level thinking. Ultimately those in the top group learn more simply because they have been given more opportunity to do so.

Class climate changes

Teachers were also enthusiastic about the practices related to enhancing the class climate as shown by this teacher’s comment: “I believe that working on my classroom climate has had a significant impact on… the reading levels in my class. Before making these changes a lot of students would often argue with each other, fight and put each other down. After changing/ implementing strategies from the workshop I could see huge changes in the students’ self-

management and their feelings towards learning and BELIEVING in themselves!” Other teachers also noticed changes in tone in their classes after implementing changes to their class climate: “…the atmosphere has changed – every two weeks the children move desks and it means they have all got to know one another and there is more harmony in the classroom.” The research evidence shows that when students are in a classroom where they feel supported and cared about, they are likely to achieve at higher levels. Positive behaviour management and interactions with students coupled with high levels of teacher care contribute to a constructive class environment. Further, when students are engaged in cooperative learning and support each other, this is also likely to lead to higher achievement. When students are no longer in ability groups, they are much more likely to create friendship networks that spread across the classroom resulting in a supportive, encouraging classroom community.

Goal setting aligns with motivation

Many of the teachers in the intervention group were already using goal setting in their classes, although this tended to be less structured than the goal setting recommendations outlined in the Teacher Expectation Project. . Teachers were enthusiastic about the effects they had noticed after implementing goal setting into their classrooms: “I used goal setting and reflections on achievement each Friday and found it beneficial in improving the students’ autonomy over their own learning. They became much more articulate and reflective about what they needed to improve or work on.” Teachers also made use of the e-asTTle individual learning pathway reports to enable more focused learning for students: “Using e-asTTle …. to determine a student’s stages on the knowledge test summaries has helped my students identify gaps in their learning. Transparency in data was helpful in setting goals, e.g. students all saw the data.” The goal setting literature is vast and because of the effectiveness of goal setting it has been applied in many settings, for example, in business, in education, and in life skills courses. A feature of the Teacher Expectation Project, however, was the alignment between goal setting and student motivation, engagement and autonomy, and teacher monitoring and feedback. The inclusion of activities that were stimulating, challenging and interesting to students helped ensure their engagement and motivation, albeit that the learning experiences were targeted around their goals. Further, the explicit feedback of teachers related to the degree to which students had achieved their goals and what they needed to learn next also served to engage and motivate students. Students took more ownership of their learning and enjoyed seeing their own progress. Further information about the Teacher Expectation Project can be found in Christine Rubie-Davies’ new book: Becoming a high expectation teacher: Raising the bar published by Routledge.

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

Assessment

Is it time to

reassess assessment?

oth NCEA (National Certificate of Educational With issues Achievement) and National Standards, like surrounding perhaps any models of school assessment in any country, have advocates and opponents. moderation, National Standards, implemented in 2010, has consistency and failed to gain broad acceptance in the primary sector for a ranking continuing number of reasons, ranging from a lack of consistency to forcing schools into unhealthy competition. to plague NCEA Meanwhile most now accept that NCEA, despite a and National rocky start, is now a much sturdier vehicle for secondary assessment. However, claims surrounding the limitations Standards, and flaws with NCEA continue to emerge, and New Zealand’s JUDE BARBACK declining performance in the international Programme for International Study Assessment (PISA) rankings is also considers some cause for concern. In light of such doubts about the current systems, and ideas touted in light of the way education is evolving, perhaps it is time to bring more we looked at school assessment in completely new and relevancy, different ways, or at least started thinking along those lines. But if we were to change, what would we change, how, and meaning and why? fairness to our Problematic areas of NCEA and National national models of Standards assessment. NCEA replaced the more traditional exam-based qualifications which yielded percentages and A, B, C and D grades, with a system that awards credits for Not Achieved, Achieved, Merit, or Excellence, through a mix of internally and externally assessed standards. The move to standardsbased assessment – which essentially measures students’ learning in relation to benchmarks of expected level of performance – saw a departure from a system that hinged on scaling and norm-based assessment and consequently failed a large proportion of those assessed.

While the introduction of achievement standards was a vast improvement on the crude and unwieldy unit standards which preceded them, the breaking down of subjects into small components – standards – that then had to be assessed consistently across all schools, remained problematic for many. It introduced flexibility for learners, which was generally perceived as a good thing, but with this came problems with maintaining quality and consistency across all schools. Similarly, National Standards takes a standards-based approach, assessing Year 0–8 students ‘at’, ‘above’, ‘below’ or ‘well below’ the prescribed standards for reading, writing and mathematics. Each standard pulls together an array of components and teachers make judgements about a student’s work as a whole, rather than a single snapshot assessment. Many see the overall teacher judgment (OTJ) system as the strength of National Standards. In other countries the emphasis is on tests, whereas in New Zealand, many inputs form the assessment of a child’s learning. In making their judgements on students’ work, teachers use whichever tests they think are most appropriate and combine these results with everyday assessments and their own observations. The difficulty is that by endeavouring to veer away from assessment that is focused on meeting specific criteria, and keep standards broad, they risk becoming vague, and subject to different teacher opinions. One teacher’s opinion of what might be acceptable to meet the standard, might not be shared with another’s. Children who are deemed to be ‘at’ the standard at one school, may be rated ‘below’ or ‘above’ at another. As with NCEA, ensuring consistency with National Standards is problematic. Continued on next page >>

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Assessment << Continued from previous page

“While few would dispute the importance of reading, writing and numeracy, there is a distinct push to extend education beyond traditional subjects.”

Criticism of inconsistency in NCEA is amplified in part by the emphasis on internal assessment. From the outset, there were fears that internal assessment would lead to “gaming” – schools using it as an opportunity to enhance their students’ results. Certainly, the Weekend Herald’s analysis of five years of NCEA results included an interactive graphic that revealed big gaps between the achievement levels of internal and external assessment, particularly for lower decile schools. Calculus students in decile one schools, for example, achieved 83 per cent of internal assessments at Level 3 in 2012, but only 34 per cent achieved the external assessments. However, the Ministry of Education says internal assessments are thought to yield better results as a wider sample of student evidence could be used in making the final judgement on student achievement. Ensuring consistency through national moderation is something the Ministry has strived hard to achieve. In NCEA’s infancy, there were many concerns raised about the quality of marking, particularly for internal assessments. The proportion of internally assessed work subject to checks increased from three per cent in 2006 to 10 per cent in 2008 after a team of full-time moderators was employed. Education Minister Hekia Parata recently described the moderation process for NCEA, which is driven by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), as “thorough”. A number of independent reviews have supported the integrity of NCEA assessment and the Minister has taken action when schools were found not to be meeting NZQA’s moderation standards. Moderation of National Standards remains a hazier concept. It is not compulsory, although over 2,000 teachers attended 125 workshops for improving moderation this year, suggesting that schools are striving for consistency. Some have expressed fears that in an effort to firm up National Standards, the Ministry will resort to a more testbased programme of assessment. Among them is leading educationalist Professor John Hattie. “If we do not get OTJs correct, then the march towards replacing teacher judgements with tests will be strong and hard to resist. Heaven help us if we have a NCLB1, SATs2, or NAPLAN3. They are the hardest to get rid of, and a fear should be the profession defaulting to these seemingly easy options,” Hattie told the 2011 Symposium on Assessment and Learner Outcomes in Wellington. However, the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT) has been pegged as the solution to a lack of consistency in National Standards. Available to schools this year, it is essentially an online tool that captures a series of teachers’ judgements on aspects of mathematics, reading and writing, turns that into a PaCT score range, and recommends an overall judgement which a teacher can confirm or review. However, even with better moderation, concerns remain over the effect of league table-type comparisons. League tables have the undesired effect of driving schools to focus heavily on the aspects upon which they are assessed. Different approaches to NCEA naturally produce different results, which would be fine if schools weren’t ranked publicly, and consequently judged on the outcomes.

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

The same argument can be applied to National Standards. While no one disputes the importance of reading, writing and mathematics, the temptation for a fiercely competitive school is to focus on these aspects at the expense of other components of a student’s education outside the realms of National Standards, such as science, ICT, physical education and the arts. The temptation to mark lightly, even within the parameters of tightened moderation, is also driven by a desire to perform well on the league tables.

Time for an overhaul?

There is no denying education is changing. Technology and all it brings – portable devices, educational games, social media – is having a dramatic effect on education at all levels. Further, what students should learn is evolving. While few would dispute the importance of reading, writing and numeracy, there is a distinct push to extend education beyond traditional subjects. Claire Amos, deputy principal of Hobsonville Point Secondary School is a strong advocate. “Of course reading and writing are important and the learning areas measured at secondary level are also fine subjects to explore, however I’m not sure they are still as relevant as they once were. “Our current models of assessment are based around a long-standing model of education that was born out of the Industrial Age and was based on meeting the needs of workers of that age. Now, particularly in New Zealand, we are facing a very different workplace, a knowledge-based landscape that requires some similar skills, but also many other skills not necessarily captured by the literacy and numeracy focus at primary and a set of siloed subjects at secondary, either.” If education is changing – in terms of what is learned and how it is learned – then it stands to good reason that assessment must keep pace as well. Amos believes we need to rethink the whole notion of ‘assessment’ for both secondary and primary students. In Education Review’s ‘Sector Voices’ supplement, she outlines how we should do away with exams and tests which measure little more than the ability to memorise and recall information under stress, and instead make better use of digital technologies to gather data over time and capture and analyse learner skills across a range of subjects. “What if we were to forgo examinations and instead poured our resources into an expansive national team of moderators who could provide both professional learning around measuring progressions of competencies as well as checkmarking educator judgements of progress made? “In a digital age, the notion of national and local educators pair-marking and giving feedback synchronously on rich multimedia, multi-subject learning portfolios is completely viable. Imagine a national assessment framework that was not just the same old subjects ‘anytime, anywhere’ but rather key competencies demonstrated ‘anytime, anywhere, anyhow’.” There is plenty of evidence to support that schools are increasingly using digital technologies to enhance the way

Assessment

assessment is differentiated according to students’ needs and interests. The Ministry’s TKI (Te Kete Ipurangi) site is rich with examples of both primary and secondary schools using applications such as My Portfolio, VoiceThread and KnowledgeNet to present learning for assessment purposes. Given these trends, it seems likely assessment is destined for a more digital presence that transcends subject divides.

