Creative Learning Community

Ideal learning place:

1. A special place - beauty, warmth, durability, inviting, social, culinary, useable buildings/teaching spaces with good acoustics, good storage space, resources managed and available (eg projection screens, net access, tools, materials),
2. Networked learning - connecting with people and information (Wheatley - systems), make outside experts available, utilise online communities, engage parents and local businesses
3. Community (Wheatley) - teamwork, shared vision, group skills, shared values, celebration, humility, 'cast not the first stone',
4. Reflection, encouraged, space for it, rythm of the seasons - expansion/contraction, room for dissent and alternate points of view. Critical and realistic, part of community life
5. Deep Learning (Bloom, Hattie) - move/expose students to experience the deepest/greatest ideas in science/art/mathematics/poetry/dance/living systems etc
6. Recognise and support Gifts & Talents (80% persperation, 10% talent, 10% mentor), everyone has gifts and tallents (Gardner). Inclusive.
7. Power and Freedom (and fun)(Glasser, Maslow, Adler, Frankl)
8. Creativity - prized, encouraged, demonstrated, celebrated, time/space/resources available for it, take risks
9. Transformation of the individual (requires power/freedom - Glasser), support social nature of learning - Scaffolding available (Vygotsky)
10. Transformation of school culture - teachers and students empowered, monitor health of system - academic results, cultural events, sport. Team action - critical reflection (what do we really want?), Entrepenuerial action (network key individuals, risk taking, plan/organised), reinforce core values, Action - Reflection cyclw

To be a good learning place it must include excellent teachers... ie they need to be fostered, rewarded, encouraged, poached, recognised, grown, mentored.

On a practical note: to be a good learning place there must be a solid infrastructure. Ie reliable financial/ it/ maintenance/ managerial support in place with the right balance between control and support. Within the leadership there also needs to be a balance of vision/growth and 'steady as she goes'. A delicate combination of 'benign dictatorship' with 'lasez-fair'. A dialogue between conserving/nurturing forces and expansion/creative forces. Not too much control and not too little - as appropriate.

links:

Soren Kaplan: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/aug2002/kaplan.html

Communities from a business angle, using online colaborative tools to facilitate.

Expert Teacher

Hattie - best three dimensions: Challenge, Deep Representation, Monitoring and Feedback

Five major dimensions:

• can identify essential representations of their subject (more integrated and deeper knowledge - more connections accross disciplines and to students - tailor presentation to where students are at - problem solving - oportunistic - good decisions on the run)
  
• can guide learning through classroom interactions (better feedback, more aware of classroom behaviour, more aware of facilities and student backgrounds)
  
• can monitor learning and provide feedback (feedback and teaching tailored to match situations, anticipate and prevent 'gotchas', automated - more for less effort, smarter not harder)
  
• can attend to affective attributes (respect for students, care and commitment, passionate, relationships vital, overcome affective issues because more aware of them)
  
• can influence student outcomes (aim for more than achievement - aim for motivation to mastery, desire students to get passionate, set appropriately challenging tasks and goals, engage rather than copy (move up the taxonomy with Bloom), improved surface learning and potential for deep learning.)

Other attributes:
Keeps order, Not boring, not strict, true to self, express genuine anger/emotions, not shout/rude, conscientious in marking, humerous, admit mistakes, enforce school rules, not over fussy, involve learners, concerned with attendance, know names, fair - treat as individuals

Maintaining order can require discipline - the expert teacher has a 'well-planned, individual model of discipline' - finding the right match between their values / educational philosophy and the range of discipline models from 'top down' to 'bottom up' (control v lasez-fair)

Wheatley

The 'Bringing Schools back to life' article said this to me:

* Top down change will fail, reductionist analysis will fail
* we are all part of complex systems
* if we are going to change everyone needs to be involved
* It takes great effort to understand what people actually want
* living systems organise themselves around shared interests
* the system has the seeds of growth within it - it only needs to hear/see itself better and include every member in the process (the members are always bigger than what appears on the official stats)
* if the system discovers something meaningful to it the information will pass through it like a flash
* process, process, process...


Wheatly's web site

Wikipedia on Wheatley

writings:
Bringing Schools back to Life

the IDEAL structure of a lesson

Students will be motivated if they are intrigued/attracted/curious/engaged by the subject. This means both the relevance of the content and the quality and connectedness of the delivery. Students love genuinely challenging work, where they can engage the problem and overcome it. They love things that are fun/cool/unique. The love things that relate to where they are at in the world emotionally/mentally/politically/economically.

Conversely if the challenge is even a little too hard students can quickly be demotivated.

Students are also motivated by their relationship with the teacher - with a good relationship - students trust that the experience will be safe and worthwhile, desire to please the teacher, desire to prove themselves.

Students are motivated if their gift/tallents lie within the subject area - they love doing something they know they are good at, or that they are naturally at home with. So different tallents/intelligences will need to be catered for to get the full benefit of this driver.

Conversly with a bad relationship between teacher and student the student might be unmotivated to achieve because they 'can't be bothered', because they are not confident to take risks, because they do not feel safe.

Students are motivated by personal feedback - particularly from people they respect, and also from people they don't like. Feedback from friends is less valued.

Students are motivated by deadlines, standards, completing course outcomes. At the lowest level this is a weak motivator, as students may only 'put in' enough to pass, rather than soaring into the task for its own sake.

Students are motivated by their peer group - they will follow the key network people in the class because they value their approval. This means if the 'cool people' are not interested or bored then a lot of other students will be also unmotivated. Conversley if the 'cool people' are engaged, then others will be indirectly motivated as well.

Students have their own 'conscious and unconscious' needs - they are complex and have complex external relationships - mother/father/siblings/peers - These have to be recognised and factored in.

Rich tasks - challenging tasks and goals - These are carefully designed tasks that are intended to engage students at all levels - they are connected to where the student is at, they allow for collaboration, they have a 'real world' connection, they are often open ended to allow students to go as far as they want. They work at multiple levels - direct outcomes, group outcomes, emotional, spiritual, political.

The down side of developing rich tasks is that they take a lot more work to assemble. Expert teachers may be 'automatic' enough to generate them without undue stress, but for myself it is a daunting job. Also many of the more interesting tasks that come to mind are potentially too long, or require equipment or facilities which we don't have or cannot afford - particularly for larger groups (eg 30 students)

Glasser: we can only control how we think and act, but not how we feel. Students seek

• safe and secure place where they belong
• to be loved and valued (and to love and value)
• to have power
  
• to have freedom
• to have fun and learn things
  

Lesson structure:

1. opening - teaser - place lesson in context of where students are at/interested in (constructivist grounding)
2. present background information and challenge
   
3. group activity - evidence of learning collected
   
4. critical reflection
5. summarise, place back in context
   

links:

Motivating students http://www.nwrel.org/request/oct00/motivate.html

Frangipani

Test of new blog

Alan Lecture - supporting docs: Bloom

Bloom's Taxonomy: http://www3.niu.edu/provost/facpers/appm/IIIDapxI.pdf