Help Me Solve It Application by Niall Mackinnon, Avernish Prospect To

Help me solve it

Application by Niall MacKinnon, Avernish Prospect to present at the WISE summit, 2019.

What would you name your challenge?

Disinspect schooling! Opening up an account ability gap for real learning.

Tell us more about your education challenge

How does your proposal align with the Summit theme “UnLearn, Relearn: What it means to be Human”?

Being at school is part of life. But it is more than that. It is life – for a pupil/student, for a teacher and everyone else in and associated with our school communities – parents, ancillary staff and the wider community near and far. Schooling is about the living of life. It is about doing it now, just as much as it is for preparing for roles in the future. It is not just outcome focussed it is present focused. So when we are at school do we frame our consciousness in this way; do we think like this? I think we should. But audit has a lot of unlearning to do if it seeks to assist and be part of such an entity. It must stop trying to make us think in ways we don’t, because we do the real work and they don’t. Audit needs to engage and understand what we do so that it can then serve us, linking the components of the system so that they cohere. It once did that. It now needs to relearn the means to serve that purpose – ours, not theirs – set in very altered circumstances. It needs to generate knowledge not impose assumptions.

Initial ideas and message (description of main ideas and talking points)

For nearly a decade and a half I was the class-committed principal of a small rural primary school in Scotland. The country brought in a new curriculum framework from 2004. Its central purpose was to foster children’s potential as four capacities of responsibility, confidence, contribution and learning. They were set in a Scottish Education Weave of layered conceptual and operational components. This was an expressly transformational national endeavour. The capacities were framed as embodiments of potential centred on personal development, awareness and capability. It was a major shift from the hitherto focus on targetised attainment. Learning became part of something bigger, more intrinsic, more purposive, more relevant, more connected. This was a bold redirection of expressed goals for a national school education system. It came about following a two-year national conversation of educators and all communities of interest. The incoming framework linked changing modes of consciousness arising through new digital media, assessment for learning, global citizenship, re-localisation, and new forms of collaborative learning, amongst much else. To bring the endeavour to life we were asked to ‘build the curriculum’ – a developmental strategy of that name. It was not implementation. This was not simply another initiative. The task was to reframe purpose and transform practice to it. We were asked to build this philosophy in our schools within the nationally agreed framework. It was not about prescription, and certainly not of imposed procedures. This was about re-visioning education. We were asked to make all this work for us in our locales, fashioned according to our context and needs. This was the basis of school education policy in Scotland for the twelve years to January 2016 when it was replaced. In Plockton Primary School we were enthusiastic exponents of the 2004-16 review principles and the central four-capacities approach. We opened up new potential through new technological potentialities, but what was really new was the thinking. It was about intrinsic meaning in learning. It was about being. This was to dispose the mind to think in new ways, to open up new potential through new means, technological and social. It was not about performance, or delivery or targets or tracking. It was about purpose. It was about ownership. To broad goals, we worked with the national curriculum agency, our local authority employer and government education department on collaborative action research projects, some of which were competitively bid for and awarded. We worked with external partners near and far. Our practice formed case studies of external bodies. This is not a ‘hear my story’ so I only touch on what we undertook, what altered, what successes and difficulties we encountered and what we achieved. Of central importance is what this all meant at the individual pupil/student level. We sought that they become the owners of these tasks and the purposes wherein they lay. We made major wholescale changes to our planning, development, assessment and organisational procedures and frameworks in accordance with the new national endeavour. There was one problem I and colleagues could not overcome. It was external inspection and its local authority bedfellow ‘quality assurance’. These audits imposed judgements as imposed text and grades to pre-existing grade descriptors. But they didn’t make sense. I was in an out-of-school role from 2013. This gave me the opportunity to enter into a reflective and analytical mode as to our school achievements, and the nature of its transformation, concerning what was going on in our national system, and beyond. I wrote these thoughts up and presented on them, worldwide. I came to reflect on my role as the local lead manager, and also practitioner with a more than three-quarters full-time teaching commitment 2001 to mid-2012. I came to understand the promoters and inhibitors of system change. I came to the realisation that our audit agencies were opposed to the curriculum framework because they were misaligned to its conceptual rationale and hence their procedures followed suit. I presented at international congresses on Scotland’s central four capacities reform throughout the world. As I did in Indonesia, Chile, the US, Canada, Norway and Singapore so did they. But what I and they presented was entirely contradictory, yet of the same national system. Note that I was presenting on enacted policy of over a decade to national guidelines from my stance as teacher practitioner and school principal. So my challenge to you here is the mismatch between audit and curriculum. The challenge lies in the underlying concepts and assumptions. What form of curriculum? (Not just as content). What form of audit? To what purpose? For what outcome? And for what lived reality on the way there? For education is very much about the journey not the end point. Evaluation is (should be) about evidential engagement to enable learning disposing to action to optimise function to achieve purpose. It is not an act of judgement. It is about meaning and understanding to serve need and enable potential. Distil purpose. Generate meaning. Seek data. Garner insight. Generate knowledge. Adjust. Investigate. Learn. Reflect. Then stop. Smile. Look about. Be. And carry on. I loved my job. We had a great time, but then we had a terrible time. Only slowly did I come to understand why. We had a terrible time because we were having a great time. We were getting somewhere, achieving something new, going somewhere new but in an audit, policy, reform and audit world which wasn’t. There came to be a fundamental conceptual mismatch. Our curriculum agency did one thing, and our audit agency did another. We were pulled in two directions. This is about institutional power. The problem is that the modes of thought are determined by audit. Instead they should be determined by purpose, derived from needs and potentials enabled through organisational means. This is to reframe audit as integral understanding which brings schools and their communities into the process as partners. Then we may re-humanise audit and transform it into understanding, to build organisational knowledge. I seek a change towards this mode of thinking and practice right across our system, and beyond. For me personally, I wish to be re-enabled to do my job in a remote little school in the far North-West seaboard of Europe, for the contradictions rendered it impossible. But it is a universal challenge. It is the challenge here that I seek the wisdom of the crowd to solve. Can we make external governance, accountability and reform serve our needs as school communities, rather than we serve theirs? Can we make school communities the agents of education system change? Can we turn we and they into us working together? I think we can! That is why I am here. We need a re-humanised school education system, and meta-system. To do that we need to reframe our thinking. We’ve got some unlearning to do first. We’ve got to unpack accountability, turn it inside out and break it apart and then re-form it, which is the true meaning of reform. Is accountability able to give an account of itself and so itself become account able? Mind the gap between the two words which is that of real learning and is where our humanity resides. We must rediscover the relationship between the parts in our immense school systems. They need to work together, as systems, not as fractured components. So what can I, those who come after me in my job and role and those steering our national system do about this? Can we reframe our practices and assumptions about the linkage of audit and practice? Can account ability replace accountability? Can we all become account able in holistic, meaningful, purposive, explanatory interrelationships replacing destructive, one-way, one-sided accountability? Is there a solution out there? Over to you.