Making better use of the curriculum

One of the major outcomes of the NCEA overhaul that followed the State Services Commission review in 2006 was to link the achievement standards more closely to the national curriculum. This, in addition to a number of other tweaks and changes, has helped to establish a qualification that is generally perceived as more reliable. The National Standards are also linked to The New Zealand Curriculum, however experts have suggested there needs to be better alignment. The 2011 OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education – New Zealand suggests that there needs to be better linkages between the National Standards, the curriculum and assessment. John Hattie also notes that National Standards are based on “years”, presuming all students of the same age can move towards the same expectation, while the curriculum is not based on years, but on a deeper notion of development. “While there is a ’year’ base in National Standards and a progression base in curriculum there is an absurdity that schools are asked to reconcile – and the best way is to ignore one of these mandates,” said Hattie to the Wellington Symposium. Amos believes the curriculum, with its five key learning competencies (thinking; using language, symbols, and texts; managing self; relating to others; participating and contributing) already provides a strong platform for an overhaul of our assessment systems. There has always been an emphasis on the key competencies in terms of assessment. Certainly, ever since the development of The New Zealand Curriculum there has been much discussion of how to assess the competencies. In her 2007 paper Assessing Key Competencies Rosemary Hipkins confronts this matter head-on: “When thinking about whether to assess key competencies, we need to consider which aspects of existing practice remain

appropriate and which need to be rethought, reshaped, and/or replaced. It’s also very important to consider what we might want to achieve by assessing key competencies. That question creates a useful ’frame’ for all the other considerations.” Amos believes we could take this further still. “What I believe we need to change is the focus. Rather than the learning areas being the dominant foreground image and the key competencies a blur in the background, I believe we need to change the depth of field and bring the competencies into sharp focus so the ’subject’ softens to simply provide a context for learning.”

Collaboration not competitiveness

useful alternative to crude comparisons in the form of league tables. Many schools already have some form of value-added measure. A good example of this can be seen at Otumoetai Intermediate in Tauranga, which scooped the supreme award at last year’s Prime Minister’s Excellence in Education Awards. The school measures the value it adds to students in the two years between entry and exit from the school across a range of areas. Arguably more important than the ideas themselves, is the fact that such conversations and blue-sky thinking is happening. When the time comes to take a fresh look at NCEA and National Standards, or a major overhaul of assessment is on the agenda, the sector will be poised for constructive consultation to help guide a very important aspect of education into the future.

In addition to such suggestions about rethinking what we assess and how we assess it, there have also been many calls to cease making the results of NCEA and National Standards publicly available. Bali Haque in his book Changing our Secondary Schools (see review page 27) points out that many high-performing education systems like those operating in Finland and many Asian countries do not compare their schools through league tables, and instead of naming and shaming, focus their efforts on strengthening the entire system. Competitiveness among schools has become deeply entrenched since Tomorrow’s Schools reforms and in any event will be a difficult notion to shake off. Haque acknowledges the unlikelihood of scrapping league tables, and discusses some interesting alternatives for how we should present assessment results to more accurately reflect a school’s effectiveness. One suggestion is to calculate and present a school’s NCEA pass rate based on both participation (i.e. the number of students for whom it was at least technically possible to gain an NCEA certificate) and the roll (i.e. the number of students on the school roll on 1 July of the year in question). Such an approach would give results more context For 20 years, Kumon has helped children in New Zealand and prompt questions understand the value of learning through practice, perseverance about what learning and and solving problems independently. assessment is taking Through our individualised programmes, students of all ages and place. abilities can consolidate their maths or English skills or be Haque also suggests challenged by advanced material. With Kumon, students also gain: the development of • Concentration skills and positive study habits ‘value added measures’ • Increased academic confidence to determine what • Time management and discipline value a school adds Contact your local Kumon Centre to see how 43,000 Australian and to its students New Zealand students are learning with Kumon. between their entry Call 0800 458 666 or visit nz.kumonglobal.com. and their exit from school, as a more

Confidence to learn in 2015

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Assessment

NCEA and the alternatives With NCEA now in its fourteenth year and well embedded, why are so many secondary schools still offering alternative assessment systems? ELIZABETH McLEOD investigates whether the Cambridge and International Baccalaureate systems are offering anything NCEA isn’t.

amilton Boys’ High School student Alex Kennedy sat 18 exams at the end of last year. Like his peers around the country, the Year 12 student was doing NCEA Level 2. But he was also doing four Cambridge International Examination (CIE) AS-level subjects. He insists “it wasn’t too bad, too intense”. Alex’s school is one of around 55 New Zealand secondary schools – 22 of them state schools – offering CIE. Some offer individual subjects to extend students; others offer full CIE courses as an alternative to NCEA. Students at Hamilton Boys’ (HBHS) are possibly the only students in the country who can opt to do both systems simultaneously (although only to AS

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

level, not A level as offered by CIE-only schools). HBHS students doing a full CIE course begin NCEA a year early, do CIE-only in Year 11, and a combination thereafter. “Without exception, it’s academically more challenging,” says headmaster Susan Hassall. CIE’s first-past-the-post, traditional end-ofyear examination system suits some boys better. Teachers believe it gives students both more depth and greater breadth, and in some subjects, prepares students more for university “because it’s got a greater rigour at the top level”. The students relish the opportunity to show what they’ve learned in an exam. “I ask the boys ‘how are you coping with 14 exams?’ and they say ‘it’s great!’ I’m not making it up, they really

enjoy it. It’s like finals day in the rugby, or Maadi Cup final; this is what they feel about those exams.” Year 12 student Finley Breeze says he feels more competitive about Cambridge than NCEA, “but I’m not sure if it’s because the people I’m competing with are the Cambridge boys, who are the smarter boys I want to beat!” But Hassall is adamant her students need NCEA too: “We’re a New Zealand school, it’s important for them to have a New Zealand qualification. We’ve always seen this as an additional resource we can use, rather than an alternative.” Finley likes doing both systems simultaneously. “It gives me double the chance of getting into the

Assessment

university I want, because I’ve got two different sets of results.” Former student Adam Cameron feels “really lucky” to have experienced both systems. In some subjects the syllabuses overlap, making revision easier. In others such as biology, they’re quite different, “so you get two different perspectives on what you’re studying”.

“At its more elementary end, NCEA’s got accessible targets for the weaker academic students whose qualities lie elsewhere, but at the other end of the spectrum the scope is effectively endless.”

International Baccalaureate Diploma: well-rounded, independent thinkers

Schools offering the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma believe it, too, offers both breadth (students do six subjects including English and a second language, maths and science; an extended 4,000-word essay and a critical thinking course) and depth (three of the subjects are taken at higher level). In New Zealand, students choose either the IB Diploma pathway or NCEA from Year 12. The following year, they sit finals, and from these and other assessments, they’re given a score out of 45. Students also do 150 hours of service, sport and cultural activities. “It’s the gold standard in pre-university courses,” says Carol Craymer, principal of Wellington’s Queen Margaret College. IB also purports to produce culturally aware, independent thinkers. Founded by educator MarieThérèse Maurette, whose 1948 report to UNESCO loosely translates as Is There a Way of Teaching for Peace?, the Diploma “is in its pure sense about a well-rounded education… it’s about getting people to look at things from different angles, different cultural perspectives,” says Craymer. Just 11 schools nationwide offer the IB Diploma; only one – Takapuna Grammar – is a state school. It’s expensive: around $1200, although private schools often absorb this into their fees. CIE isn’t cheap either: around $135 per subject.

Isn’t offering these alternatives an implied criticism of NCEA?

All the educators interviewed for this article say they fully support NCEA. Hassall says her school uses CIE to “add something extra” to NCEA to meet the needs of its gifted students. “I’m still not convinced NCEA does that well enough. It’s too broad a brush – if you’re very gifted you’re going to get an Excellence without even blinking, so where’s the challenge? Whereas to get an A star is really a good challenge.” Craymer believes “there’s nothing like NCEA in the world”. It caters for every kind of student, from one doing unit standards through to someone wanting to study engineering. “But… it’s a bit like building a house that’s more multipurpose. The IB Diploma is designed for people to go to university; that’s why they do a 4,000-word extended essay.” However, the implication is surely that NCEA doesn’t prepare students as well for university? Craymer: “I don’t think it’s true that you can’t prepare someone for university with NCEA. But

you have to make sure they’re sitting a course that’s going to prepare them. If they want to do engineering, you can’t let them drop maths… It’s a very complex programme to put together, and schools have to be very careful that they construct a programme that’s not going to limit students’ choices in the future.” This was underscored recently by the announcement that 4,400 further students failed to achieve university entrance last year, after the criteria were tightened up. A review is underway, but it’s thought some students may have been given bad advice, or misunderstood the new requirements.

Private school rejects alternative systems

The principal of Christ’s College in Christchurch believes strongly that NCEA, coupled with Scholarship, is “quite capable” of extending top students. The private school is bucking the trend by not offering an alternative to NCEA, “simply because we don’t see that we need one,” says Simon Leese. “At its more elementary end, NCEA’s got accessible targets for the weaker academic students whose qualities lie elsewhere, but at the other end of the spectrum the scope is effectively endless.” He dislikes the notion of a separate system for ’more able’ students. “That in itself tends to be disparaging of the calibre of NCEA, and I resist that. One hears it a lot.” Leese also dismisses claims NCEA isn’t recognised internationally. “I’ve got boys in the most prestigious courses in the world, in Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Monash – so it’s quite possible for NCEA at the right level to open doors for boys all over the world. “Provided boys are of sufficient calibre and work hard and are sufficiently distinguished in their outcomes, they can go anywhere they want to.” Universities New Zealand executive director Chris Whelan agrees. Elite universities are highly internationalised, and “very good at benchmarking their entry standards with other international standards”.

