Pak Tee Ng (Singapore): Teach Less, Learn More

Here are 5 points that stand out for me:

1. Focusing on PISA scores, or scores on any other test, is not the same as focusing on student learning in the classroom. Too often, a focus on standardized testing can actually have a harmful affect on teaching and learning.

2. Education is an investment -- not an expenditure. Cutting education is like a farmer who sells his top soil.

3. Teachers don't need surveillance -- they need support. You don't improve the education system by firing individual bad teachers -- you improve the education system by creating good teachers and then trust them to do their job.

4. Teach Less -- Learn More. Pasi Sahlberg writes about Finland and Gary Stager writes about the Maker Movement. Pak Tee Ng reminds us that, "more of the same teaching is not the way to inspire better learning." Efforts to "teacher-proof" education via standardization is not the solution, it's the problem. 

5. You say you want this, so why are you doing that? Unfortunately, myths are often more satisfying to us than the truth - in education we are satisfyingly distracted by a great many myths. If we are to improve school, we have to allow it to change. And if we want to make the right change, we need to be evidence and research based.

Does size matter?

This was written by John Scammell who taught high school math for 18 years before becoming a high school math consultant. He blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by John Scammell

Defining my terms:

A columnist is someone who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions.

A journalist collects, writes, and distributes news and other information, while refraining from bias.

An Edmonton Journal columnist, one who could never be accused of even partially refraining from bias, has been arguing that class size reduction efforts in Alberta have been a waste of money. He cites research and even quotes the head of PISA(sounding dangerously like a journalist), but then conveniently leaves out relevant details that would contradict his argument (he is, after all, a columnist).

Some high performing countries (according to PISA) have larger class sizes than we do. The obvious conclusion is that we should increase class sizes, right? Not so fast, Mr. Biased Columnist. It’s only a logical conclusion if you ignore other all the other factors at play.

Currently, the norm in high schools in Alberta is to have teachers teach 7 out of 8 blocks. That means each semester I see four unique classes of around 35 students, for a total of 140 students per semester. I get an 80 minute preparation period every other day. Because of the already large class sizes, I spend most of my preparation time creating and grading assessments. Very little of my preparation time is spent on actually thinking about how to teach my material better.

Mr. Biased Columnist points out that places like Finland, Korea, Singapore (among others) have class sizes that are larger than in Alberta, and still perform better on PISA (this is fact). What he deliberately neglects to tell us (Logical fallacy of Omission – Stacking the Deck) though, is that teachers in those countries spend far less time in front of students than we do in North America. From the Singapore Ministry of Education:

The workload of our teachers varies across the year, depending on whether it is peak or non-peak periods. Over the entire year, our teachers teach, on average, about 15 hours per week. To deliver classroom teaching effectively, teachers also spend approximately twice as much time on teaching-related duties such as preparing for lessons, providing remediation for weaker students, setting and marking of homework and examinations.

They spend double their assigned time on teaching related duties compared to time spent teaching. I spend 1/8 of my assigned time on teaching related duties compared to time spent teaching.

Singapore has secondary classes in the neighbourhood of 40 students, but based on what I read above, they would only see two of those a day. That’s a total of 80 students per semester, which is far fewer than we see each semester in Alberta. In addition, the Ministry of Education in Singapore indicates:

Some schools also deploy two teachers in a class of 40 students—one teacher brings the class through the curriculum, while the other teacher assists specific students who may have difficulty understanding the materials being covered.

Wow! Singapore teachers actually have less marking to do than I do, more time built into their schedules to collaborate with colleagues and plan good lessons, AND they get to team-teach in large classes? It’s a model I’d be willing and eager to explore. Are they hiring in Singapore?

Mr. Biased Columnist suggests that good teachers will do well no matter how many students we give them. I agree. Under our current conditions, however, they will likely burn out from all the marking and management problems that large classes can bring. We don’t want to burn out our good teachers, do we? One third of new teachers in Alberta burn out within 5 years. Let’s revisit Singapore.

The annual resignation rate for teachers has remained low at around 3% over the past five years. In our exit interviews and surveys, workload has not been cited as a major reason for leaving the Education Service. Nonetheless, we will continue to monitor the workload of teachers through internal employee feedback channels to ensure that workload is maintained within reasonable levels.

