20 minute read
When international school leadership needs to break with the legacy and context of the past Rob Ford
By John Cannings and Alexandra Catallo
Adrew Watson in the last issue of International School magazine highlighted that the world is close to a tipping point, citing the work of Johan Rockström and Will Day. Both argued that in the next ten years the world is going to face a number of social and environmental issues because of climate change, and some of these changes may be irreversible. Andrew further suggested that schools have a critical role in helping to avoid this grave situation and that there needs to be a ‘Renaissance in Education’. This view is one that many writers would agree with (see, for instance, Hargreaves, 2008; Sterling, 2008; Ackoff and Haynes, 2010). As Andrew also argued, we need a more fundamental change in thinking and an education that embraces a holistic approach, including systems and design-thinking and complexity. Education needs to be transformative and needs to encourage capacity building and empowerment: the ability to be both creative and adaptive.
Why was there a need for Webinars on ‘Case Studies for Change’?
The authors of this article, Alex Catallo and John Cannings, agreed with many of the views that Andrew expressed, and decided to run a series of webinars to highlight what practitioners in the classroom are doing to bring about a paradigm shift within their schools for Sustainability Education. We felt this would complement the academic discussions of Sustainability in Education that we have both experienced.
In presenting his Golden Circle, Simon Sinek (2005) shows us that fi nding your purpose, or your ‘why’, is crucial if others are going to be inspired to join you. By ‘why’, Sinek means: What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? The why is our belief system, it roots us in authenticity and genuine attachment, it is powerful and it also explains why some organisations and some leaders are able to inspire, when others can’t. Sinek explains that, for success, we have
The webinars to connect not just the head but also the heart. By connecting our thinking to provided our belief systems people are generally participants with attracted to beliefs that align with opportunities their own. to discuss Our WHY? issues with the We recognised early on in the webinar presenters series that we have a shared core belief; that it is time for a shift from philosophising about sustainable development, towards a practical need for urgent social transformation. We need a cognitive shift – to take all the thinking and worrying of the last sixty years regarding Earth’s future and our place in it, and turn it into something that transforms what we do at the chalk face and how our students act when they emerge from it. In the webinar series, that ‘Why’ brought others to us, not because what we had to say was ground-breaking, but because they also believe in a need for action in schools, they had reached a tipping point as well – how can we do things differently? Others shared our belief that something needs to change. The webinars provided participants with opportunities to discuss issues with the presenters and included a wide range of people with interests in education (students, teachers, school administrators, parents). Geographically, participants ranged from China in the East to Scotland in the West. Below, we provide a brief summary of the key lessons learned from the webinars.
What lessons have we learned?
1The need for common understanding of terms such as sustainability
One of the things that has become increasingly obvious throughout the webinars has been the lack of a shared language and understanding of the term ‘sustainability’. That has been hardly surprising as academically there have been at least 50 different interpretations of the word (University of Leicester, 2021). In our fi nal webinar we invited participants to share their defi nitions, and while there was a slight difference in semantics, there were many commonalities in the language used. There was agreement regarding our role as a species in respecting and working with each other, in a way that everyone can continue to benefi t from. This implies a healthy respect for other species and for the environment that we share. In addition, there was agreement about there being a personal responsibility for change.
Lucy, one of the school student participants, defi ned sustainability as ‘We must change so that we can live our lifestyles indefi nitely’, while Dr Michael Johnston, Assistant Head of School at Frankfurt International School, stressed the need for common language in a school and, ideally, succinct terms that could be understood at all levels of the school.
2An overarching model or philosophy to guide the school
There are tools and models to help educators and students in developing a systems approach to decision-making. We have been fortunate to have had exposure to two of those models: the Compass Model and the Doughnut Economics Model. Both models help to give an overarching view of sustainability and structure a class approach to decision-making as well as a whole-school approach.