How does NCEA stack up against the alternatives – and can it learn anything from them?

The only available New Zealand research on this topic suggests NCEA can hold its own within our

universities. A 2008 study found that University of Auckland students who’d been through NCEA had almost five times the odds of success in their first year at university than those who’d taken CIE. The researchers believed this might be due to the fact that university courses are organised similarly to NCEA – students choose papers from a smorgasbord of topics which are assessed through ongoing internal assessments and final exams. Dr Earl Irving, a senior research fellow at The University of Auckland with assessment expertise, says there’s a dearth of data enabling any robust comparison between Cambridge, IB and NCEA. So we asked some HBHS students for their personal observations. They agreed that: CIE covers more content in some subjects, and in greater depth CIE’s marking schedule is more explicit about what’s required in an answer; NCEA’s exemplars aren’t as helpful They prefer CIE’s percentage grade to NCEA’s ‘Achieved’, ‘Merit’ and ‘Excellence’ endorsements, which are too broad NCEA’s grading is more arbitrary – omitting one key word can alter a grade – and more subjective; standards use unspecific terms like ‘indepth’, and ‘comprehensive’. Leese considers some of the comments “quite perceptive”. He cringes when colleagues say students have to put particular phrases into their economics answers to get a certain grade – “that obviously is a worry”. Unlike CIE, NCEA doesn’t have a syllabus. It’s a flexible system that allows schools to design programmes, using the National Curriculum, that meet the individual needs of students – both vocational and academic. Nevertheless, Irving acknowledges there is “less specificity” in NCEA, and less detail set out for students to follow. Instead, “there’s a need for the student and teacher to interpret these together – not a bad thing, but definitely time consuming”. He’s concerned that teachers (and students) are sagging under the burden of assessments – which may result ultimately in some external assessment being reintroduced. Meanwhile, Irving “loves” the fact that IB students can’t specialise as early as students do in NCEA or Cambridge. “It creates people who are like the so-called Renaissance man – with a wide-ranging knowledge across a large number of subjects. They’re not allowed to get away with just doing maths, biology, physics. And I like that.” At the end of the day, says Irving, each of the models has its strengths and weaknesses. “And there are ‘horses for courses’, so there’s a need to allow co-existence of the three models. [But] the one that we can have most influence over is our home-grown one.”

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Student app

NCEA Pal a hit with students

Education Review looks at an app that is helping students keep track of their NCEA credits.

“T

here are two things which I am 99 per cent sure about when it comes to senior students,” says Jeff King, deputy principal at Rangitikei College. “One, they do not know how many credits they have, and two, they will know exactly where their phone is at any given moment.” It was this line of thinking that led King and Wasim Talim, an information systems student at Victoria University, to create NCEA Pal, an educational app that allows students to keep track of their credits in real time as opposed to logging in to the NZQA website or KAMAR, where the data is entered by teachers and administrators. “It started by accident really,” King says. “I was talking to the principal about the frustrations of students not keeping track of their credits, and she said what we need is an app, and I thought ‘she is completely right’.” At that stage, says King, building an app was something he knew absolutely nothing about, but he contacted Talim, a former student with whom he had collaborated on previous venture. Over the next six months, King and Talim discussed and planned out what the app would look like and how it would function. “One thing that we discovered was important, was that it had to have an offline function because of the cost of data,” says King. “Many students still don’t have reliable data so if they had to be connected to the internet for the app to function, students wouldn’t be interested.” So, the app is designed to be downloaded by students and then function completely offline apart from when updates are needed. Following the development and design phases, the first real prototype came out in January 2014. From there, it has been through various iterations to improve its usability or sort out bugs. Talim explains that a code is very fragile: “You change one small feature and that can have a huge impact on another area of functionality.” The two persisted, and the app was finally published in the iOS and Google Play app stores in August last year. “We weren’t really sure how it would go and I remember saying it would be great to get 500 installs by the end of the year,” says Talim. They were quickly gaining more than twice that number a day. Within the first two weeks it was the top ranked educational app on the New Zealand iOS store and had more downloads per day than the likes of Snapchat. They sent it out to different schools through a network of teachers and students. “To be honest some teachers don’t quite get it,” King says. “Some I’ve talked to commented how students could just go to NZQA or that they could add in assessments that they hadn’t passed. They don’t seem to understand

that it is about student autonomy and learners having control over their learning.” By contrast, other schools have been proactive about promoting it to students and parents through newsletters and Facebook pages. The app has the support of NZQA and the Ministry of Education, with Minister Hekia Parata sending an email congratulating them on the great work. King and Talim have funded the entire project themselves. While they admit that building an app is not cheap, they want the app to remain free for students. They believe NCEA Pal allows students to be more actively involved in their own education and that it fills a big gap in the market. When a student receives a result from a teacher they can enter the results straight into their phone. It is in real time and they don’t have to wait for it to be exported by schools to the NZQA site. In some cases, if their teacher knows it is a definite pass, a student can enter in the mark, then confirm the grade at a later date. However, King believes it is not the instant gratification that is the key, but the fact that the students are managing their own results. “The front end of the NZC talks about the concept of ‘managing self’ and NCEA Pal allows this to happen. All of a sudden students are able to input and manage their own credits and not have to rely on their teachers, and this is the key to it in my mind,” he says. “I had a student, who has been quite disengaged with education and in a bit of trouble, come up to me the other day at school to show me the app. He had loaded all his credits onto it and was admiring his first three excellence credits on his phone. What can I say; that is what it is all about,” King says. Development on the NCEA Pal continues. King says they have been working hard over the break and will release version 2, which has a number of new features, in March. Eventually they hope to build in vocational pathways so students can see where their credits can take them.

“All of a sudden students are able to input and manage their own credits and not have to rely on their teachers…”

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

NCEA Pal is available for free download at iTunes and the Google app store.

ICT

Techno Me in ECE

FILIPE PRIETO shares his experience and findings on how technology can be used to great effect in early childhood education (ECE) settings.

have always believed technology plays an important role in early childhood. The literature supports this, suggesting that technologies offer new opportunities to strengthen aspects of ECE practice. I sought to explore such opportunities further as an ECE teacher and through my studies.

Start of a technological journey

Early in 2012 I started working at New Shoots Children’s Centre Papamoa. The centre has a licence for 100 children and at that stage was at around 80 per cent of its capacity. Soon after starting I noticed that the centre had an iPad that was rarely used by the teachers. My interest in technology and education made me wonder what teachers could be doing with the iPad. After setting up the iPad and sorting out the Apple store credentials I started to explore apps that focused on preschoolers. Soon after that, I was authorised to purchase an Apple TV for the centre. When the Apple TV’s set-up was complete I was able to connect all devices and share information between them. I could mirror the iPad screen onto the TV, share photos between the devices and instantly find photos taken with the iPod on the laptop computer. Teachers then started to make the most of the devices and started to use them during their mat times, planning and assessment. Initially, some teachers found the transition easy, while others found it more challenging. However, with everyone’s commitment and collaboration, two years on all teachers are fully able to take advantage of all the devices on hand.

Taking it to the next level

I then started to wonder how much children were really absorbing from all that technology we were involving them in the centre. As part of my study towards my Masters in Education, I developed a small project to investigate how much children would support each other when interacting with the iPad. I wanted to find out how much children were learning and how much they were teaching others during their involvement. The project ran for six weeks and involved a small group of 10 children. I used Mercer’s Quality of Children’s Talk framework to assess the children talking during their session with the iPad. The project showed that the interactions children had during the iPad sessions suggested they were not only taking a lot from it themselves, but even more importantly that they were also contributing to each other’s learning. The more technologically capable child was supporting and helping the less capable so they both could achieve the same outcome. The results confirmed my belief in the iPad as a great learning tool. It was interesting to find out that my project findings are consistent with larger studies in this area which also show that the iPad plays an active role in children’s own learning and development, and that of others. Technology used in this way also aligns with many of the goals laid out in the ECE curriculum Te Whāriki, particularly the exploration goal which places emphasis on using a variety of strategies for exploring and making sense of the world, and also on explaining and listening to others.

Technology at New Shoots Children’s Centre, Papamoa I intend to continue extending the knowledge on how technology can influence ECE and also researching new apps that can help children to learn and to extend their interests. Technology provides opportunities for learning at all levels of education – and this journey starts in early childhood. Please join the Facebook page “ICT in ECE”, created as a forum for teachers to share technological ideas, discuss issues and ask questions.

Devices for ECE (and how to use them) While Apple devices are used here, it should be noted that there are many alternatives available including more affordable Android and Google devices that are proving popular in many other ECE settings.

iPad/tablets The beauty of the tablet is its portability. It can be taken to wherever the learning is happening. For example, if a child finds a strange bug in the sand pit, teachers can take the iPad to the sand pit and search for the bug, take photos of it and even create a small learning story. The Apple store also has more than one million apps available that cover lots of subjects that can arise from children’s interests.

iPod This can be used as a camera or to play music. With easy access to iTunes, teachers can purchase and play songs according to children’s preferences (‘Let it Go’ from Frozen was a popular choice!). Teachers can also access internet radio Pandora to search for free playlists containing everything from Disney songs to classical music. The iPod can also be linked to the other devices through the iCloud so photos can be easily accessed from the computer or Apple TV.

Apple TV Teachers have access to the YouTube channel and can instantly find resources related to anything children show interest in, or anything related to a specific theme, song or story. We are still to create a closed YouTube channel where we can post videos made by the children and those can be easily accessed through the Apple TV.

Air Play functionality Teachers can mirror the iPad and iPod onto a bigger screen. If a child is exploring a specific app, a teacher can mirror the iPad screen onto the bigger TV so the other children can watch it.

iCloud Pictures taken with the iPod/iPad are instantly available at the laptop computer. Photo stream can be published and watched on the Apple TV and pictures are instantly backed up and can be accessed from any other computer remotely.

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Teaching abroad

A Kiwi teacher in Saudi

Kiwi teacher ANNAJANE LAIRD talks to Education Review about her experience as a single woman living and teaching in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

What prompted you to consider teaching abroad?