Who will present your challenge to the audience? (short biography of the speaker if different from the registered delegate)

Niall MacKinnon

Please name your organization (Short presentation if applicable)

Avernish Prospect/ formerly Plockton Primary School, Highland Council, Scotland, UK

Please provide us with speaking references (if any)

Relevant to this application (available on request with text, slides, abstracts): MacKinnon, N., (2009). Reckoning with a New Curriculum, Talk given at the Annual Conference of the Association of Head Teachers and Deputies in Scotland – November 2009. MacKinnon, N., (2014) The Local–National–Global Nexus of Education Change – Action Research Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School, 27th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia MacKinnon, N., (2014). What do we need to do to build cultural capacity for innovation in your context? A personal perspective of school education in Scotland, International panel invited presentation, Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Universiteé Laval, Ville de Queébec, Canada. MacKinnon, N., (2015). Inter-school collaboration – a practitioner perspective. Presentation at the 3P Network Forum for Policymakers, Politicians and Practitioners, 28th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA MacKinnon, N., (2015). Schools as agents of system change, 28th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA MacKinnon, N., (2015). New Presenting – New Linking – New Thinking: Pedagogic Innovation Beyond Learning, Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Innovation and Digital Technology: Between Continuity and Change. Trieste, Italy MacKinnon, N., (2016). The need for systems thinking to build cultural capacity for innovation throughout school education, Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Singapore. June. MacKinnon N., (2017). Closing the gap from within – reframing assessment through integral understanding, International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Ottawa, Canada. January (abstract only enclosed) MacKinnon, N., and Teo, C.L. (2018). Workshop: Designing Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment to Support Children in Enacting Purpose in their Learning Through Knowledge Building. International Conference for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Singapore MacKinnon, N.,(2018). Enabling Purpose as Children’s Learning: System Change from the Ground Up. International Conference for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Singapore MacKinnon, N., (2018). Seeking Purpose Beyond Learning as Knowledge Building. Conference presentation:Knowledge Building Summer Institute, ‘Knowledge Building: A Place for Everyone in a Knowledge Society’, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. August 2018 MacKinnon, N., (2019). Systems thinking and formative engagement as a new basis for the collaborative enhancement of school education, International Conference for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Stavanger, Norway.

Please upload additional supporting documents to strengthen your proposal (if any)