Singapore has bigger classes, fewer teaching hours, more collaborative time built into their day and retains 97% of their teachers. Does class size matter? Not nearly as much as teacher collaboration built into the school day.

On a completely different vein, I do need to point out that in my travels across Alberta, I already see classrooms that were built to hold 25 students jam-packed with 40 desks. I don’t know how we can physically put more bodies into those classrooms. Are we going to build a bunch of new schools with large lecture theatres?

Some Resources I Used:

Singapore Ministry of Education
Singapore Parliament Class Size
PISA Key Findings 2012
Comparing the US to Finland and Singapore
Teacher Workload and Pay – Various Countries

Reading the PISA Tea Leaves: Who is responsible for Finland's Decline and the Asian Magic

This was written by Yong Zhao who is Presidential Chair, Associate Dean Global and Online Education, College of Education at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Catching Up or Leading the Way and World Class Learners. He blogs here and tweets here. This post first appeared here.

by Yong Zhao

“Finland Fell from the Tip of PISA,” says the headline of a story in the largest subscription newspaperHelsingin Sanomat in Finland, according to Google Translate (I think it should be
Finland Falls from the Top of PISA). I don’t know Finnish but thanks to Google Translate, I was able to understand most of the story. The gist is that Finland has fallen from the top in the current round of PISA.

This is big news, with significant implications not only for the Finns but also for the rest of the world that has been looking at Finland as the model education system since 2001 when Finland was number one in the first round of PISA. Although results of the 2012 PISA won’t be officially unveiled until 10am GMT, December 3rd.the leaked story, published on November 30th, has already sent the Finns and others to speculate the causes of Finland’s decline. “The reasons are seen in the teachers’ continuing education in poor and outdated teaching methods and technology,” writes the Helsingin Sanomat story (courtesy of Google Translate).

While the Finns are right to be concerned about their education, it would be a huge mistake to believe that their education has gotten worse. Finland’s slip in the PISA ranking has little to do with what Finland has or has not done. It has been pushed down by others. In other words, Finland’s education quality as measured by the PISA may have not changed at all and remains strong, but the introduction of other education systems that are even better at taking tests has made Finland appear worse than it really is. In 2000 and 2003 when Finland was number one, only two East Asian education systems were included: Korea and Japan. In 2009, there were seven from Eastern Asia: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Macao. Six out of the seven ranked top 10 in math, five in science and five in reading and Shanghai took number away from Finland. I have not seen the 2012 results yet and will miss the big moment on my way back to the U.S. from Hong Kong, but I can guess, as the Helsingin Sanomat already suggested, the East Asian education systems did very well again, squeezing further Finland down the league table.

An even bigger mistake is to assume that the Asian systems have made significant improvement and surpassed Finland. The Asian systems have always done extremely well in international tests, especially in math. The top scoring education systems in another major international assessment, the TIMSS, have always been Eastern Asian since 1995: Singapore, S. Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. Mainland China has yet to participate in TIMSS.

The 2009 PISA results have already begun to shift the world’s attention away from Finland to Shanghai. I fear that the 2012 PISA will complete that shift and make Shanghai and other East Asian education systems THE model of education because the magic potion that East Asian success in international tests is very poisonous.

The recipe for the East Asian success is actually not that magical. It includes all the elements that have been identified as the symptoms of the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) by the great Finnish education scholar Pasi Sahlberg: Competition, Standardization, Frequent Testing, and Privatization. In East Asian high PISA performing systems, these ingredients are more effectively combined and carried out to an extreme to result in entire societies devoted to ensure that their youngsters become excellent test takers.

While the East Asian systems may enjoy being at the top of international tests, they are not happy at all with the outcomes of their education. They have recognized the damages of their education for a long time and have taken actions to reform their systems. Recently, the Chinese government again issued orders to lesson student academic burden by reducing standardized tests and written homework in primary schools. The Singaporeans have been working reforming its curriculum and examination systems. The Koreans are working on implementing a “free semester” for the secondary students. Eastern Asian parents are willing and working hard to spend their life’s savings finding spots outside these “best” education systems. Thus international schools, schools that follow the less successful Western education model, have been in high demand and continue to grow in East Asia. Tens of thousands of Chinese and Korean parents send their children to study in Australia, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. It is no exaggeration to say that that the majority of the parents in China would send their children to an American school instead of keeping them in the “best performing” Chinese system, if they had the choice.