What is involved with the agency registration process?

Annajane: As a new teacher it troubled me how slowly my student loan was decreasing even with a sizeable chunk of my pay going on repayments. Then one day I saw an advertisement for teaching overseas in a newspaper in the staffroom and so I applied. I was fully certified and figured I had nothing to lose.

Annajane: The first time I taught overseas (2007) I went through an agency. I recall filling in some forms, submitting copies of qualifications and a phone interview. From there it was a matter of being suitable and being put forward to a school. My details went to two schools. One position fell through but the second one didn’t, and so my first time overseas was in the United Arab Emirates. A lot of the timeframe is dependent upon when the position starts; August is most common, but January also has positions starting. The time of the year when you’re appointed will also have an impact, as will how quickly or not embassies issue visas. Did you have a clear idea of where you wanted to teach, or were you open to ideas?

Annajane: Ironically I hated the Middle East the first time I was here. In hindsight I realise the culture shock was immense and I was not coping. I went back to New Zealand and quickly realised that I missed being overseas, so one Friday night I applied for three positions in Morocco, Mongolia and Saudi Arabia; Morocco because it seemed like it might be an interesting place to live, Mongolia because I thought it might be an amusing story someday about the time I interviewed for a

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

job in Mongolia, and Saudi Arabia because I’d been intrigued about why it was so hard to get a visa as a single woman. Ironically it was the Mongolian position that I was offered, so I went to Ulaanbaatar for two years. After two years and two very long winters I decided I wanted to live in a warm climate again, and enjoy a better salary and housing. I considered most Middle Eastern nations as well as South East Asia and Europe, however my fascination with Saudi continued. I knew the inequality of treatment of people based on skin colour would still be there; I knew that due to extreme wealth parents would have a large say in how schools run and that the approach to parenting would be different; and I knew to live in the Middle East I would have to make my peace with those things.

I interviewed a couple of years ago to be the literacy coach for a school. The British principal commented that one thing she knew from working with a lot of New Zealanders is that we all teach reading well. I think a school’s perception of New Zealand teachers generally depends on the New Zealand teachers they have.

Annajane: One of the most challenging things in PD sessions is for everyone to use the same jargon. Often teachers are all talking about the same thing but with completely different names for it. There’s so much we teachers can learn from each other if we’re open to it. Initially I thought nationality/training might have had some input into whether you were a good teacher or not. I’ve realised that good teachers are good teachers regardless of where they trained.

How do you think New Zealand teachers are perceived at your school, and overseas in general? Annajane: My experience has been that there are many American and British international schools. These schools generally take their own people first, mainly due to experience with their curriculum. It’s definitely easier as a Kiwi if you have UK National Curriculum experience. In Mongolia there were three Kiwi teachers in my first year and only me the second year. I am the only Kiwi in my current school and apparently it was difficult to get a visa for me so there are no plans to have any more New Zealanders on the staff. We have a variety of nationalities – British, Irish, South African, American, Canadian. Parents often comment about the accent, because they can’t place it and at times struggle to understand it however that is often due to speed of speech. I have to consciously slow down when I speak to parents. The children pick up the accent and the speed quite quickly because they’re with me all day.

How has working with other Englishspeaking teachers of different nationalities impacted on your teaching?

Has working in a different academic year been difficult?

What has your experience of the different cultural aspects been?

Annajane: No, the only minor irritation is that my main holiday of the year is in a New Zealand winter. On the plus side I get to travel in the Northern Hemisphere in the summer and not in the winter as I would if I were travelling in the long break in New Zealand.

Annajane: I feel incredibly privileged to be able to live and work in different cultures. There is a school of thought that perhaps because international school teachers work in international schools, and therefore teach wealthy children, that perhaps we don’t see the “authentic” culture of a place. There are misconceptions about Saudi. For example, I seldom cover my hair, I’ve only seen the religious police twice in three and a half years, and none of my abayas are plain black. I’ve found all the Arabs I’ve met to be incredibly generous, welcoming people. I’ve had the odd negative experience but the good outnumber the bad easily. Everything is segregated here. All restaurants and fast food places have a family section and a singles section, for the men who don’t have their wives with them and the single men. Interestingly on a Friday, the holiest day of the week, where the country is virtually closed until 5pm, it is difficult for single men to get into restaurants as often only the

Teaching abroad

“If you’re a new teacher, do your registration period at home … you need to know what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t before coming overseas.” family section is open, which I always find amusing since the depiction is that women are oppressed. In my time here there has been an enormous shift in the gender of shop workers; in some shops 50 per cent of their checkout operators are women. From a parenting perspective, I have been in awe of how educated many Saudi mothers are and how forward thinking they are. They love their country but many think that a change is coming and they want their children to have a western education so they can be part of that change. I am always amazed that when dads do get a chance to attend something for their daughters, how many turn up and how many want more opportunities to be involved in the education of their daughters. It is still very rare for schools in Saudi Arabia to have events in girls’ schools that fathers can attend and it involves them using a separate entrance. Saudi Arabia is synonymous with expat housing compounds. These are basically a gated community with armed guards on the gate. I live on one, but I have friends that don’t. Personally, as a woman on my own, I prefer to live on a compound. I like being able to walk to the shop to get a bottle of milk without having to put on my abaya. Much like the private beaches, once you’re on a

compound you could be anywhere in the world. Saudi Arabia also has private beaches. You walk in with an abaya and once you’re in, people are wearing bikinis.

Have your financial expectations been met?

Annajane: I didn’t have particular financial expectations but my furnished housing is provided. My employer pays for my utilities and yearly flights. My expenses are food, entertainment, internet, cellphone, cable TV, a maid once a week and a driver. It’s a comfortable life. What advice would you give to New Zealand teachers considering teaching overseas?

Annajane: Just do it. Check the contract carefully. Look for things like yearly flights, medical insurance, school fees (if you have children), housing. Do some research on the school before you go. If you’re a new teacher, do your registration period at home. You will see things overseas that are not what we consider to be good educational practice and you need the time at home to

consolidate your training. You need to know what is ’normal’ and what isn’t before coming overseas. I see teachers who haven’t done teaching time at home and it is to their detriment as educators. Accept that there will be culture shock both at school and in your personal life. Remember you’re a guest in the country and you’re not there to change it. Keeping an open mind and a sense of humour will also help. Children are children everywhere and they will amaze you with their observations about life, as did the first graders (Year 2) who told me that I wasn’t a Muslim so I didn’t need to fast during Ramadan (after I slipped up by drinking in front of them). Equally parents are parents; the parents that you desperately want to see, are the ones you never see. But also, all parents have their child’s best interests at heart.

Would you consider teaching overseas again? Annajane: For me probably the bigger question is would I teach in New Zealand again? And the answer is I don’t know. I feel incredibly privileged and blessed to be able to live in different countries and teach. I feel equally grateful for the travel opportunities that it allows me, and I’m not sure I can go back to teaching in small communities again, regardless of how passionate I am about them.

Does your sports court need a roof?

Receive

FREER! SOCCE BALLS

*Offer valid until 31st December 2015. Conditions apply.

Call us today to discuss your requirements

0800 166 722

sales@shadesystems.co.nz www.shadesystems.co.nz Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Sun safety

A shady issue for secondary schools The NZDSi and Cancer Society are urging the Government to provide funding and support for shade provision in New Zealand secondary schools.

The Palmerston North City Council (PNCC) erected shade sails at Palmerston North’s Lido outdoor pool where many local school sporting events take place.

Lousie Reiche, a member of the New Zealand Dermatological Society Incorporated (NZDSi), was overwhelmed by the responses she got to letters she wrote to various MPs and secondary schools in her local region of Palmerston North about the importance of shade provision at school to protect children from the sun. One local school’s board of trustees incorporated shade requirements into their building and landscape policy plans, while feedback from parent representatives at another school stated they “would not allow their children to participate in swimming and athletics carnivals because they felt being in direct sunlight all day was unacceptable”. “This means current lack of shade is restricting full education,” Dr Reiche says. While the Cancer Society’s SunSmart campaign has been very effective in preschool, primary and some intermediate schools, the campaign has not been funded to roll out into the secondary sector. Louise Sandford, Cancer Society’s national health promotion adviser says the Ministry of

Teach International

Extracurricular activities:

Drawing on his experience teaching at a school in China, ANDY ELLMERS discusses how important and just how difficult it is for secondary school students to strike a balance between academic demands and finding time for extracurricular activities.

s a teacher at an International School in China I am confronted with different perspectives about extracurricular activities almost every day. Some choose involvement in wider school life, while others hold the belief that this kind of involvement is an unnecessary distraction from what they are at school to achieve. I believe the consequences of this choice during the formative years of a student can be as critical as what happens in the classroom. Too often student capability is perceived by objective means of assessment only without recognising the less objective outcomes of education to their full extent. A student’s ability to manage his or her time, commit to a long-term project, and maintain positive relationships at different levels – all of which are necessary skills to function beyond secondary school – cannot be directly assessed through an exam. I have completed many university references in which I am required to give an account of their personal attributes. In theory these attributes are to be established and refined under the deliberate and guided learning experiences in the classroom, but whether this can be achieved is questionable.

Positivity and skills

By their nature, extracurricular activities foster different personal skills from class-based activities as a consequence of choice. A conscious choice from a student to engage in an activity in spite of other responsibilities they may have will often create an experience that is more meaningful to them than a mandatory task. This has been evident to me over the years as students make the first step to challenge themselves to have more fun, or have more skills, or be something more than they are, and in doing so the activity is salient to them. Further to this, they also surround themselves with other students who have made this choice, which creates a positive

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

environment, yet one that a student may opt out of, unlike that of a class-based activity. Common extracurricular activities may include the school play, sports teams, student council, debating team, a cultural group, a musical group, Model United Nations (an educational simulation and academic competition in which students learn about diplomacy, international relations), and many more. This additional activity requires a student to prioritise personal and group-based tasks, which builds time-management skills. Often they will work as part of a team towards a common outcome which is tacitly or explicitly agreed on, as it is a voluntary activity. A student is faced with the challenge of self-motivation and must develop the skills to manage their thoughts when they get tired, lazy or a little bored. The contributions and commitment that a student has to their group can be realised by the product or performance of the group which is not assessed by a teacher, but assessed by their peers in a way that is more immediately meaningful across a broad range of personal and social aspects, including fun, happiness, pride, self-identity, and acceptance.