2.2 The Doughnut Economic Model
In 2009 Johan Rockström led a team of international scientists to determine the nine planetary boundaries that regulate the stability and resilience of our planet. The scientists proposed quantitative planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations. Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. The boundaries include factors that are familiar today: ocean acidifi cation, freshwater consumption, chemical pollution. Kate Raworth is the architect of the Doughnut model (Figure 2) which she developed while working for the charity Oxfam, linking social foundations with the planetary boundaries that were established by Rockström’s team of scientists. She recognised that social boundaries need to be factored into building a
Figure 2: Doughnut Economic Model sustainable future.
Raworth has been working with the city of Amsterdam and is using the doughnut to restructure its thinking, policies and future design. The city of Amsterdam looked at their future planning through two scales, local and global (what happens in the local community, and the global-universal issues that we all face) and two domains: social and ecological.
Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann, an IB Business Management teacher and leader of the Sustainability Action Lab at Strothoff International School, adapted this model using these lenses and their core questions to consider school sustainable development. She posed the question ‘What would it take for our school to thrive?’, using the lenses to help focus sustainability in her school (Figure 3).
The lenses force us to distinguish symptoms from cause. For example, if the symptom is that we have plastic trash everywhere and so we need to recycle more plastic, the root cause of that problem is actually our human relationship with plastic, that we view it as disposable when it isn’t. So – if plastic is not disposable then we cannot throw it away. Recycling does not cure the problem: in fact putting recycle bins in locations has been found to increase plastic use because it alleviates our conscience. This framework helped Jennifer’s school to look at issues such as the sourcing of school uniforms and the school’s attitude to the forest surrounding it. 2.1 The Compass Model This model has been adopted by over 160 schools around the world. The Compass model fi ts the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the four domains: Nature, Economy, Well Being and Society using a compass rose as a basis (see Figure 1). It is argued that any complex or wicked problem that the world faces can be analysed through these domains. It stresses the interrelations between the various domains. The model encourages systems thinking about complex issues and has developed a wide range of tools and lesson plans for use in K-12 schools globally.
Figure 1: Compass model
Figure 3: The lens of the doughnut model applied to a school context (Brandsberg-Engelmann, 2021)
3What tools did we fi nd to support teachers in schools?
Compass Education We mentioned above that Compass Education offers a wide range of materials for use at all levels of schools. Dr Michael Johnston, a faculty member of Compass Education, recommended participants to join the group and get access to them.
Youth Mayors Guide The Youth Mayors Guide is a free guide funded by the Erasmus+ scheme and developed collaboratively by United World College (UWC) Maastricht, Strothoff International School, UWC Robert Bosch College, UWC Red Cross Nordic and the International School of Brussels. The material is organised into four categories and designed to categories and designed to help students take action. help students take action. The categories used in the The categories used in the guide follow a servicelearning design cycle: Investigation, Planning and Designing, Taking Action and Sharing. It provides over 50 different provides over 50 different skills and techniques to help students in both preparing and carrying out action. The material is geared more to secondary level, but tools could be adapted for younger students. This guide is accessible and usable for anyone who wishes to use it.
Using the SDGs as tools Aurelia McNicol from Collège Alpin Aurelia McNicol from Collège Alpin Beau Soleil in Switzerland uses the SDGs as a tool to drive school projects. Aurelia uses simple activities such as baking to explore the SDGs. One such task was about the source of the food on your plate. She asked questions of the students such as: How would your decision-making process change if each item you had for breakfast also contained the human and ecological cost locally and globally? Aurelia explains that if we live in a transparent world where information is clearly shared, rather than the opaque world we live in now, our decision-making will change. This prompted a group of students to demand that the school have a meatfree day. Aurelia organises communitybased activities that are focused on sustainability (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: from presentation by Aurelia McNicol
5Changemaker’s personality
One important characteristic has been the changemaker’s personality. They have of course been knowledgeable, but more importantly they have been enthusiastic, they have the ability to talk with everyone, to engage with all members of the school community (students, staff, administrators and parents) and inspire them. They have been fl exible in their thinking and opportunistic: seeing opportunities in school and turning them to their advantage. Above all they have led by example and aimed to empower their students. Ingrid Delange, a Maths teacher from China who presented, typifi ed this approach.