Churches and McBride (2012). Making external school review effective - Findings from the 2012 Windsor International Conference on School Improvement through Inspection and External Review, CfBT Education Trust, pages 22 and 114. Commentary on: MacKinnon, Niall. (2011d). The urgent need for new approaches in school evaluation to enable Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, Volume 23, Number 1. February https://www.educationdevelopmenttrust.com/EducationDevelopmentTrust/files/c9/c95397 1b-53b2-423a-9db7-6b62915b66f7.pdf MacBeath, John and Moos, Leijf. (2011). ‘Editorial’, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, Volume 23, Number 1. February. Commentary on: MacKinnon, Niall. (2011d). MacKinnon, N., (2009). Reckoning with a New Curriculum, Talk given at the Annual Conference of the Association of Head Teachers and Deputies in Scotland – November 2009. MacKinnon, N., (2011a). ‘Finnish Lessons for Scotland’, online article in Bower, Joe ‘For the love of learning’, Alberta, Canada (11 November) http://joe-bower.blogspot.com/2011/11/finnish- lessons-for-scotland.html MacKinnon, N., (2011b). Systems learning, not inspection, Holyrood Magazine, 11 March http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1rftx/HolyroodmagazineIssu/resources/90.htm MacKinnon, N.,. (2011c). ‘Let’s re-energise 'living learning', Times Educational Supplement for Scotland. 18 February. https://www.tes.com/news/lets-re-energise-living-learning and as Member comment: A world leading culture of true learning?, ‘Head to Head’, Journal of the Association of Headteachers and Deputies in Scotland, June 2011 (with minor additions) MacKinnon, N., (2012). ‘A Scottish Headteacher’s View of the Effectiveness Challenge’, ICSEI Express and Digest, The International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, May http://newsite.icsei.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ICSEIEXPRESS2012_Vol3_1.pdf (page 10) and published as: MacKinnon, N., (2012). The 25th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, ‘for the love of learning, http://www.joebower.org/2012/01/25th-international-congress-for-school.html 27 January MacKinnon, N., (2014). The Local–National–Global Nexus of Education Change – Action Research Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School, 27th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia MacKinnon, N., (2014). What do we need to do to build cultural capacity for innovation in your context? A personal perspective of school education in Scotland, International panel invited presentation, Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Universiteé Laval, Ville de Queébec, Canada. MacKinnon, N., (2018). Seeking Purpose Beyond Learning as Knowledge Building. Conference presentation:Knowledge Building Summer Institute, ‘Knowledge Building: A Place for Everyone in a Knowledge Society’, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. August 2018 Three articles which reference and interlink sequentially to each other: ‘As I Say Goodbye To Headship’ by Nigel Utton, departing head teacher (2014), Bromstone Primary School, Broadstairs, Kent, England. https://www.teachers.org.uk/files/nigel-utton-expert-view.may- 2014.docx ; ‘Global Educational Reform Movement is here!’ by Pasi Sahlberg, winner of the 2013 Grawemayer Award and visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, http://pasisahlberg.com/global-educational-reform-movement-is-here/ ; ‘Kills 99.9% of GERMs’ by Niall MacKinnon, departing head teacher (2016), Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland. https://www.tes.com/news/tes-archive/tes-publication/kills-999-germs The 3P Network members Karen Seashore (USA), Anton Florek (England) and Boudewijn van Velzen (The Netherlands) organized a workshop that explored a relative new phenomen in systems in which the traditional hierarchy seems to be no longer effective. There was an interesting resonance from the audience on the issues presented by folks from Australia, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany et cetera – not only in the workshop itself but also in some of the keynotes. There is a shift happening on multiple levels in systems world wide, and not only in the education sector.

System boundaries as we know them don’t seem to matter that much any more. In the middle tier unfamiliar agents are going to be active. Organizational learning in schools will need to be more than professional development approaches.

It should lead to serious questions about the nature of school organizations where networks seem to be the norm more than the well known organograms. And as a consequence that process will challenge leadership in the schools. Being a good educational leader will no longer suffice.

Inspired by our encounters and by comments from 3P members who could not be there in Zug we’ve decided to continue our effort to write a monograph, a think piece about the middle tier in education. The aim is to have it published some time in 2016 and discuss it during the ICSEI 2017. For comments, please write to [email protected].

Contact your Network Leaders for more network activities  Leadership: Jacob Easley II ([email protected]) and Pierre Tulowitzki ([email protected])  MORE: Daniel Muijs ([email protected] and Marcus Pietsch ([email protected])  Early childhood: Persille Schwartz ([email protected])  3P: Naomi Mertens ([email protected]) and Erica van Roosmalen ([email protected])  Data use: Kim Schildkamp ([email protected]) and Jan Vanhoof ([email protected])

4.The Next Edition  ICSEI EXPRESS  ICSEI DIGEST

4.1 ICSEI EXPRESS Expect another issue in December, 2015. At that time, we will share some more news and highlights of the Glasgow Congress, and feature updates and perspectives from our network.

4.2 ICSEI DIGEST 1. Inter-School Collaboration: a Practitioner Perspective Author: Niall MacKinnon Affiliation: Highland Council, Scotland http://www.plockton.com/primary/

Niall MacKinnon explains how a changing national curriculum and inter-school networking led him to become involved in ICSEI and the 3P Network. This is a précis of a presentation at the 3P breakfast seminar at ICSEI Cincinnati. Illustrations of student work are also included. He is planning to attend at the Glasgow Congress.

Plockton Primary School in the Highlands of Scotland has been closely involved in initiatives arising from social and technological change (MacKinnon, 2014). We are rural and small. Children are taught in the same multi-stage classes over several years. This requires lack of content repetition. Practice became a set of unique occurrences year on year. The planning load had to be taken off, to prevent staff burnout. We came to enable opportunities around frameworks and capability. We matched these to Scotland’s new curriculum approach. It is centred on children’s potential as ‘Four Capacities’ of: Confidence, Contribution, Responsibility and Learning. Forward planning declined in intensity just as personalisation increased, given a range of ages, needs and altering approaches.

New learning opportunities became constellations of purpose. External changes, the new curriculum approach, and school characteristics disposed to networking. Inter-school collaboration began as a few one-offs, taking us away from fixed plans for a while. These became more frequent. They came to replace the fixed plans. We sought new systems to ensure breadth,

balance and coverage. Collaboration turned into a philosophy and a way of being. This is a complex blend, requiring ‘Professional Capital’ (Fullan & Hargreaves, 2012). Without it such an approach cannot proceed, let alone succeed. We came to re-write school development and administration guidance to this new approach. It fitted with one interpretation of our new national curriculum framework. These then constitute behaviours which are formative to and of the system beyond specific schools. Schools are not mere recipients of policy.

This approach fits certain forms of education philosophy and not others. It turned away from an orientation of ‘curriculum as product’ towards that of ‘curriculum as process’ (3). A tension arose between development and audit. Competing frameworks and methods remain in place in Scotland for these functions. This remains a problem. Different bodies and processes operate according to different notions of curriculum. Power is a major factor in mediating education change. The system must become adept at ‘learning from below’.