Outside the comfort zone

Many extracurricular activities include a period of time away from their familiar setting, for example school or home. The challenge of an unfamiliar, and sometimes unpredictable, setting often provokes a response from the student with real consequences, rather than something as abstract as a grade. Among the support of a school group, the response is very often a positive one. I believe such a range of outcomes is rarely achieved in class, and in my experience, a likely outcome of extracurricular activities. The cultural beliefs held from parties outside the school may help or hinder a student’s involvement in extracurricular activities. These parties may include family, religious and nationalistic groups, among others. Independent of the school’s aims, it is often these beliefs that decide how

Sun safety

“Schools that place an overt emphasis on extracurricular activities as a part of their daily routine are more likely to foster desired outcomes from their students.” Education is looking at funding a research project to see what transparent materials provide the best UV protection to develop a prototype for use in schools. Despite this, the Ministry currently has no specific requirements for school boards to provide canopies or shade cover above outdoor areas, stating that sun hazards can be managed in a number of ways, such as students wearing hats when outdoors, or gathering under trees. “Most schools have little or inadequate shade and while teenagers are relatively un-sun-smart evidence suggests that if shade is available they will use it,” Sanford says. “We have the highest skin cancer rate in the world and the Ministry of Education should consider shade provision in all secondary schools.”

Victoria University’s School of Architecture in Wellington joined forces with the Cancer Society to develop appropriate sun protection guidelines for building shade structures in schools – stating that covered outdoor learning areas need to be UV protective and thermally comfortable. Reiche says it is unacceptable for youth to be at a higher risk of developing skin cancer as a result of excessive sun exposure on school grounds. UV radiation is at its highest between September and April from 10am to 4pm – the hours when children are at school. Therefore having adequate shade to provide protection from the sun is vitally important. Dermatologist Dr Louise Reiche instructs Awatapu College principal Gary Yeatman and secondary students about the importance of seeking shade at interval and lunchtime.

Teach International

do they add value? important an additional activity is in the dayto-day life of the student. A student who may seemingly be integral to a group performance may be absent due to religious reasons, and whilst it can sometimes be difficult for other students to reconcile how someone may have priorities different from theirs, this can also provide an opportunity for other students to develop awareness and understanding of others, and also resilience so that the desired outcome might be achieved.

Cultural considerations

As a teacher in Asia, many parents of my students come from cultural backgrounds and a tertiary education structure in their home country that values exam results. As a consequence of this there are many students who do not participate in any extracurricular activities, and instead attend additional academic classes outside our school setting. In my experience these students have displayed reclusive tendencies, which has not lent itself to developing a range of skills in the classroom. There are also parents who, while they come from conservative cultural backgrounds and expect high academic standards, are very supportive of their child being actively involved in many aspects of school life. Not all of these students are naturally confident, however the support and understanding of time and energy demands for an additional activity provides an encouraging environment for their child to try new things, whatever the outcome may be. This is an amazingly applicable lesson for a student to learn.

A positive social-emotional climate and infrastructure of extracurricular activities can greatly affect the wellbeing and success of a student as they approach university entrance. It seems all schools differ in their approach to student welfare and achievement. In International Schools in Asia, with such diverse cultural perspectives, it is difficult to meet all the parental objectives all of the time.

The right environment

However, as educators, I feel it is the responsibility of the school to act to develop all facets of a successful functioning adult, which again, may not be determined by an exam. While many schools may offer a range of extracurricular activities, the student’s time and energy may not be effective if the school does not provide the necessary expertise and support. In this case, the student may be better off studying for their assessments. I believe there is no right answer to solving issues regarding student involvement in school activities and fostering intrinsic motivation; however, I do believe in creating an inclusive and supportive school environment to maximise the chances of positive student experiences. Schools that place an overt emphasis on extracurricular activities as a part of their daily routine are more likely to foster desired outcomes from their students. This may include: hiring staff with specific extracurricular skills and experience; providing organisational structure of extracurricular activities as a recognised workload in the teacher’s timetable or compensation; setting deliberate expectations of

instruction and appropriate tone of the activity; providing necessary equipment and facilities for success; monitoring of student progress, and regular recognition of student achievement. I believe schools have a responsibility to provide an environment to support the growth of students into happy, confident, self-aware adults. While this may sound like common sense, it is evident that not all schools take this responsibility seriously. As a teacher of Year 11–13 students, the graduating year always seems to exhibit a range of school involvement. However, what does not seem to vary is that the successful academic students by and large are also the students who have devoted time and effort to extracurricular activities. These are the students who have learned organisation of priorities and time management. They have strong interpersonal skills and can establish and maintain relationships in many situations. They have learned commitment to working towards a long-term goal. They demonstrate intrinsic motivation and resilience. Above all, they are highly functioning, self-aware students with the confidence to try something new to enrich their lives. I believe extracurricular activities are every bit as important as what we achieve in class. It is well worth the student’s time and effort to participate in extracurricular activities, and well worth the time and effort of the schools to provide a quality experience. New Zealander Andy Ellmers is a teacher and high school coach at an International School in Beijing. He has also taught in schools in England and Egypt.

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Sun safety

Let’s talk about

sex

veryone who works with children and young people with learning/intellectual disabilities understands the challenges of teaching sexuality education to their students. Despite being flooded with highly sexualised images daily, many, if not most people, find it incredibly difficult to articulate the information needed by our students, in a way they can understand. The problems are significant, as we found when producing resources: lack of common language even for body parts; decisions about what to teach; how, at what age and stage… the list goes on. The sexuality education requirements of special needs students are higher than those of the neuro-typical students who will, in the worst possible scenario, at least gain much information which is passed on by innuendo through conversations and media. For special needs students, these options are not going to work, and lead only to their already increased vulnerability. The research is simply horrifying. When I worked for CCS in the early 1990s, the estimates of sexual abuse inflicted on those with disabilities was in the order of 80–85 per cent. That figure has increased to 85–90 per cent, with some studies indicating levels of abuse of up to 89 per cent of people with intellectual disabilities. It isn’t hard to mount an argument that says these young people need good sexuality education more than any other group of students because their risk of abuse is so high. Apart from the misery of sexual abuse, there is another concern: sexual abusers have almost always been abused. Rehabilitating a neurotypical adult after sexual abuse is challenging. For someone with an intellectual disability, the potential for future non-offending is much, much more difficult to achieve. Better to prevent the abuse in the first place. Education has shown to help prevent abuse. On the other side, sexuality education isn’t just about preventing sexual abuse – it’s about providing information so that young people can make informed choices in their sexual lives. It’s 2015, and no longer novel to see couples with learning difficulties wanting to have intimate relationships. The problems can be simply fixed: Be up for the challenge: Start by recognising that your students really do need this education – it cannot be an optional extra. Use the proper words for body parts: There are so many slang words for body parts, and your students might only be able to learn one. Consistency is key for their learning.

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

ANNETTE MILLIGAN discusses the importance of sexuality education for those with special needs.

Use clear, precise language: Here’s one misunderstanding: a young couple in their early 20s, both with special needs, living in the same house, said they wanted to start “sleeping together”. The caregivers rightfully wanted to establish that neither was being coerced, and were preparing to talk about contraception. After a lot of discussion, it turned out that when they heard the term ’sleeping together’, they thought it meant they would sleep in the same bed, PJs on, and that being intimate was a quick kiss. When the caregiver explained what sexual intercourse was, they were both horrified, and wanted no part of that! A simple term, totally, and understandably, misunderstood. Masturbation is another area that some teachers struggle with. I have worked with teachers who have had several young people masturbating several times a day in the classroom. Not only is it disruptive, if that behaviour is not modified, that person will come to the attention of the Police. Even not observing social mores – such as running up and kissing other students in the playground – will create issues. Teaching the basics of asking before hugging/kissing, teaching how to say ‘no’ and ‘yes’, teaching what is private and what is not are vital parts of this education. Beware of the trap of making exceptions because the person has special needs. For example, the 16-year-old who has been able to take his clothes off since childhood and run around naked because there are so many other things to battle. If it’s going to be unacceptable when he’s 30, it’s unacceptable now. Have standards of behaviour agreed between the school team and the family so that there is consistency. A failure to moderate unacceptable behaviour will make it very limiting for special needs students to have social integration as adults. Keep the long-term interests of your students top of mind. Where to get help: There are resources available at IHC (www.ihc.org.nz), Family Planning Association (www.fpa.org.nz) and Health Click (www.healthclick.co.nz) for the “Me” resources designed for those with learning disabilities. Annette Milligan is the director of Health Click. She is a trained secondary teacher and sexual health nurse/ educator with 26 years’ experience in the sector.

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz

James

Planning lessons, Monika

grading papers Jennifer

and dodging spitballs have gone Google. Thousands of schools have already gone Google, using Apps for Education and Chromebooks, devices that bring the power of the web to students. Why not learn more?

http://goo.gl/gcFSww

Special Education

Targeted teaching:

new research in special education CATHY HERRIES reviews a new book that she believes is essential reading for educators of students with SLD and PMLD.

urricula for Teaching Children and Young People with Severe or Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties by Peter Imray and Viv Hinchcliffe is a professional treatise on the education of students with SLD (severe learning difficulties) and PMLD (profound and multiple learning difficulties), written by two respected practitioner academics. The authors advocate that those with SLD and PMLD learn differently from neurotypical (NT) children and as such these two particular groups require a distinct curriculum using specific pedagogy. At times their dialogue is frank: “the mistaken assumption that treating everyone the same constitutes equity – it does not – it constitutes blindness”. They also go as far as arguing that the pedagogical needs of students with SLD and PMLD differ to the extent that they should not be taught in the same classrooms, even in special schools. To support our understanding of developing specific curricula for these students, parts 2 and 3 of the book give arguments and practical advice for setting up an effective teaching and learning programme to meet the diverse needs of these particular students. After clarifying their pedagogical position, Imray and Hinchcliffe discuss the dilemma of assessment. In the UK, teachers of students with special needs working within level 1 of the national curriculum are required to report on student achievement using performance scales known as P scales. (Some New Zealand special schools currently use this assessment). The authors argue that the linear nature of the P scales and their academic focus makes them inappropriate for students with SLD and PMLD. Alternatively they support the use of Routes for Learning (or something similar – many New Zealand special schools use Quest, which is derived from RfL) for students with PMLD. Rather than having students assessed on learning areas, RfL looks at key milestones the students might go through. RfL advocates that “learners are entitled to access a curriculum and assessment framework which is fit for purpose and meets their specific needs – there is little benefit or increase in entitlement if they are included in structures which fail to do this”.