Otto Scharmer said in a recent presentation: ‘The superpowers of the future will not be found in Washington or Beijing ... they will be the individuals who are re-aligning systems’ (Scharmer, 2021). In other words they are the changemakers – but many of us just don’t know it. ◆
4Having a support network: Aligning your Why
We have learned that fi nding a support network is an essential component to building a cognitive shift. To discuss and drive ideas and projects, to maintain momentum, fi nding the like-minded energy in your school is very important. Through the webinar series it was clear that many teachers felt alone in their quest to educate for a sustainable future. Building a network is one of the most positive aspects of our webinars in developing an international network of likeminded people who can support each other.
John Cannings is based in Switzerland, and is a workshop leader and examiner for the IB, an author and a faculty member of Sused.org, which promotes sustainability in schools. ✉ cannae40@gmail.com
Alex Catallo is based in Budapest as a Biology teacher, Theory of Knowledge examiner and Education Designer at sused.org. ✉ alexandra.catallo@gmail.com References
• Ackoff R L (2009) Interview with Phyllis Haynes on YouTube. youtu.be/MzS5V5-0VsA • Brandsberg-Engelmann J (2021) A Deep Dive into the Doughnut Economics Model. Presented in the series of webinars Case Studies for Change. • Compass Education. compasseducation.org • Delange I (2021) Eco Roots. Presented in the series of webinars Case Studies for Change. • Hargreaves L (2008) Whole School Approach to Sustainable Education. Pilot projects for Systemic Change. www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-6/whole-school-approach-eduation-sustainabledevelopment-pilot-projects-systemic-change • McNicol A (2021) Case studies in integrating the SDG’s with and beyond classrooms, a selection of Illustrative examples. Presented in the series of webinars Case Studies for Change. • Raworth K (2017) Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. London:
Random House. • Raworth K (2021) www.kateraworth.com/2020/04/08/amsterdam-city-doughnut/ • Scharmer O (2021) Lessons from A Year of Disruption: How to Build Transformation Literacy for the Years
Ahead. Presented at Regenerative Confl uence conference, Hawkwood College, 10 May 2021. • Sinek S (2005) The Golden Circle. London: Penguin Books • Sterling S (2008) Sustainable Education. Towards a deep learning response to unsustainability. www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-6/sustainable-education-towards-deep-learning-responseunsustainability • University of Leicester (2021) Unpublished lecture notes from Concepts in Sustainability course. University of
Leicester. www.le.ac.uk • Watson A (2021) Towards Sustainable Education. International School. Summer 2021, 4-5. issuu.com/ williamclarence/docs/is_summer21/s/12812565 • Youth Mayors Field Guide tool kit. sites.google.com/uwcmaastricht.nl/youth-mayors-curriculum/toolkit
The OECD By Therese Andrews
Global Competence Framework: a Critique
In 2018 the OECD assessed the concept of Global Competence for the fi rst time as part of the triennial PISA assessments. Released in October 2020, the results of the assessment demonstrate social reproduction, with more powerful social groups benefi ting from a framework developed by a small group of Western educators. Despite the power that the
OECD holds, and the infl uence of the PISA assessments on government globally, educators should be cautious in their enthusiasm to adopt and embed the framework in their own schools.
The PISA assessments are administered on a threeyear cycle, with tests in three literacy domains (mathematics, reading and science) and, since 2012, one cross-curricular competence per cycle. The cross-curricular competence is subject to selection based upon it providing information on how prepared students are for a) full participation in their society and b) lifelong learning as well as needing to be innovative. Whenever a new crosscurricular domain is selected for assessment by PISA, it is subject to a development phase before it is piloted. Prior to 2018, cross-curricular competencies assessed by PISA include collaborative problem solving (2015) and creative problem solving (2012).
