Andrew Old recently posted on the why allowing mobiles into classroom is lunacy here:
This is why I think his argument here is flawed. It was written as a direct comment to Andrew, and so it refers to him as the second person. I have asked him if wants to delete the comment to allow for readability and brevity in the pages so I have also posted the comment here. It got a little long winded so maybe this is a better place for it.
It is interesting that you seem to have a habit of taking a quote and misrepresenting it as in this earlier post re: Francis Gilbert
I take the quote not to mean that more learning is bad, clearly this is lunacy, but the obvious meaning is that the learning seems joyless, which is bad in my book. On engagement, your weasel word stance is also flawed. Willingham does not discount the importance of motivation, in fact he makes pains to state that without it, learning is inhibited. There is evidence (http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/The%20Risks%20of%20Rewards.pdf)to suggest that external motivators instigated by the teacher can work short term, but longer term this damages students’ willingness to learn. I recognise the strengths in this argument, and in the report I cite, the “kefir” experiment seems to be used by proxy for learning. This an area of personal interest to me at the moment as I have perceived a change in the motivation of my students since the adoption of Project Based Learning as one of my teaching methods. My reading around the subject has only just started and my mind is far from made up, though my gut instinct is to support the article. If we take engagement to mean simply entertainment then yes, this is not desirable. I prefer to take engagement to mean students developing an intrinsic motivation to work and do well as a result of a well designed and well executed curriculum that presents content in a meaningful and purposeful way. My preferred method is project based learning which may or may not include direct instruction as appropriate, though again I know you are not a proponent of project based learning and have Hattie’s effect sizes to post in return here.
My interest in project based learning stems from firstly, my subject (music) which lends itself to working towards a product, where knowledge is acquired through purposeful play on the journey towards this product. Secondly, I was lucky enough to visit High Tech High in San Diego last year and as a school that delivers entirely through PBL in all subjects but Maths, I was awestruck by the quality of students’ work, knowledge and the engagement (see my earlier diefinition) of students with the curriculum content. I really think if you had the chance to see this place you would love it Andrew. You might not come away banging the PBL drum, but the structures in place for staff and students were unlike anything I have ever come across in my admittedly short career. Staff and students expect each other to be exceptional and have protocols for making sure that happens.
I am not best writer and can’t really express or impress the extent to which I found this place is a learning nirvana. For anyone or reading this or if you haven;t already done so, their delightfully clunky website is worth a visit and you can find some startling statistics about the impact of their curriculum design on
their students.
You write lucidly and argue well Andrew but there is a joylessness here that I sense is a result of you feeling at odds with what you would deem the prominent progressive educationalist view.
Correct me if I am misrepresenting you, but I believe you have previously questioned my professionalism when you said of my use of SOLO:
“If your classes benefit from being given bad ideas about how thinking works, it just makes me wonder what you were doing before.”
We later had a lengthy discussion about the nature of SOLO, you seemed to agree with the statements that thinking is based on knowledge, that we understand new things in the context of things we already know, that we make predictions when encountering new knowledge again based on what we already know. This to me is the essence of how SOLO can be used to observe learning outcomes. I described SOLO of a map for knowledge, you actually corrected me and I thank you for the clarity it gave me in that SOLO can help develop a map of knowledge. At no point in the use of the taxonomy is content knowledge ever abstracted out. SOLO is not used to measure thinking, it is used to measure outcomes or in other words depth of content knowledge.
Personally, I am a little disappointed that when a teacher says that they have tried something with success, that you use your own beliefs and stance to criticise this. I aim to do nothing in my class that serves anything other than the learning of my students. So long as you and your students are doing well, who am I to say that you are wrong? We hold very different beliefs about education I am sure, but I absolutely respect your resolution to educate your students in the way you deem best.
If this is a misrepresentation of the tweet, then I humbly apologise. I have tried to present a clear representation of not just the tweet, but the conversation.
In this post and in my case you mistakenly lambaste what was later qualified as an emotive statement. Of course we should not ban PCs, and of course we should manage their use so that technology is used to serve learning.
As a music teacher I deal primarily in “skills”. In terms of an epistemology of music, this could be describes of knowledge how to. This is where I err from Willingham’s view that factual knowledge precedes skill.
Students are perfectly capable of making music and internalising sounds before they are aware of or acquire the factual knowledge associated with those sounds. There may be some related and elementary factual knowledge such as “this is how to hold a guitar” but that is not directly related to the ability to imitate a phrase for example.
There is an inherent and unhealthy need in western culture to make music into something tangible, which is a result of a traditional hierarchical model applied to music, where the composer sits atop a chain which runs through performer to consumer. The distinction between performer/composer/listener would not be understood in many cultures. There is some excellent research on this the musicologist Nicholas Cook.
