feedback, feedforward, Feedup, feeddown lester.flockton@otago.ac.nz
A professorial friend of mine (that is, a warmly and most respected academic) once remarked to me that the whole focus of teacher education should be on child development. Now when you think about it, that could mean leading teachers into much deeper, profound and resolute understandings about how children really learn, how much they can learn, the pace at which they can learn, the things that stimulate and excite their learning, and the things that frustrate and obstruct it. It might also help us to be clearer about what we might sensibly expect of children’s individual rates of progress and achievement apropos selective measures in singular domains, such as literacy and numeracy. Child development is a complex mix of the intellectual, physical, emotional, aesthetic, moral (and now also, technological). It is a hugely fascinating field full of truths, insights and contradictions – convenient and inconvenient, observable and unobservable. Yet it is a window to a deeper understanding about learning. Regrettably, that window is largely closed or painted over. It seems incomprehensibly and reprehensibly out of fashion, favouring instead current technicist orthodoxies that the late Jim Neyland (Victoria University) termed “scientific management” of education. This orthodoxy is characterised by standards and standardisation, measurement and evidence and, above all, that glorious data! What teachers might come to accept from a deep grounding in child development that makes indelible imprints on the professional mind (tattoos on the brain) is a resolute acceptance of the complexity and richness of difference and diversity, that all children are not created equal, that they do not all benefit from privilege and opportunity, that one size does not fit all cultures let alone all children, that so-called “quality teaching” is far from enough for some, and that it is a nonsense to expect all to succeed to targets of “at” or “above”, regardless of the hell bent
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mantra of “quality teaching” (as though this is a new idea) and the false trickery of medicinal “data”. John Hattie’s truism should never be lost sight of: “There will always be 20 per cent below”. In her recent release of the Government’s education “Report Card”, Minister of Education Parata proclaimed, “It’s about shifting away from statistics to numbers”. (As one blogger commented, “Hell – and she’s the Minister of Education.) “It’s about shifting away from statistics to numbers,” she said. “This report confirms we are well on track, but also keeps us honest – we need to keep a laser-like focus on achievement and act quickly when we see a child can learn more and where we see children falling behind.” Ms Parata says it shows Māori and Pasifika achievement rates are trending up, but from a very low base. (3 News, 13 August, 2013)) However well intentioned these data (statistics, numbers), garnished with blatant indigestible political blah, it is inevitably about electioneering. As Robin Alexander observes: Of all the so-called ‘levers’ of systemic reform, tests (or data) seem to be the instrument of choice in policy-makers’ efforts to do the two things which they believe they must always be seen to do: raise educational standards and call teachers and schools to account. This means that tests (or data) are high stakes not just for children and teachers but also for politicians, and that they may be as much about political capital as educational progress. It also means that there’s always the risk that politics will drag what ought to be a carefully considered debate about the quality of education into the gutter of electioneering.
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Of course Ms Parata wants to boast “trending up”, otherwise her government’s policies become a cynical joke. But extreme caution needs to be exercised before swallowing the hype. Remember (and please don’t forget) that the main reason given by the Government for introducing National Standards was to rescue the 20 per cent they claimed were failing (although now that we have national standards data, that percentage is oddly higher than that). Now if you look at their school report on the Ministry of Education website, you will see that they have a goal for trending up improvement. The goal is that by 2017, 85 per cent of children will be at or above the standards. So, from 16 out of 20 (80 per cent) children succeeding before national standards were introduced, 17 out of 20 children (85 per cent) will be succeeding (maybe) after 7 years of single-mindedness. Clearly, the fix-it policy is going to drag out over a very long time – but, in the meantime, what about all of those highly paid Ministry expert “SAPs” who were going to rev up the acceleration and remediation of learning through their extraordinarily superior elixirs. According to the “data”, it seems they must be buzzing on very low octane fuel, yet that fuel is costing a great deal more than high-grade fuel! So, where does all of this lead us. Again, Hattie seems to have hit the nail on the head: The politicians, advocates, and officials who promised improvement from their policies then start to become concerned that they do not see the gains promised by their national standards policies. Maybe, they say, the standards were too aspirational, and we cannot have a system that “fails” so many, so it is necessary to take stock, conduct a review, and so on. This can lead to complicity in finding ways to make the policies seem successful. This path includes presenting data in “interesting” ways such as using fancy graphs, changing of the standards (in a particular direction), and higher baying of criticism at the culprits who are causing this lack of success (i.e. schools. (Hattie, 2010) The constant accompaniment to the serving up of data in all of this, is the tedious baying about teacher quality. Teacher quality (along with data, of course) is the official panacea for everything from serious behavioural problems to fixing underachievement among children who are highly over-represented from low socioeconomic and dysfunctional home circumstances.
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It is about time Ms Parata and her officials started to understand children’s development and acknowledge the truth of the matter, which has been so simply and clearly stated by Robert Stake: Student test scores are only weakly related to the quality of schooling. What determines the level of student performance is some rich mix of genetic predisposition, infant nurturing, sibling rivalry, early childhood experiences, peer interactivity, exposure to language and word games, television, and schooling. Schools are good for children, but schools cannot overcome deep deficits. (Stake, 1999). If I have repeated myself from previous “School Lines” columns, I make no apology. It is abundantly clear that we need to continue to hammer home the message. Postscript In defence of data, I know that it has some “indicative” value, but too much of it falls short of giving a wholesome, accurate and balanced account of everything it purports to represent, or all that children know and can do. All data are the hard outer shell of what they represent. They tell little about the soft underbelly! Data might sometimes contribute to improved teaching, but that depends entirely on the choice of subject matter and criteria for “improvement”. In reality, most data about children’s achievement tells good teachers little that they did not already know. Data is inglorious! Reference: Alexander, R.(University of Cambridge, UK.). The Perils of Policy. Success, amnesia and collateral damage in systemic educational reform Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Program 2010, Public lecture, Wednesday 10 March 2010. Hattie, J. (2010). Horizons and whirlpools: The well travelled pathway of national standards. Unpublished. Stake, R.L. (1971). National Assessment. Proceedings of the 1970 Invitational Conference on Testing Problems: The Promise and Perils of Educational Information Systems. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.