The selection of global competence for the 2018 cycle was announced in 2016 and was justifi ed with reference to continued digitalisation, global inequalities, migration and matters associated with developing communication technology. In contrast to the three literacy domains of the PISA assessments, the innovative cross-curricular domains lack a robust research base which simultaneously drives forward the way we think about assessing students whilst also introducing a new concept for assessment prior to universal consensus of the concept being achieved. As a result, the issues with the 2018 framework are plentiful. At the time of release, global competence as a concept lacked universal consensus, such that now the defi nition used by the OECD in the framework is what global competence is considered to be, rather than a starting point to inspire further discussion. In addition, the narrow defi nition propagates global elitism and the framework itself focuses on prejudices and xenophobia rather than on global issues, with social and political issues absent from the framework entirely. Furthermore, while recognising the need to drive assessment methods forward, the OECD is a driver of free market education policy which can create contradictory and incompatible effects within national education systems. The use of only a small group of experts in the development of the framework (seven in the fi rst stage and only four in the second stage, along with a project team from Pearson) has resulted in a biased and ‘un-global’ framework for assessing global competence.
The assessment was only administered digitally, with those countries unable to participate digitally thus unable to participate at all, which is rather ironic given the intention of the framework. Only twenty seven countries and economies participated in the assessment, and only eleven of those twenty seven were OECD countries, suggesting that the expert panel who developed the framework, while representative of the OECD, may not have been representative of those who participated.
There has also been criticism in the academic literature of the value that ranking countries and economies to encourage competition has in enhancing global competencies. Additionally, there is no mention in the framework or results about whether global competence is a relative phenomenon in which achieving competence relies on others not achieving it. More than thirty countries opted out of the assessment, despite participating in the assessments for the three literacy domains. Various reasons were given for non-participation, including not wanting to place an additional burden on schools and some suspecting a hidden agenda.
The original framework and assessment were written in English and subsequently translated into 90 languages and dialects. PISA assessments are administered in the language of instruction, and the translation from English combined with the general lack of visual clues and emphasis on reading in the assessments could have disadvantaged many countries and economies, particularly countries with high numbers of migrants who may not be native speakers. This would have been exacerbated by global competence being a new domain that hasn’t been embedded into education systems.
The consequences of these decisions for the resulting framework and assessment are serious. Educational reform lies with those who have power, which does not always serve the people most impacted. To assess a domain such as global competence which is connected to cultures, without employing a diverse group of experts who are trained in unconscious bias in the development phase has meant that a rhetoric surrounding global competence has developed which enhances the position of the global elite. Using the development of this domain to include the underrepresented voice of the global south is a missed opportunity. Unsurprisingly, the countries and economies that performed best in the assessment were all part-anglophone, with Singapore, Canada, Hong Kong (China) and Scotland (UK) at the top end of the table. At the bottom end were Thailand, Panama, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Morocco and the Philippines.
The critique outlined here can serve as an example of how new initiatives, policies and assessments should be considered ahead of rushing to implement them in schools where there may not be a national education system to follow. It is easy to be inspired into action when an exciting new initiative is launched, particularly from an organisation such as the OECD, but ensuring that anything new being introduced will enhance learning for our students, rather than provide a biased view based on Western values and viewpoints, is key. While many international schools do represent a global elite, we should take the opportunity to educate for inclusion and equality rather than further propagating social reproduction of the elite. ◆
Therese Andrews is Director of Curriculum Innovation at Thomas’s Battersea Senior School, London, having previously taught internationally in both Shanghai and Boston. ✉ ta649@bath.ac.uk
Using Nietzsche’s theory
of knowledge to interpret educational assessment
By James Cambridge
The British educational theorist Basil Bernstein argued that the relationship between school subjects and the real world was akin to the difference between woodwork and carpentry. Whilst carpentry is a body of professional knowledge and practice, woodwork should be seen as a filleted version selected and organised for the purposes of teaching, learning and assessment. In other words, pedagogical knowledge is an interpretation of real-world knowledge. It contrives opportunities for students to perform certain tasks in a particular sequence so that they can learn knowledge, skills and attitudes. Opportunities are also contrived that enable such learning to be made visible, so that particular behaviours can be observed, and these observations can be used to assess levels of educational attainment.