Getting the priorities right

Imray and Hinchcliffe refer to personalised learning and define it as “spending time on things that really

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

“No student is ‘too anything’ to be able to read and write.” matter for children”. They openly admit that they do not believe in a broad and balanced curriculum. Their argument is that time is short and we should concentrate on priorities for children; these children are unlikely to learn incidentally. Parts 2 and 3 of the book look at curricula for students with PMLD and SLD respectively. Specific examples are given in addition to explanations of the professional theory behind the practice. Specific curriculum focuses are explored: Part 2, concerning curriculum issues for those with PMLD, includes cognition, communication, physical, care and sensory curricula. Part 3, curriculum issues for those with SLD, includes a language, literacy and communication curriculum, a mathematical thinking curriculum, a creative arts curriculum, a problem-solving curriculum, a play curriculum and a citizenship curriculum. Tried and tested approaches are described and explained. There are issues in the book that some of us may want to challenge. Students with SLD and PMLD do require specialist teaching approaches but I would argue that the NZC pedagogy is broad enough to encompass these students if it is sufficiently unpacked and tailored to students’ needs. A Sensory Learning Professional Learning Group facilitated by the National Coordinator for CLICKSpecialEDNZ has recently done just that. Their work will be available on the ‘Sensory Learning’ page of the CLICKSpecialEDNZ website in term 1 this year.

Changing the context

I would also argue that students with SLD and PMLD need a broad and balanced curriculum. For many of our students, the learning areas / the content of a lesson, is the context for learning. The learning intentions may not specifically relate to the content; they will be explicitly related to the student’s individual learning needs. It is essential that we give our students a range and variety of contexts so that they have repetition with variety. The goal may be the same but the context must

change to allow learners to consolidate their skills. As long as anything new is presented within a structure of familiar routine the child will have an opportunity to learn. There has been a move away from the mastery approach, where a unit of material is taught and students’ understanding is evaluated before they are able to move on to the next unit – which must be a relief for students whose progress is extremely slight – at last a chance for something new and engaging! I would urge anyone working with either of these groups of students to read the work of David Yoder, David Koppenhaver and Karen Erickson with regard to literacy. I am a firm advocate of Yoder’s “No student is ‘too anything’ to be able to read and write” approach and would not like to take the responsibility of excluding a student from involvement in a structured literacy programme because we have decided they won’t benefit from it. These researchers from the Centre for Literacy and Disability Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill believe that everyone is somewhere on the literacy continuum and have structured teaching approaches to develop emergent literacy skills. Imray and Hinchcliffe’s book discusses 11 curricula. For some, the breadth and abundance of ideas could be overwhelming. However, teachers need to consider these ideas in order to understand and make decisions about the development of the most appropriate curriculum for their students. This book is well researched and refers to the contemporary experts in the field worldwide. Effective curriculum development for students with SLD and PMLD is an area of significant need across New Zealand. In the absence of widespread tertiary training in SLD and PMLD, this book is essential reading for all teachers in the sector. The issues discussed in the book, including pedagogy, student placement, curriculum, assessment and specialist approaches, are all current topics of discussion, both in special schools and in mainstream inclusive settings. Imray and Hinchcliffe have delivered a book that is indispensable to educators of students with SLD and PMLD. It provides valuable, targeted, professional information and challenges our thinking. Cathy Ferries is a deputy principal in a special school. She has been working in special education in New Zealand and England for more than 25 years.

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz

Book Review

Changing our Secondary Schools: HELEN ANDERSON reviews the most talked-about new a review DR book in educational circles in recent months: Changing our Secondary Schools by Bali Haque.

ali Haque’s Changing Our Secondary Schools was a welcome Christmas present and I settled to read with expectations that this would challenge the summer sun. A book with a similar title (Our Secondary Schools Don’t Work Anymore, David Hood, 1998) edged into my memory but 16 years have passed and Bali Haque has the credentials to produce something built on considerable direct experience. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the many ways a quality education is measured and offers thoughtful critique of a range of testing and data processing methods, including PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and NCEA results. In part 2 recent educational reforms are reviewed, notably, Tomorrow’s Schools, the New Zealand Curriculum and National Standards. Part 3 delivers on who might be responsible for the ongoing failure of reform efforts and, not to spoil the story, but school leaders including the author are mentioned. In part 4 a set of proposals is put forward to address the issues identified in the first three parts. Bali Haque notes that it may seem “dangerously contradictory” to offer reforms when he has been highly critical of New Zealand’s reform and policy development process, and this has some truth in it. Blaming the process, however accurately, without addressing how to fix the process beyond exhortations to do better, softens the impact of an otherwise excellent set of proposals for change.

Looking for the shock factor

Part 4 is about teachers and this creates a vital focus on the core activity of education, that is, learning and teaching. This is an outcome of Bali Haque’s experience and knowledge across the secondary system in schools and agencies and now as a researcher and writer. However, having built a convincing, balanced and evidence-based argument that some groups in New Zealand society are disadvantaged by our secondary school system and that this situation is persistent in spite of reform intentions, it might be expected that the proposals in the last section would surprise. Instead, they provoke contemplation. This is useful and less unsettling to my holiday mood but I still have a moment of wishing for something that will shock. The task is a tough one. We have an internationally outstanding curriculum design, a mass of talented teachers, a growing number of schools with purposeful learning space designs, but like the cover design, these are very smart cogs, whirring around determinedly in a system too often maintained on its current path by the compelling force of the domestication of innovation and failure of leadership to carry change into practice. To set a new direction may require a significant disruption – a disruption that would cause the comfort seekers to drop their baggage and prioritise learning and teaching. This might hopefully be premised on learning achievement defined in terms of innovation, creativity and valuing of the way technology and diversity can reframe our solutions.

The light in the tunnel?

Disparity of outcomes has been our long educational history and Bali Haque has clearly identified the urgency of the situation where disparities are sustained, the numbers affected increase, and talent is wasted in failure and disaffection. There is no doubt that Haque’s proposals for better use of data, greater support for teachers, stronger school leadership and robust policy development are valid but saying it does not make it happen. A small light in this long tunnel might be found in the current policy support for new learning space designs. These challenge the philosophy of education that goes with the box classroom, rows of single tables and chairs and the teacher at the front delivering immediately dated information. At the very least the new learning environments change the physical arrangements that have enabled single, directional learning, and support interactive, collaborative learning that builds on and values diversities. Bali Haque provides an elegant image when he identifies that teaching is an art much akin to “improvised street theatre”. This notion comes alive in interactive learning spaces where all participants contribute. For his proposals to happen, the ’theatre’ must be allowed to be creative, required to engage in change and capable of being startling if we are to succeed on the much larger stage of our social, economic and political futures. This book is a significant achievement and it will certainly provoke useful debate on a vital issue; it supports those who would create change and this is of considerable value. Dr Helen Anderson works in Academic Quality at AUT University. Bali Haque, Changing our Secondary Schools, NZCER, Wellington, 2014. pp274, ISBN978-1-92723147-0 retails at $39.95 and can be purchased at www.nzcer.org.nz/nzcerpress/ changing-our-secondary-schools.

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

New entrants

Want me to be a critical, creative and innovative thinker?

Then let me play!

STEPHANIE MENZIES enters a plea to bring play back into the classroom.

o inside any primary school classroom and look for the ‘play’. Where is it? When did we become so serious with our students and forget to include play? It was only 15 years ago that we could go into any Year 1 classroom and find children playing with play-dough and creating the most spectacular creatures, painting a masterpiece or gluing together toilet rolls to make a spaceship. They were engaging with each other, negotiating, sorting out arguments and establishing friendships. They were imagining, exploring and inventing. It was through taking risks, discovering new ideas and putting these ideas into action that learning took place. Now it seems such acts of play are a thing of the past. We walk into a typical classroom and find containers of maths equipment that only come out at maths time, musical instruments gathering dust while they wait for the designated timeslot to learn percussion and Lego in buckets under the reading shelves waiting to be used on rainy days. We are reading a lot lately about having children ‘school-ready’ when they start school, especially so that the transition to school is smooth for the child. Why don’t we turn this thought completely around and ask schools to adopt a play-based pedagogy to reflect the Te Whāriki early childhood curriculum and weave this pedagogy thread throughout all levels of primary school?

Why don’t we play?