Inter-school dynamics do not just require enabling links at an operational level between those involved. They involve brokering with other players – those who sanction and permit initiatives – that which has been articulated in the ICSEI 3P Network discourse as the ‘authorising environment’. For us the linkages became forms of education practice. Indeed they came to define a model of education philosophy. The linkages formed dynamic entities through which we came to articulate meaning. This moves on to theory and practice models. For instance forms of inter-school communication spawned new forms of media literacy.

In this way a school can become more linked in with and relevant to the world beyond school. Inter-school collaboration is a means to that. For me that has led on to other forms of partnership. ICSEI and the 3P Network was a natural progression. I did not pre-plan that. Yet this is what ICSEI and the 3P Network is all about. It is a consequence of a culture of collaboration. Just as we need to foster links between schools we need to broker links across the layers of our school systems, especially that of policymakers, politicians and practitioners – the 3P’s of the ICSEI 3P Network. We are greater than the sum of our parts.

(1) Fullan, Michael and Hargreaves, Andy. (2012) Professional Capital – transforming teaching in every school. Routledge: London & New York (2) MacKinnon, Niall. (2014) The Local–National–Global Nexus of Education Change – Action Research Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School, 27th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia (3) Sahlberg, Pasi. (2005) ‘Curriculum change as learning – in search of better implementation’ in: Curriculum Reform and Implementation in the 21st Century – Policies, Perspectives and Implementation. International Conference on Curriculum Reform and Implementation in the 21st Century: Policies, Perspectives and Implementation, June 8-10, 2005, Istanbul, Turkey

2. Leading School Improvement: from Theory to Practice. Author: Cherylynne Gostow Affiliation: Deputy Principal, Ellenbrook Christian College, Western Australia

Context: In Australia every school or system has to develop and publish a school improvement plan. My research during 2014 was focused on negotiating the space between system and school leadership as we developed a system improvement plan (SIP) for implementation across the seven schools in the Swan Christian Education Association. (Paper was uploaded to ICSEI conference 2015 website).

This year as Deputy Principal: Innovative Learning Design K-12 in one of our schools, my focus has shifted to the implementation of our research-informed system improvement plan. I recognized early the need to distil from the vast scope of the SIP a sharp focus for teachers, students and our parent community. Once this aspect of our SIP is embedded in our practices, we will move on to the next step in our implementation plan. Along the way, I am collecting data to monitor our effectiveness and guide our process.

The implementation strategy: My role is to support teachers in developing a shared understanding of what Quality Teaching looks like and the conditions that give rise to Quality Learning for students. We have weekly professional learning workshops for teachers where each aspect of the markers we have identified as representing Quality Teaching and Quality Learning are examined. This forms the basis for ongoing conversations surrounding our improvement plan.

In the first weeks, once we had identified our focus, I found many teachers were still asking what our strategy was. I kept wondering where the communication was flawed. To me the direction was crystal clear! A conversation with my professional mentor included the phrase ‘marinade them in the message’. Reflecting on this, I decided to create a simple business card that teachers could use as a reminder. One teacher took two cards and taped them either side of the touchpad on her laptop. I was thinking about something more durable when I came up with the idea of plastic cards – rather like a loyalty card or a corporate identity card that often includes the company’s values. This serves the dual purpose of marketing our school and making our message memorable.

We have distributed plastic cards, printed on each side, to all in our community (teachers, parents and students) to ensure we all share the sharp focus. The card (design below) provides a handy reference point for every conversation about our work surrounding improving student learning outcomes.

KNOWLEDGE BUILDING: A PLACE FOR EVERYONE IN A KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

KBSI2018 PROCEEDINGS

2018 Knowledge Building Summer Institute Toronto, Ontario, Canada August 14-17, 2018

Knowlege Building International 22nd Annual Knowledge Building Summer Institute Knowledge Building: A Place for Everyone in a Knowledge Society August 14-17, 2018 Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Conference Organizers: Knowledge Building International (KBI) Institute for Knowledge Building Innovation and Technology (IKIT)

Conference Chair: Marlene Scardamalia

KBSI2018 Committee: Carl Bereiter, Renato Carvalho, Stacy Costa, Frank de Jong, Robert Huang, Ahmad Khanlari, Therese Laferriere, Susana La Rosa, Leanne Ma, Richard Reeve, Monica Resendes, Joel Wiebe, Ying-Tien Wu, Gaoxia Zhu, Brian Zijlstra

KBSI2018 Design Experiment: The teachers: Patricia Berrones, Lori Belford, Patricia Flores, Emily Horner, Darlene Martin, Suzana Millnovich, & Pieter Toth. The students from San Francisco Javier School, San Luis de Potosí, Mexico; St. Michel, Quebec, Canada; Lok Sin Tong Wong Chung Ming Secondary School, Hong Kong; St. Anne’s Elementary School & Dundas Valley Secondary School, Ontario, Canada. Thanks to Ann Russell and her team for welcoming the Design Experiment group to The Michener Institute of Education at UHN.