This brings to mind a statement made by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, jotted down in his philosophical notebooks and published in The Will to Power, that ‘there are no facts, only interpretations’. The attribution of this statement to Nietzsche is fairly well known but it also appears to be misunderstood by many commentators. It may help to inspect the passage from which it is taken:
‘Against positivism, which goes no further than the phenomenon and says, ‘there are only facts’, I would say: no, facts are precisely what there are not, only interpretations. We can establish no fact ‘in itself’ … In so far as the word ‘knowledge’ has any meaning at all, the world is knowable. It may however be interpreted differently; it has no hidden meaning behind it, but rather innumerable meanings which can be assigned to it. Hence “perspectivism”’ (Nietzsche, 2017: 287).
Here, Nietzsche is introducing a theory of knowledge (epistemology) which he identifies as perspectivism. As Jonas (2009: 158) puts it, perspectivism ‘does not mean that Nietzsche thinks a human being can ever have a perspective that is not possible to improve. Even the most sophisticated perspectives can potentially be refined an infinite number of times. The essential point is, however, that Nietzsche’s perspectivism is meant to deny our notion of ‘‘objective’’ knowledge (as a God’s-eye, perspectiveneutral perception), not preclude knowledge and truth altogether’.
This idea is important when applied to the field of educational assessment. I am sure that it is accepted that we cannot read the mind of the candidate directly. The best we can do is to contrive a situation in which the candidate performs a behaviour (this could be writing an answer to a question or performing a physical task) which can then be used as evidence of educational attainment. However, this chain of events requires a number of interpretations to be made.
A subject guide or specification is an interpretation of an academic discipline, rendered into a form of pedagogised knowledge that can be reproduced for teaching, learning and assessment. Teachers interpret the subject guide or specification to inform their teaching, and learning involves the students making their own interpretation of the knowledge reproduced by the teacher. An examination paper is an attempt by the principal examiner to interpret the specification as set down in the syllabus or subject guide. A mark scheme is an attempt by the principal examiner in cooperation with other senior examiners to interpret the examination paper. The candidates need to interpret the examination paper in terms of their interpretation (or more likely their teachers’ interpretations) of the syllabus in order to compose their responses. The assistant examiners marking the paper must interpret not only the mark scheme but also the candidates’ responses to the question paper. It is to be expected that assistant examiners would obtain guidance from senior examiners who are team leaders on interpretation of the mark scheme. Hence, informed by his/ her interpretation of the mark scheme, the assistant examiner’s role is to interpret the candidate’s interpretation of the examination paper (which is itself an interpretation of the syllabus). Everything here appears to be the interpretation of another interpretation.
The problem of interpretation has been studied in some detail in the context of the history of science. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn (1970:122) points out that, while he does not suggest that scientists do not characteristically interpret observations and data, ‘each of these interpretations presupposed a paradigm. They were parts of normal science, an enterprise that... aims to refine, extend and articulate a paradigm that is already in existence... examples typify the overwhelming majority of research. In each of them the scientist, by virtue of an accepted paradigm, knew what a datum was, what instruments might be used to retrieve it, and what concepts were relevant to its interpretation. Given a paradigm, interpretation of data is central to the enterprise that it explores.’
Hence, science education involves induction of the learner into acquisition of a particular paradigmatic interpretation of the world. With a paradigm to inform interpretation, the learner can transform data into information. As Kuhn (1970: 111)