Our children have more structure and organisation in their lives than ever before. They get fewer opportunities for play within their classrooms, whether it is free play, supported play or purposeful play. We know the social, emotional, intellectual and cognitive benefits of play based-learning, so why aren’t we brave enough to put some free play back into our classrooms? I once taught a boy in Nelson, who arrived on his fifth birthday with a bright, cheeky grin that instantly stole my heart. But it was difficult to engage him in any classroom activities. He wasn’t interested in the sand, the water, Lego or the Mobilo. After two weeks of trying to engage him, I visited the local recycling centre and bought an old typewriter and camera. I placed these objects in a tray with screwdrivers and left them out all day. The only rules I attached to them was that there were to be only four children playing at a time and they could only be played with before school

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

started. He started coming to school each morning at 8.30am to dismantle these objects. I would take two minutes out of my morning preparation to go over and greet him, ask him about his family and make comment about the mechanics of what he was doing. We built up a positive connection which turned more into an attachment, and I found he would do anything I required of him in the classroom. We established respect for each other – him respecting me for taking time to get to know him and me respecting him for adhering to the classroom rules and expectations. There are many reasons why we may not have play-based activities in our classrooms: a perceived loss of power; the amount of imagination required to come up with ideas; the organisation of time, materials, activities and spaces; the classroom may be noisy and messy; students may be talking, laughing and moving around, and you may feel that you are losing all classroom control and management. But take a look inside an early childhood centre and you will find none of these things bothering the teachers. They set clear expectations of their students and have consistent rules and consequences set in place. They have already done the hard work; primary teachers just have to keep up their practices. I found my love for play-based learning in a Year 1 class in Hokitika. I had 12 students, including identical boy triplets and identical boy twins. Almost half of my entire class looked remarkably similar and was mostly boys! I was rummaging around in the caretaker’s shed looking for some paint one day and came across an old wooden carpenter’s table along with a dusty box full of child-sized tools. My dad cleaned them all up and sent me back to school on Monday with a box full of wooden off-cuts and shiny clean tools. I set the table up outside my classroom and placed the box of materials beside it. During maths I sent one of the groups outside to the table. I took a breath that lasted the whole lesson and let it out once they were all back inside with all fingers intact and eyeballs still in their sockets. Kevin had a permanent smile on his face because he was allowed to work outside in the sun, James was delighted at his creation of a futuristic space-ship and Becks was the envy of her class when she appeared with a wooden praying mantis including its wooden enclosure. These children had the opportunity to communicate with each other, share

materials, practise patience, negotiate, create a masterpiece and have fun!

Start now!

Our National Curriculum identifies several values and key competencies that we strive to teach our children. Almost all of them can be developed through play-based activities: innovation, inquiry, curiosity, and sustainability, respect, thinking, using language, and managing self, relating to others, participation and contributing. I propose that we say, ‘enough is enough!’ Children in ALL years at primary school have the right to play, both within their classrooms and in the playground. We know that they become intrinsically motivated through play-based learning (and the need for rewards and star charts may no longer be needed). We know that one of our main goals is to motivate students to learn and we want them to continue to learn long into the future. We know researchers are linking the benefits of play on the developing brain. All around the world, children are engaging in pretend play that simulates the sorts of activities they will need to master as adults, suggesting that play is a form of practice. So give them the opportunity to practice at school, right now in your classroom. Digitally record the creations your students make and upload them to your class blog. Be prepared to let the child discard their creations when they are finished with them...it’s often the process that is more important for the child than the product! Give yourself permission to roam around the room observing the children at play, listen to their conversations, take photos for picture stories, sit down alongside them and engage in conversation, identify ‘teachable moments’ and run with them. You will soon work out the right time and place to intervene. Use your intuition, experience, knowledge, expertise and common sense to judge when the time is right. In order to face the challenges of the 21st century, our children need to be critical and creative

New entrants

“I took a breath that lasted the whole lesson and let it out once they were all back inside with all fingers intact and eyeballs still in their sockets.”

thinkers. The industrial age is truly over. We are now ensconced in the knowledge age with its unique challenges that are largely undefined as yet. Why not create a classroom environment to reflect a play-based pedagogy approach which encourages children to think outside the square and be creative? Why not arrange materials in provoking and inviting ways to encourage exploration, learning and inquiry? We all know that play contributes positively to a child’s sense of well-being. It enhances a child’s natural capacity for intense and self-motivated learning. It helps build creative and critical thinkers, and lets children test social boundaries. Play produces curiosity, openness, optimism, resilience and concentration. It enhances a child’s memory skills, develops their language skills, helps regulate their behaviour, advances their social skills and encourages academic learning to take place. Why not be that brave teacher who says ‘I’m going to bring play back into my classroom’? Maybe your next PD session could be a visit to a local kindergarten to see the learning that is taking place...through play. Stephanie Menzies recently completed her Master of Education degree, with her final assessment on play-based learning. Useful websites for play ideas include www.pinterest.com, www.backtoblocks.com and www.playbasedlearning.com.au

ways to bring back play, have fun and promote learning:

Buy old suitcases at the op-shop and fill them with various manipulation toys: Lego, Duplo, Meccano, wooden blocks, magnets and an assortment of magnetic and non-magnetic materials. Bring them out at different times of the day and let your pupils spend 15 minutes creating.

Keep a plastic cube full of natural materials. Children love having a handful of shells, some pieces of branch, some stones and a glue-gun. Trust me on this! Give them these things and stand back and watch the creativity and learning that takes place!

Collect a box of mechanical junk from the recycling store and add several screwdrivers and Allen keys. Set the box up somewhere in the classroom for the children to go to before school, or on rainy day lunch times.

Bring out the woodwork table and tools you will find hidden in the back of the caretaker or sports shed. Add a box of wooden off-cuts (not treated wood) and you have created an amazing builder’s paradise! Keep this table just inside your door so you can easily put it outside each day. Offer it to your colleagues’ students to use outside your room. I found I never used to get in trouble for the noise my students made when I offered it to other classes!

Introduce glue-guns to your classroom along with a large basket full of recycled cereal boxes, perfume boxes, toothpaste boxes, egg cartons, etc. I suggest you use cool glue-guns which can be found at your local supplies store.

Alternate between having a sand or water tray in your room. Along with learning science and maths concepts, children also have the opportunity to practise their social skills.

I can’t think of anything better to use ice-cream containers for, than to fill them with play-dough. It is easy to make, can last a couple of weeks and children of most ages enjoy playing with it. Don’t be scared off by the ‘germ-brigade’. Dirty play-dough doesn’t kill, and children over five don’t tend to snack on it!

Why not include a painting easel into your room and give it the respect one gives a classroom computer. Use watercolour paint cakes with a jar of water and a cloth nearby and let children come and paint when they feel like it. The world will not stop spinning if you let a child spend 10 minutes painting her masterpiece during silent reading.

Have a box of dress-ups in your classroom. A Year 6 teacher may allow his students to use them every time they present something to the class. This infuses the presentation with laughter and helps put the more nervous students at ease.

10. Wooden blocks should be in every classroom at every level in primary school. That’s a no-brainer...all children, at any age enjoy building with blocks.

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz

Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

Homeschooling

An education at

home

The Principal of Home Schooling NZ, TODD ROUGHTON, explains why he believes homeschooling is preferable to New Zealand’s mainstream education system.

t is probably fair to say that the three basic aims of education in New Zealand are to train young people in academic and practical knowledge and skills, in values, and in the skills of citizenship (socialisation). From where we sit, as we speak daily with families around the nation, the motivations for choosing to homeschool are chiefly to be found in these three areas.

Home education approaches The National Council of Home Educators New Zealand (NCHENZ) website states that about 7,000 children are currently being home educated in New Zealand, and every family will have their own unique style. Some of the more common approaches to home education are outlined below, although most families blend a number of different methods.

School At Home: Some people literally do ’school at home’ with a fixed curriculum, workspace, and schooling hours - a highly structured approach that mirrors the traditional classroom method. Unit Studies: Particular subjects are linked to the child’s own areas of interest while integrating literacy, numeracy, science, arts and other subjects. Unschooling: This term is much misunderstood and some people avoid using it, preferring terms such as natural, child-led, or free-range learning. This is an unstructured, integrated approach based on the child’s interests and passions. John Holt, the author of Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling, has written a lot about natural learning. 30

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

Waldorf: This is based on the work of Rudolf Steiner who was an Austrian philosopher and teacher. Steiner took a holistic approach to education and stressed the importance of the ‘whole child’ by focusing on body, mind, and spirit. Care is taken to develop subject content in a way that is truly relevant to the inner life of the child. There is an emphasis on natural play materials, storytelling, art and craft, music and movement, nature, and the rhythms of life. Montessori: This educational approach was developed by Dr Maria Montessori in about 1897. The focus is on independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological development. Rather than use formal teaching methods, the Montessori approach involves developing natural interests and activities. It is important that a child is free to investigate and make choices about the things they want to do. Charlotte Mason: Charlotte Mason was a British educator who

dedicated her life to improving the quality of education in England at the turn of the twentieth century. Probably the best known of her methods is her use of living books instead of dry, factual textbooks or books

Homeschooling

Meet the O’Brien family Knowledge and skills

Changes to pedagogy (and hence to the content of teacher training) have resulted in enormous changes in the delivery of education, which are not universally agreed upon or accepted. Beyond this, even with the best of intentions and the dedication and commitment of most teachers, there is no guarantee that while quality teaching may take place, quality learning will. In response to these things, parents who homeschool have the opportunity to research good teaching methods and use what most suits their children’s personal needs, and can give their children one-on-one attention. They also have ready access to professional advice and support where needed.

Values

Legislative efforts to remove all traces of a Judeo-Christian belief system may have succeeded politically, but they have not changed the core moral values of many New Zealanders. Parents who disagree with this change of values can teach the values that they believe are of primary importance. They can also be available to support their children as they learn to think for themselves and develop their own convictions.

Socialisation

In response to the oft-asked question “Aren’t you worried about socialisation?” many parents will tell you that this is actually the

chief reason for the decision to homeschool. In fact, it is the single most common factor we encounter in dealing with daily enquiries. Parents who feel strongly that bad company corrupts good character welcome the opportunity that homeschooling provides, to promote positive relationships in their children’s lives. Underlying the above question is the assumption that homeschooled children will somehow develop into socially inept citizens, but this is far from the truth, as homeschooled children learn to socialise in natural ways within their families and communities with people of all walks in life, and of all ages. In reality, many homeschoolers would argue that socialisation that involves being constantly surrounded by a large group of just one’s peers, is not natural (as it happens nowhere in real life apart from our schools), and its inherent weaknesses provide fertile grounds for a range of social problems, including bullying. Peer pressure is a sociological term, defined as “the influence exerted by a peer group or an individual, encouraging other individuals to change their attitudes, values, or behaviours in order to conform to group norms”. It is rare to hear the term used positively, because negative peer pressure, the logical consequence of too much rigid, age-banded ’socialisation’ (and the subsequent over-influence of the all-powerful but very immature peer group), pushes so many young people towards undesirable behaviour.

that are condescending to children. Living books are usually written by one person with a passion for the topic and a broad command of the language, making the subject alive and engaging.