A special thanks to our colleagues, who assisted us with the review process: Alisa Acosta, Kate Bielaczyc, Maria Bogouslavsky, Renato Carvalho, Donatella Cesareni, Bodong Chen, Stacy Costa, Frank de Jong, Joseph Gallifa, Huang-Yao Hong, Robert Huang, Ahmad Khanlari, Derya Kici, Pei-Yi Lin, Francesc Martinez, Yoshiaki Matsuzawa, Sandy McAuley, Cesar Nunes, Jun Oshima, Ritsuko Oshima, Hyejin Park, Don Philip, Joanna Qi, Monica Resendes, Giuseppe Ritella, Hai-Peng Wan, Li-Jen Wang, Joel Wiebe, Guangji Yuan, Anna Zhou, Gaoxia Zhu

Table of Contents

Long Papers Scripted Idea Improvement in a Learning Community Curriculum for Grade 12 Biology……….. 2 Alisa Acosta, James D. Slotta Multi-Modelling Dialogic Skills: The Use of Multiple Resources to Support Classroom Dialogue……………………………………………………………………………………….. 10 Anja Amundrud Learning from the Knowledge Builders: Students Making Sense of the Change to a Classroom Knowledge Building Community…………………………………………………………….. 18 Katerine Bielaczyc Citizens in the Making: An Interdisciplinary Knowledge Building Approach in Citizenship Education……………………………………………………………………………………… 25 Melvin Chan, Anthony Chua, Teo Chew Lee Towards the Realization of a Mobile Extended Knowledge Building Community………………. 32 Robert Huang Building on Design Thinking: Pedagogical Challenges and Titanic Solutions…………………… 39 Paul J. McElheron One Bloody Thing After Another: Barriers to Knowledge Building among Hematopathology Residents in Two Countries…………………………………………………………………… 46 Rumina Musani, Donald N. Philip ViSuAl The Video Supported Collaborative Learning Knowledge Alliance Erasmus+ (EU)- Project………………………………………………………………………………………… 54 José Ramos, Frank de Jong, Maaike Vonk, Ruis Espadeiro, Alberto Cattaneo, Ali Leijen, Sirpa Laitinen-Vaananen, Eila Burns, Marije Bent, Narda Tiebosch, Himno Bel Idea Generation and the Shared Epistemic Object of Knowledge in an Artifact-Mediated Co- Invention Project……………………………………………………………………………… 65 Sini Riikonen, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Kai Hakkarainen The Boundaries of Knowledge Society to Prepare Teachers in Iran……………………………… 74 Mahmoud Talkhabi, Erfane Ghasempour Khoshroodi, Ahmad Khanlari, Elahe Ghasempour Khoshroodi Creating Cultural and Epistemic Carryovers for Sustaining Idea-Centric Practices: A Principal's Contribution…………………………………………………………………………………… 80 Chew Lee Teo, Edwin Chan Developing Low-Achieving Students' Understanding and Engagement in Productive Discourse through Meta-Talk in Knowledge Building…………………………………………………... 88 Yuyao Tong, Carol K.K. Chan Fostering Student Voice and Epistemic Agency through Knowledge Building………………….. 96 Pieter Toth, Leanne Ma Mobile Knowledge Building: Toward a New Conceptual Framework…………………………… 105 Joel Wiebe Learning from Cross-boundaries Collaboration in Knowledge Building Communities with the Support of Idea Thread Mapper………………………………………………………………. 114 Guangji Yuan, Jianwei Zhang, Mei-hua Chen, Patricia Gagnon, Stacy Kirk The Use of Knowledge Building Scaffolds by Grade 7 Students………………………………… 120 Gaoxia Zhu, Chew Lee Teo, Ahmad Khanlari, Shahizah Bte Mohd

ii SHORT PAPERS The Impact of Brokers towards Students' Knowledge Growth in Knowledge Building………….. 129 Yujie Chen, Yibing Zhang Offline Group-level Knowledge Building Discourse in a Large Community…………………….. 138 Xueqi Feng, Jan van Aalst, Carol K.K. Chan An Integrated Inquiry about Energy and Environmental Issues in a Grade 5 Classroom………… 147 Derya Kici, Tanya Demjanenko, Montana Kleinman, Jianwei Zhang Transformation of Teachers through Knowledge Building: Utilizing a “Growth Mindset” in a Secondary School……………………………………………………………………………... 154 Derya Kici, Marlene Scardamalia Designs for Visualizing Emergent Trends in Ideas during Community Knowledge Advancement 158 Leanne Ma Seeking Purpose Beyond Learning as Knowledge Building……………………………………… 163 Niall MacKinnon How are Ideas Advanced? A Multifaceted Investigation of Discourse in Knowledge Building…. 167 Hyejin Park, Jianwei Zhang Emerging Concepts for Co-designing Technology for Dialogic Practices – the Case with Talkwall……………………………………………………………………………………….. 174 Ole Smørdal Exploring the Contribution of Students with Learning Difficulties in an Inclusive Co-invention Project…………………………………………………………………………………………. 179 Kati Sormunen, Kai Hakkarainen, Sini Riikonen, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Kalle Juuti, Jari Lavonen, Tiina Korhonen Knowledge Building and the Practical Design Principles in the Master Learning and Innovation of Aeres Applied University, the Netherlands………………………………………………... 186 Lia Spreeuwenberg, Frank de Jong, Niek van Benthum, Hennie van Heijst Promoting Students' Participation in Classroom Discussions through Knowledge Building Circle………………………………………………………………………………………….. 191 Changhong Yin, Yibing Zhang, Yujie Chen