By the way I don’t think that project based learning’s requirement for a product is at odds with this observation, as the musical learning is a result of the product, but is not the product itself.
Musical progression is a difficult thing to describe non-musically. Musical Futures has had a massive impact on music education and at its heart is the teaching of music musically. Students experience and internalise sounds first, then learn the factual knowledge associated with this.
As a music teacher, and one who uses a Musical Futures approach, I support the exploration of the judicial use of mobile technology. The potential in the devices seems worth exploration, and the barriers presented are exactly that. They are bad things. They are bad things that we might overcome. The reasons why I think they could be useful are:
Many of these views are supported in the surprisingly excellent Ofsted triennial report into music in schools: Wider still and wider
0 To use as a recording device to demonstrate musical progression musically. Assessment that is musical can not be done on one piece of work but against a portfolio of evidence. This is not teaching for evidence by the way, I teach for learning.
0 Accessing resources such as musical scores, or instructional videos for example. I can’t physically directly instruct 30 students on how to play drums, flute and guitar at the same time. I can if I’m on a video.
0 Music technology is a career path for students, for example mobile devices can use garage band, which is an exceptional piece of software. I can’t afford macs.
This last point is important. I could use other devices to do these things, but they cost money and most students have mobile devices which can already do these things, and by their nature they are mobile, I physically don’t have space to put any alternative technology in my practice rooms.
Let’s not have a knee jerk reaction. Let’s look at something that has potential, but needs to be investigated. Let’s disagree with each other in a way that does not question our ability to do well for our students.
ANDREW'S RESPONSE
The stuff about mobile phones I hope to cover (either directly or indirectly in a future blogpost), however, I will try to deal with the other points.
1) It is not “misrepresentation” to sum up what you think somebody’s opinion amounts to. I directly quoted Francis Gilbert’s words.
2) “joyless” is not an “obvious meaning” in anyone’s book. In fact joy is quite a difficult concept. I tend to view it as the rewarding feeling arising from the exercise of virtues. Obviously it can also mean “happiness” or “pleasure”, but that would fit my interpretation of FG’s argument perfectly. If you have another definition, one that would actually help your point, go ahead and give it, but as things stand you actually seem to be strengthening the case for my interpretation.
3) You don’t actually appear to have stated what the flaw is with my argument about engagement unless it is the straw man that I am against students being motivated. Obviously I want students to be motivated to learn, I just consider motivation to be a means not an end.
4) Rewards and punishment are about desert, not about motivation. That’s what makes them distinct from bribes and threats. I would never seek to justify them simply as motivators, or indeed concern myself too much with manipulating others.
5) I’m not aware of effect sizes for project-based learning, although I do have a few research articles on it waiting to be read. I’m generally against it on the grounds that it tends to involve groupwork and discovery learning, both of which there is good evidence against in most contexts.
6) My objection to SOLO taxonomy is that, if we respect existing bodies of knowledge, we simply have no need for any new system of structures in which to arrange that knowledge. That’s what academic disciplines are, an arrangement of knowledge. SOLO appears to do the same job badly, providing no useful insight and no obvious benefit. The reason I don’t accept anecdotal evidence for it, is because I have heard the same evidence for so many other schemes that are completely contradictory and the only way to sort between them is with things like a coherent explanation and good empirical evidence.
MY RESPONSE
1) Perhaps misrepresentation is the incorrect word in this instance, I do think your interpretation of "more learning = bad" makes seems to make a rather incongruent jump to serve the purposes of the content of your blog. Who would rightly believe that learning is bad? Yes FG may have a stance against private schools that I also find in need of some more coherent argument but to suggest that he finds learning to be bad by proxy seems a little implausible.
You did misrepresent my twitter post though to serve this blog post as I later qualified this as an emotive statement, again clearly I do not believe that PCs should be banned.
2) 3) 4) 5) The use of the word joy I feel is appropriate for such young children. Drill has its place. I am firmly in favour of students learning their times table by rote. Using memory to assist in calculation seems an entirely appropriate way to teach numeracy. I am not so sure about sitting in silence to read though as I fail to see how this maximises the use of the teacher. You do say that the ability of young children to learn of their own accord is no excuse for not teaching them. Guided readings seems a more appropriate way to check understanding.
You qualified that you were being flippant about play in the same post, but my use of the word joy links to my definition of engagement.
I'm going to talk about personal experience here so you might want to just skip past this part. I went to a school where I learned by rote. I did quite well. I have a good memory, this helps. I think the skill that I developed best at school was being able to copy from the board without looking at my page. I honestly think that other than one superb Physics teacher, I could have done without most of the rest and just bought some textbooks. In class I would finish copying out twice as quickly as the rest of the class and then hid that I was finished and messed around. My education was entirely joyless, I took no reward from learning and I was not engaged, I had no intrinsic motivation... and yet I was successful in terms of academic grades.