Classical: Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words (written and spoken) rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television). The early schooling years are spent in absorbing facts, in the middle grades students learn to think through arguments, and in the high school years they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called ‘The Trivium’. This approach is quite rigorous and systematic. Eclectic Approach: The term ’eclectic’ refers to a mixed approach to home education – gathering bits and pieces from various philosophies and sources. Many home educators take an eclectic approach because homeschooling gives them the flexibility to adapt their programme to fit in with the family’s goals, commitments and lifestyle. For example, they might generally use unit studies, follow a curriculum for maths, attend some set activities at specific times during the week, and keep afternoons free for child-led learning opportunities.

CAROLYN O’BRIEN shares her experience of homeschooling her six children. We are a homeschooling family who live on a small orchard in Central Otago. I homeschool the children and Alister is an orchard manager. Our children are John (26), Eve (25), Oliver (23), Elza (22), Jude (15), and Timothy (10). We have homeschooled all our children from school age right through primary and secondary levels (Jude and Tim still working through it). As young parents we had friends who homeschooled their children using the ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) system. We went to an ACE conference to learn more about it and decided we wanted to educate our children at home. We liked the idea of this lifestyle as a family.

The benefits

We wanted our children’s learning to be from a foundation of the personal values and beliefs we have as a family. Homeschooling has catered for this. We also wanted to avoid the negatives of peer pressure. Academically we have managed well because we had good support from Home Schooling NZ. Having grown up together with the bulk of their learning and play at home, the siblings have a strong bond, which remains now that the older children are adults and spread around New Zealand and abroad.

The challenges

One of the main challenges is that we only have one income. This means we have had to settle for a less affluent lifestyle which at times has been challenging, but at the end of the day the rich sense of community we share outweighs this drawback for us. Another challenge was when the children’s best friends moved away which left a lonely space for a time. It was maybe harder on them as they did not have such a large pool of friends to fall back on. In the end their friendships with their siblings carried them through until they developed new friendships.

Where are they now?

John, who developed good leadership skills being the eldest of six homeschooled children, has been in the New Zealand Army for six years and enjoys this career and its challenges. Eve graduated from Bethlehem Tertiary Institute in 2013 as a Primary Teacher. She has done a lot of volunteer work overseas during her schooling and adult years, visiting Tanzania, Rarotonga, America, and Myanmar. She hopes to teach in Myanmar this year. Oliver graduated from Otago Polytech in 2013 trained in Outdoor Leadership and Management. He is employed seasonally running outdoor adventure camps for children and youth. Elza graduated from MAINZ Tai Poutini Polytech in 2013 as a Sound Engineer. She is very musical. She is presently doing volunteer work in an orphanage in Uganda. Jude plays rugby for the local under-15 high school team. He wants to join the Air Force. Timothy is still enjoying a life of learning and adventure. Homeschooling has given us a special opportunity to look closely at each of our children’s personal make-up, to encourage them in the things they are good at, and give them plenty of opportunity to develop their gifts and abilities. This, combined with the strong sense of community we have as a family, has given them a good foundation as they stepped out into adulthood. It has been a great lifestyle for us.

Go to

www.educationreview.co.nz Education Review series NZ Teacher 2015

ICT decisions

Using learning technologies to best effect

At a conference, you gave the analogy of the catfish growing to the size of its environment and comparing this with students’ capability to grow to the size of their environment when taking down the walls of the classroom with the aid of emerging technologies. New Zealand has set itself the challenge of every student in Year 4 and above having a digital device by 2017. However, it strikes me that the main challenge lies beyond this: how teachers and students should use the learning technologies to the best effect. How do you propose we meet this challenge? Marci: As educators, we are constantly bombarded with a plethora of technology and new apps. The use of technology should be driven by what will make teaching and learning better and what will give students the applied skills they will need in the workplace. Video collaboration is one of the most important tools for today’s digital classroom. Ensuring access to live video conferencing, as well as ensuring video-on-demand is available on every device from smartphone to laptop, is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have. To drive teacher adoption you must raise awareness and address any education needs to ensure teachers feel comfortable using the technology. Programmes, resources, and technology must be easy to use. Teachers and students will use the technology if it’s user friendly and easily available, regardless of device.

I sense schools are nervous about making the wrong choice when it comes to purchasing the right technology. They are anxious to invest in tools that will be widely used and are suited to their curriculum and their students’ learning needs. What advice would you give to schools to help them procure the right technology? Marci: It can be easy to get caught up in the ’shiny object syndrome’ with new technology. Have a thorough assessment process to clearly understand the needs of your school or organisation and select the best tool suited to your requirements. Ensure the decision-making process includes the IT department , who will run and service the technology, and those who will use the technology, such as teachers and students. Look for technology that plays well with others and your network while providing all the security and benefits you need. It must be a robust solution, but not a ‘bandwidth hog’, and choosing quality over perceived affordability is a must. When it comes to video, the biggest mistake I see schools

NZ Teacher 2015 Education Review series

JUDE BARBACK asks international expert Marci Powell for her advice for New Zealand schools as they go about procuring, managing, and using learning technologies.

make is choosing technology that may be more affordable but compromises on quality. Selecting high-definition video and audio quality is crucial, as is the ability to share content. When you can, procure technology that integrates and ‘talks’ to other technologies. For example, with video conferencing, choose a user-friendly solution that is able to access your existing email address book to invite people into a video call or integrate with an existing learning management system (LMS).

Schools are also nervous technology may become out-dated too quickly. Are there any measures that can be taken to ‘future proof’ the technology? Marci: I find that maintenance or service agreements that enable you to update your technology automatically are very valuable, as is licensing for devices. Make sure you work with your IT team to choose a video collaboration solution that has the flexibility to be updated to ensure it maintains relevance as technology and software changes.

I’m interested in the growth of edutech. Do you think the technology is leading teaching practices, or is the technology responding to the changing needs of education, or are both moving simultaneously? Marci: Both are moving simultaneously. Most often, we as educators find really ’cool’ technologies and then think creatively about how they can play into teaching and learning. Likewise, students, most of whom are ’digital natives’, adopt technologies, and push schools for permission to apply them in the classroom. As new technologies are created, we as educators see how to apply them to our world and get excited. As we integrate technologies and change our pedagogical best practices we uncover weaknesses or gaps in technological capabilities. Technology companies must respond.

I’ve noticed many New Zealand schools have been preoccupied with what network they are on. I like the idea that we are moving beyond network dependency. Do you think this ideal has just has much power as the ability to place a device in the hands of every child? Marci: I agree. We need to get beyond the network and beyond limiting ourselves. As we strive to not only give students core knowledge, we must also provide applied skills and the technical skills they will need in the workplace. Some businesses are Apple-based, some are PC-based, and some are mixed. However, this is becoming less and less significant because of mobile devices and the

interoperability we are seeing in an app-based society. Moving beyond network dependency enables students to learn anywhere, anytime and on-demand. We need to enable network interdependency and place smart devices in every student’s hands to have the ultimate learning environment.

MOOCs, flipped learning, nano-lectures – clearly the walls of the classroom are coming down and there is much to be gained through this, however do you have any concerns about what also might be lost through stepping away from the more traditional one-to-one, faceto-face learning environment? Do we need to find a happy medium? Marci: I actually believe that stepping away from the more traditional face-to-face environment that we have been doing for 200 or so years is the best thing we could ever do. This style of teaching in many cases has become a sit-and-get environment with the teacher on the stage and little interaction or collaboration. The new way of collaborative teaching is more student-centric and truly develops a much higher level of thinking and creativity. Face-to-face teaching is still critical, as is one-to-one. But does that mean we have to be in the same physical location to be face-to-face or one-to-one? Using video collaboration allows us to create classrooms without walls that still have the face-to-face experience. Moreover, it extends our reach to ensure very remote students can be connected to a learning community. This is ideal for a country like New Zealand where students often live in rural locations. The traditional style has it good points, but it is designed to prepare students for jobs that are disappearing – jobs of the last century. Sitting in rows, doing rote learning or ‘drill and kill’ worksheets … even the bell between classes was originally designed to get students in a habit of working on repeat processes and knowing when to take a break. It prepared them for rote jobs in an industry or on a manufacturing floor or at a desk. It did not teach higher order critical thinking skills and certainly did not teach students to think outside the box and be creative. Today, we have to prepare students for jobs that demand these higher order skills. The happy medium is an on-demand learning environment combined with highly collaborative student team work. Being able to do this outside the traditional classroom walls with geographically dispersed students and teachers who are video connected is priceless.

Former Polycom global director Marci Powell was named an EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) Fellow last year.

Feed the world Protect the future Live well The world is at a crossroads. A rapidly growing global population is putting increasing strain on food production and security, environmental management and sustainability, and redefining business and lifestyle. We need to find solutions for these pressing problems; our future depends on it. As New Zealandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s specialist land-based university, Lincoln University has a long tradition in offering qualifications addressing these very issues. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agricultural production, science, business, environmental management, technology, tourism, sport, design or property, no other university specialises in meeting the demands, challenges, opportunities and considerations of the land-based industries, both in New Zealand and the wider world.

The world needs Lincoln. The world needs you. www.lincoln.ac.nz | 0800 10 60 10

TO LE ARN T HE T RUE VA LUE OF PRINCIPLE S AND E THIC S, T HE Y SENT THEIR STUDENT S TO PRISON.

ED REVIEW 01

Watch the full story about why St Thomas of Canterbury College won the award for Excellence in Engaging at the 2014 Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards at pmawards.education.govt.nz/winners

If you’re doing great things in education, we would love to hear about them. Entries for the 2015 Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards close on 20 March 2015. Visit pmawards.education.govt.nz