INNOVATIVE FORMAT PROPOSALS Knowledge Building Collaboratory: An Open Platform to Support Collaboration on Innovative Initiatives for Knowledge Building Research and Practice…………………………………… 199 Renato Carvalho, Brian Zijlstra, Marlene Scardamalia Knowledge Building Analytics: From Analysis to Actionable Insights…………………………... 200 Bodong Chen, Yu-Hui Chang, Gaoxia Zhu, Leanne Ma, Ahmad Khanlari, Stacy Costa, Alwyn Vwen Yen Lee, Seng Chee Tan, Xueqi Feng, Wanli Xing, Bo Pei Collaborative Annotations in Knowledge Forum: How to transform Knowledge & “Static” Learning with Students………………………………………………………………………... 203 Stacy A. Costa A Case Study in 21st Century Teaching & Learning: Getting it Right or Getting it Started?...... 204 Alexander McAuley Analyse-Reflect-with-Technology: KB & LA in Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment of 21st Century Competencies………………………………………………………………………... 205 Chew Lee Teo, Melvin Chan, Anthony Chua, Ahmad Khanlari, Leanne Ma, Monica Resendes, David Groos, Bodong Chen, Carol Chan, Xueqi Feng, Yuyao Tong The Idea Thread Mapper Project: Sustaining Knowledge Building across Classrooms………… 208 Jianwei Zhang, Mei-Hwa Chen, the ITM Team University at Albany, SUNY

iii POSTERS The 'Progressive Design Method' Development: How to Promote Students' Participation in Blended University Courses………………………………………………………………….. 222 Stefano Cacciamani Lens of a Knowledge Building practitioner: Enhancing Teaching and Learning of Music……… 223 Melvin Chan, Anthony Chua, Teo Chew Lee Knowledge Improvement Cycle and Map: Scaffolding the Grasp of the KB Principle, Improvable Ideas, Through Visualizations…………………………………………………… 225 David Groos, Bodong Chen Knowledge Building: Indices of Impacting Builders to Assess the Collective Cognitive Responsibility…………………………………………………………………………………. 227 Calixto Gutiérrez-Braojos, Leanne Ma, Jesús Montejo-Gámez, Bodong Chen Knowledge Building Research: Transience, Continuance and Core Authors…………………….. 228 Calixto Gutiérrez-Braojos, Jesús Montejo-Gámez, Fátima Poza-Vilches Contribution to the Archaeoschool Virtual Museum through the Incorporation of a Baroque Hall with Representative Objects from the Cholula Area, Located in Puebla, Mexico……………. 229 Oscar Hernández, Iris Caballero, Karina Ramos Knowledge Building in a Parenting Education Community………………………………………. 230 Jie Qian Knowledge Building and Vocabulary Growth in English: A Case Study………………………… 231 Ahmad Khanlari, Gaoxia Zhu, Chew Lee Teo Engaging Students in Authentic Science through Knowledge Building using Virtual World…… 233 Min Lee, Carol K.K. Chan 5th Graders Building Knowledge in a Science Class……………………………………………... 234 Pei-Yi Lin, Huang-Yao Hong, Ching Sing Chai Exploring Novice Teachers' Reflections and Design Practices on Knowledge-Building in Junior High School Classrooms……………………………………………………………………… 235 Pei-Yi Lin, Yu-Hui Chang, Bodong Chen Knowledge Forum as Qualitative Research Platform…………………………………………….. 236 Yoshiaki Matsuzawa Designing for Knowledge Building: An Action Research Study in an Elementary Classroom….. 237 Robin Parker Knowledge Building and Professional Learning………………………………………………….. 238 Rema Passarelli Knowledge Forum® as Knowledge Development Environment in a Community of Practice…… 239 Gerrit Veldman, Frank de Jong The Intellectual Structure of Empirical Knowledge Building Studies Published in the Selected Journals from 2006 to 2017: A Co-citation Network Analysis……………………………….. 240 Ying-Tien Wu, Kai-Yu Tang Extending Knowledge Building Discourses through Cross Community Collaborations…………. 241 Guangji Yuan, Jianwei Zhang

iv Knowledge Building Summer Institute, ‘Knowledge Building: A Place for Everyone in a Knowledge Society’ Toronto, Canada, August 2018

Seeking Purpose Beyond Learning as Knowledge Building

Dr Niall MacKinnon

Social Analyst & former Headteacher, Avernish Prospect, Scotland, UK

Demonstrative discussion Abstract The purpose of this session is to examine specific ‘learning artefacts’ and ‘evidence of processes’ created by children in a nursery and primary school education context that exemplify the collaborative building of knowledge. Their relevance and means of gestation lie in that ‘space beyond’ which I identify as the space beyond formalised learning, wherein lies Knowledge Building yet does not necessarily comprise it.

Introduction The purpose of this session is to examine specific ‘learning artefacts’ and ‘evidence of processes’ created by children in a nursery and primary school education context that exemplify the collaborative building of knowledge. This is not to demonstrate that they have ‘learned’ something whether as content, skill or awareness, or have demonstrated creativity, or enabled some whizzbang, wonderful or indeed ‘excellent’ outcome. Their relevance and means of gestation lie in that ‘space beyond’ which I identify as the space beyond formalised learning. It is the space wherein lies Knowledge Building yet does not necessarily comprise it. The examples arose in operational zones where I as teacher didn’t control the learning or at least, not overly, in that I did provide parameters and wherewithal and set a context but did not seek to constrain, or more particularly, to specify. However that does not mean that there were not sophisticated or extensive frameworks, guidelines or curriculum components as a backdrop at school, education authority and system level. Indeed it was an awareness and appropriate utilisation of these, in the context of enabling learning and developmental opportunities, that these examples arose. The learning went beyond what I had planned or foreseen, to form in collaborative endeavour, entering the realm of Knowledge Building, as I see it, for there are many ways of seeing it, notwithstanding its formal definition and components (Scardamalia 2002) as underlie this Summer Institute.