The East Asian education systems may have a lot to offer to those who want a compliant and homogenous test takers. For those who are looking for true high quality education, Finland would still be a better place. But for an education that can truly cultivate creative, entrepreneurial and globally competent citizens needed in the 21st century, you will have to invent it. Global benchmarking can only give you the best of the past. For the best of the future, you will have do the invention yourself.

(May append later. Gotta run to the airport)

Andy Hargreaves on transforming education in Alberta

This was written by Andy Hargreaves who is Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College and co-author of The Fourth Way. This was written as the forward for A Great School For All: Transforming Education in Alberta which is a research update by the Alberta Teachers' Association.

by Andy Hargreaves

For more than a decade, Alberta has been Canada’s highest-performing province and the highest performing English- and French-speaking jurisdiction in the world on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of student achievement. Despite its superior educational performance in Canada and beyond, Alberta has so far been largely overlooked by influential international policy analysts and, therefore, also by the global media; the plaudits have gone largely to Ontario instead. To make this observation is not to imply that Ontario’s hard-earned international prominence is undeserved but, rather, to wonder why Alberta’s impressive educational record is largely unknown, even among Albertans themselves. 

Strangely, one of Alberta’s greatest challenges in the years to come will be to acknowledge its own success. In a world where education is easily hijacked by governments pursuing strategies that will produce short-term solutions for which they will then take credit in the next election, most other nations and their leaders are inclined to impute failure to the educational systems they have inherited and to the people who work in them, so that the incumbent government can claim victory in righting the wrongs of its predecessors. Alberta, however, has achieved increasing and sustained success over several decades with the same government. Alberta’s challenge, therefore, is to acknowledge and celebrate its educational successes, and to find a way to articulate and explain them to its own citizens and then to the world. Alberta will then stand tall as a recognized world leader in education alongside other creators of educational excellence, in Finland, Ontario and Singapore.

Celebrating success brings risks as well as opportunities, however. This is a second educational challenge for Alberta. Celebration can court complacency. In the teaching profession, it can encourage a belief in the value of untrammelled autonomy among individual teachers who might want to claim that they can now be left alone to get on with the job. Among governments, it can induce business-as-usual approaches that fail to prepare them for the challenges of the future and that maintain long-standing policies that might be preventing even greater success. 

Convincing policy-makers and system leaders to take new approaches when they have experienced educational and political success with existing ones can be difficult, but it is before the peak of performance that decline is often already occurring, even though the decline might not be evident in performance results. A paradox of improvement is that you have to quit your existing strategy even when you look as though you are still ahead. 

Knowing that most innovations fail, leaders and voters are often reluctant to ditch tried-and-true methods in favour of a new approach. In Great by Choice (HarperCollins 2011), influential business writers Jim Collins and Morten Hansen argue that the answer to this dilemma is disciplined innovation that is delivered “with high reliability and great consistency.” According to them, “the great task is to blend creative intensity with relentless collective discipline so as to amplify the creativity rather than destroy it.” Discipline requires relentless perseverance and complete indefatigability to ensure that a good idea comes to fruition in practice and that innovation continues alongside improvement, not at the expense of it.

Innovation in the public sphere is important not for its own sake but because it helps citizens and governments deal with new challenges and opportunities. This is especially true in a province like Alberta, with its increasing population, prosperous but vulnerable energy-based economy, and growing awareness of the needs of indigenous communities and the importance of developing a balanced approach to new technologies that will embrace their creative advantages while offsetting the damage and distraction they can inflict on younger generations.

In 2004, innovation guru Charles Leadbeater argued that the answer to all of these issues was not for some central body to mastermind and implement innovations through pipelines of policy delivery, from the centre to the individual. Instead, he argued, at their most sophisticated, governments should establish platforms that enable users to organize their own lives and behaviours more effectively together. In public services, therefore, promoting innovation is not only a question of relaxing or releasing control and responsibility to others. It is about building platforms where people are increasingly able to design learning supports and solutions for themselves.