I am pretty good at maths but fairly artistic and so was told I could not be a graphic designer and was coerced into an engineering degree. I lapped up the maths in the first year but had absolutely no passion for the subject whatsoever. I got 91 for the maths module and 6 for the design as I stopped turning up for those sessions (I doubt I would have done much better though). I was not ready for the work that was required as I had been spoon fed for 7 years. I decided to follow my passion and studied music, later becoming a teacher after taking a community music module and working in my old primary school. I adore my job and count my blessings each day. We cannot be passionate about every discipline and nor should we expect our students to be, but we should find ways to expose the passions of our students. If we do not make learning a reward then this is less likely to happen.
I agree wholeheartedly that motivation is a means and like you I think it something we should aim to instil. If learning is to joyful in that learners experience "the rewarding feeling arising from the exercise of virtues" during the acquisition of knowledge; at this early age then yes play is important in the sense that young children are trained to see learning as a game where learning=winning.
The quote moves from saying that such an over-academic (key word over, not academic) focus may be unsuitable for younger children, and then says that his child benefited from "learning" by doing. At no point does he say that his child learned more in the private school, this is something you have determined by elevating their teaching methods. It is the means that he is talking about and not the ends, the teaching method and its appropriateness for the children, not the amount of learning. Yes, his views seem dogmatic with regards to private schools from what I have read, but to make the bold claim that he believes learning must be bad is a step too far.
Education should be joyful by your definition. Engagement is a virtuous means. My definition of engagement as "an intrinsic motivation, to connect with one's own education as a result of seeing learning and quality outcomes as a reward" does not seem that far away from your stance.
I recognise that with the Learning Futures scheme for example you disagree with their notions of school as base-camp, extended learning relations and school as learning commons. I take issue with your categorisation of engagement as a weasel word because the word is not the problem, rather interpretation of the word and its misuse. Yes learning will not always be nor should not always be fun, nor should we look to entertain our students. However we should absolutely look to find the means to develop our students' intrinsic motivation through a "culture of quality" as Ron Berger would put it, where the work matters and is the reward, and learning is the virtue. My preferred method here is PBL and Critique.
http://www.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue6/collaboration/
Again I know as this involves some discovery learning as part of a blend and collaboration you would take issue with this, but having seen it in practice at HTH, and the way that content is scrutinised in a robust manner I am happy to use it. 80% of feedback students receive from peers is wrong. There may be an argument to avoid peer assessment, however students' peer assess informally as a matter of course. Why not try and teach them to be better assessors? Short term you might argue, "Why not teach them some stuff instead?" but my experience leads me to believe that in music less breadth of content covered with greater depth makes students more musical though this is difficult to quantify empirically. I suspect that long term I am doing the right thing for my students in spending curriculum time deliberately using and manipulating the collective intelligence of the class to challenge the quality and depth of content. Already the musical quality of their compositions, their attitude towards redrafting, understanding of and use of technical language is improving.
The above might all seem terribly flowery in its language and not rooted in empirical evidence but these are views that I hold as a result of my own experience and my reading. These are my beliefs. The things we disagree upon is a tension we are never likely to resolve. The issues I take with your posts are technical; the leap to “learning = bad” is too far I think, you used my quote without qualification, you state that engagement is a weasel word when in fact it is the interpretation of the word that is the issue. Your argument against the use mobile technology to an extent relies upon and certainly assumes a homogeny of context.
6) I absolutely respect academic disciplines and their inherent differences. I am a musician and I find it difficult to accept that non music specialists can make sound judgments on the quality of a lesson in 10 minutes in an inspection for example. The use of SOLO should bedone in context. It does not for example suppose that making abstract generalisations of a quite simple rule is higher order then understanding complex relations of causality: For example: 2,4,6,8 – What is the next number the nth term=(n-1)+2 therefore the next term is 10 would be classified as extended abstract. However clearly this is not deeper content knowledge than understanding and articulating how the Treaty of Versailles was a cause of World War II which would be classified as relational.
What SOLO does is give you a shared language of learning; it helps you to form a map of content knowledge (again thanks for your wording). In a more discrete context it helps students understand how they might be able to use their new knowledge. It does not exist to supplant the existing bodies of content knowledge. I find it useful to plan questions. Many others find it useful to signpost a way for their students to display deeper learning outcomes with discrete curriculum content.
I absolutely disagree that it abstracts knowledge from the picture or that it presents an incorrect model of thinking. It is used to measure depth of content knowledge.
There may not be a need for it, but if it works in your context and helps why not use it? A bit like mobile technology.