Analytic perspective The formal curriculum frameworks and components were very much there, but I viewed them as an overlay. Of themselves they do not switch on learning and enable personal development except in coercive form by making tests and grades the purpose of learning (Bower 2013). Whilst an array of content, skills and personal development was present and necessary, and was here sophisticated, I was interested in how children came to become aware of their own needs and potentialities which were expressed through endeavours as realisation of purpose. I came to see purpose as a primary enabler of motivation, and thereby means of acquisition of developmental potentials – individually and collectively – and so to the building of knowledge. In a small rural school context with multi-age classes and also having a large range of additional support needs I came to view my job as to provide a guiding theme, yet seeking to enable diversity, in such a way that there were cohesive tasks but a wide range of learning components and broader developmental opportunities. This approach emerged in a sense as educator Knowledge Building in which I and colleagues could best meet the diverse needs of pupils/students, in the sense of setting out the conditions to ‘best’ enable these, best only meaning the best as I could do as I could perceive relating to the needs and potentialities as I saw them. These were identified at the individual level, yet pupils/students with very different developmental stages and needs had to function purposively together. This disposed towards collaboration. This is what attracted me to Knowledge Building and to other modes of thinking and practice within the same stable, in particular systems thinking, especially as developed by Seddon (2008). I and colleagues sought to to reach out to very diverse needs and potentialities of the pupils/students, also focussing on these as an unknown to be revealed (Bower 2013). In so doing we moved away from a focus on delivery, target and product modes of learning as ‘learnification’ (Biesta 2009) and performativity (Ball 2003) to the meeting of needs, spawning potentialities, and

1 KBSI2018 163 enabling capacities of personal development. That shift of locus is hard to pin down. It is teacher as collaborator, rather than as disseminator or adjudicator. Formal assessment could be viewed more as recording than grading. Evaluation moves from performance management to professional capital (Fullan and Hargreaves 2012), reversing the global trend of the last fifteen years, though with significant counter examples (e.g Sahlberg 2011; 2015) even within the same education system (MacKinnon 2011a) The journey I have been on in a practice context mirrors that of the conceptual and theoretical nature of the wider systems, far and near. But this has been largely in reverse, as school systems have sought greater control and specification, thus disposing to learnification (Biesta 2009), performativity (Ball 2003), neo-liberalism in education governance (Ball (2015) and the Global Educational Reform Movement (Sahlberg 2011, 2012 and 2015). Knowledge Building operates in different terrain, as I see it. There is a need to articulate this deep divide more specifically, as an immune response (MacKinnon 2011c), giving rise to alternative forms of education system change and reform (and stability in the sense of not changing things which do not need changing) and of evaluation and assessment which are consonant with this philosophy. There needs to be a shift from measurement to understanding, utilising measures as a means to comprehend but not as an end in themselves (see Seddon 2008 outlining systems thinking). To this end I urge a shift of audit and scrutiny from accountability to ‘account ability’ (MacKinnon 2011a).

Major goals: What we may seek to collectively achieve/accomplish The session seeks to take the specific examples given, as selected by the presenter who was researcher, action implementation developer and teacher, to explore the ‘space beyond’ learning. I seek that we collectively further explore or refine the concept of Knowledge Building and its practical applicability through relating concrete examples to the essential motivations and purposes which lay in their formation by pupils/students. In a sense then the artefacts are emergent indicators of Knowledge Building as much they are also the means by which it is enabled. Of necessity Knowledge Building is a fuzzy concept. In this session I frame attention in order that we may understand Knowledge Building further by examining it through the specific lens of purpose; the purpose being that which arose in these pupils/students as they sought means to articulate, navigate and realise their purposes within the class and school setting (which also occurred off- site as class and school activity). They were their purposes, not mine, even if I was a very active contributor to the context and enablement of opportunity for them to arise. But I did not seek that they should arise, specifically. So much surprised me, which I would see as an oblique indicator of active Knowledge Building. I came to see that this was how the children built motivation and the desire to foster specific skills, awarenesses and knowledge, as a means to enable the purposes which they had constructed. These may be quite local, ephemeral or fleeting. Also they may be repetitive, incrementally building modes of awareness over time through similar repeated actions, slowly changing to match altering development. I came to see that this aspect very much applied to deeper potentials of building informed attitudes or developing specific orientations of personal development, on to higher order thinking and application. The approach also applied specifically to children whom I perceived exhibited characteristics of deficiencies of nurture or organic dispositions of additional support need. Thus a Knowledge- Building approach could reach out to the needs of pupils exhibiting what has been termed ‘the attainment gap’ but utilising approaches far removed from performativity as have come to be commonly applied and which are entrenching, leading to ‘subjectivity as a site of struggle’ (Ball 2015).