This analysis raises important questions for educators. For example, what platforms do governments need to create so that teachers can develop their own curriculum and assessments together, instead of delivering curriculum and testing designed by government? What systems can be created and how can resources be reallocated so that peer-to-peer networks of schools can raise achievement themselves instead of having expensive intervention teams impose policy from the top? What is the best way for teachers to pursue their own professional development to meet their own needs without this becoming fragmented and self-indulgent on the one hand and overly controlled by central priorities on the other?

We have some good ideas about how to mesh innovation and improvement, and about why we should. We need to innovate before our improvement efforts flatten out and before improved student achievement stops. We need to innovate to respond to the new challenges that any system faces. We need to innovate because even the best systems have elements in their policies that could impede success. Effective innovation is disciplined; it should complement improvement rather than challenge it. Finally, innovation in public services such as education is not about governments withdrawing from public life, but about shifting responsibility from driving and delivering services to creating ways for people to develop better supports themselves.

Alberta is extremely well placed to address these issues in its education strategies. It already has an astounding and sustained record of educational success that matches the best in the world. For more than a decade, in comparison to most of its Canadian peers, but in line with best practice across the world, it has supported educational innovation through the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement. Like other high performers, Alberta has begun to benchmark its strategies by starting to network with other high performers in Finland and elsewhere. Albertans are not impelled to change strategy from election to election, because the province has been characterized by a high level of political stability that is typical of most successful systems. Again, like other high-performing peers, Alberta enjoys strong support and participation in the public education system from almost all of the province’s parents. And Premier Alison Redford has indicated a bold preparedness to review those parts of the government’s existing strategy that may be detracting from even greater success, such as the provincial achievement tests, which can undermine commitments to deeper and more creative learning in schools.

One of Alberta’s greatest advantages is common to high performers—a strong and committed teaching profession. Unlike its neighbour to the south, Alberta does not cheapen or demean the teaching profession; it understands that the human capital of its students depends on investing in the professional capital of its highly qualified teachers. Alberta does not involve only teachers in delivering change; it also engages principals and superintendents. And it creates and maintains platforms where educators can advocate for further innovations and improvements to benefit students and strengthen the profession that works with those learners on the front line, every day. Albertans understand that the teaching profession is not an obstacle to transforming the province, but an essential and inalienable part of the solution.

A Great School for All—Transforming Education in Alberta is another example of the outstanding intellectual and strategic leadership of the province’s teachers. It is a document that recognizes the successes of the province that the members of the Alberta Teachers’ Association proudly serve; challenges the province’s leaders to be the best they can be in the circumstances they face in partnership with teachers; draws on research, inquiry and international benchmarking to identify the most promising practices; and sets out 12 clear directions to move the province and its children ahead.

Developed by the Association’s research staff, this comprehensive document seeks not just an end to standardized testing but more-sophisticated and more-demanding processes of assessment for learning. It takes a balanced rather than a bullish or obstructive approach to the role of new technologies in schools, calls for a more inclusive approach to special educational needs, and identifies the best supports and partnerships to bring that about. It reasserts the importance of professional autonomy for teachers but understands that this autonomy is collective, not individual. And it argues for a profession that should be given and that must take greater leadership—teachers and principals need to take greater collective responsibility for the quality of professional work. 

Alberta is already a world leader in educational achievement, but its high ranking is not yet matched by international recognition. What Alberta needs now is a clear statement identifying the reasons for its success, champions who can explain that success in inspiring ways to people in the province and across the world, and a platform from which it can launch the innovations that will lead to even greater success in the future. There is no better time for the government and the profession together to show the world what an outstanding system has achieved and can achieve, and to establish a platform that will make Alberta a world leader in educational innovation and transformation in the decade to come. Alberta has no need to rent improvement and reform models that have been built by other systems. On the contrary, it has the proven ability, creativity and professional quality to own the future that it creates for itself. This report can and should become a significant contribution to that quest.