Focus The audience is engaged by attention to specific practice contexts through tangible artefacts set by the scholarly context as realised in the conceptual and theoretical underlay of this conference. I make the assumption that those present are familiar with the concept and development of Knowledge Building and its component elements. An aim is to foster discussion of the development of Knowledge Building itself as articulated through the concept of purpose. This is prompted but not constrained by the artefacts. In many pedagogic contexts we hear of the desire to ‘get inside’ learning. I want to (start to) do something subtly different – to ‘get inside’ Knowledge Building. This cannot be seen directly but is made apparent, in one respect, through actions as formed with regard to purpose. I see the relationship of Knowledge Building with purpose as two-way and it is that which I explore through discussion in the session, with the artefacts as prompts which guide our way into the thinking and collaborative realisation which formed them. I also touch on the great divides which operate at the system level, and which require application of modes of Knowledge Building to overcome the barriers which stand in their way, many of those lying within the operational dispositions of education governance and administration, including the directions of school and education ‘reform’

2 KBSI2018 164 as widely adopted. By becoming clearer as to what we are enabling and why we may then construct and develop frameworks which protect us as a Knowledge-Building community from destructive ‘reform’ attempts which undermine our approaches, often unknowingly by those mandating and directing them. The essential fuzziness of Knowledge Building renders it susceptible and vulnerable to modes of educational thought and practice, particularly those arising from centralised planning, specifications, audit and external direction, which threaten or undermine our endeavours to its purposes as articulated by us as a Knowledge-Building community. This is a specific and tangible danger (MacKinnon 2011c). I articulate a distinction between ‘accountability’ and ‘account ability’ (MacKinnon 2011a) as a means to harness audit and evaluation to our purpose(s) and transcend this danger, needing also to communicate these shifts of perspective to system change leaders.

Overview of demonstration or other presentation material Written excerpts including sentences, paragraphs, poems, multi-media artefacts, film excerpts, annotated photographs, webpages, models, films of models, plays, photographs in situ of activities, each exemplifying a Knowledge-Building aspect. I also state the existence of the above in the context of my own learning journey and particularly with regard to their relevance to the publications below. These form the backdrop of the demonstrative discussion and a hard copy of each is available. The 2017 and 2018 items form a particular focus. Each form part of my own personal learning journey, with colleagues, by which I have come to present this analysis and reflection and from which its examples are drawn. I allude to these, briefly mentioning them in accordance with ‘soundbites’ as follows:

References of this author utilised with annotated comment MacKinnon, N., (2011a). The urgent need for new approaches in school evaluation to enable Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, Volume 23, Number 1. February. (Major reform of education in a specific context cannot occur without giving due attention to the means of getting there, and by extension understanding where ‘there’ is; that is: evaluation has to contend appropriately with purpose, at all scales. [academic journal paper]) MacKinnon, N., (2011b). ‘Let’s re-energise 'living learning', Times Educational Supplement for Scotland. 18 February (Examining the nature and underlay of ‘living learning’, the dangers of ‘excellence’, and proposing an alternative which is relevant to Knowledge Building [article]) MacKinnon, N., (2011c). ‘Kills 99% of GERMS’ Times Educational Supplement for Scotland (11 November) (Understanding the Global Educational Reform Movement or GERM and developing an immune response. [article]) MacKinnon, N., (2015a). Inter-school collaboration: a practitioner perspective, ICSEI 3P breakfast network seminar presentation, 28th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (Theoretical, practical and conceptual presentation of collaboration between schools as a mode of curriculum practice [conference presentation as paper and slides with summary journal article]) MacKinnon, N., (2015b). Inter-school collaboration: a practitioner perspective, ICSEI Express and Digest, Volume 6 Issue 2, The International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement [short article based on conference presentation above] MacKinnon, N., (2016). The need for systems thinking to build cultural capacity for innovation throughout school education, Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Singapore. June. (Perspectives on systems thinking as an enabler of cultural capacity for innovation and Knowledge Building [conference presentation as paper and slides]) MacKinnon, N., (2017). Closing the gap from within – reframing assessment through integral understanding, International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Ottawa, Canada. January (Assessing a single piece of written work through the analytic perspective of Knowledge Building which formed a diagnostic function to this pupil’s personal and emotional needs, and which illuminated the context from which these arose [conference presentation as paper with slides and artefact] MacKinnon, N., (2018). Enabling Purpose as Children’s Learning: System Change from the Ground Up. International Conference for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Singapore (Exploration of synergy and dissonance between school level and national level education policy and resultant practice change.[conference presentation as paper and slides]) MacKinnon, N., and Teo, C.L., (2018). Workshop: Designing Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment to Support Children in Enacting Purpose in their Learning Through Knowledge Building. International Conference for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Singapore (Comparison of two approaches to curriculum change

3 KBSI2018 165 related to idea-centred collaborative learning within two countries’ education systems set far apart culturally and geographically. [workshop as abstract and slides]) Chapter: ‘The Global Educational Reform Movement’ in Sahlberg (2011 and 2015) including extended quote from MacKinnon, N., (2011a) (establishing the concept of The Global Educational Reform Movement on the world stage with analysis of its means of establishment and functioning [book chapter])

Conclusion

Learning has no meaning of itself. It only makes sense when matched to purpose. Purpose has to be owned. It cannot be imposed. It can be fostered and inspired. It has to be real, that is authentic. Learning has to reach out beyond its own frame of reference, which means beyond tests and grades, beyond accreditation. Learning matched to sense- making matched to purpose disposes to the creation of knowledge. The fruits of that endeavour are collective and social. They are what make us, as individuals, as organisations, as social entities, as a society and societies, in an ever more connected world. Education is not separate to those, or a preparation. It is inherently a part of Knowledge Building and requires educational institutions – their structures, concepts, values and processes – to so dispose themselves to encompass it. Knowledge Building is demonstrative. It is inherent. It is of the now. It is what it is.

References Ball, S. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 18, No. 2, 215-228. Ball, S. (2015). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: refusing neoliberalism?, British Journal of Sociology of Education Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability (2009) 21:33-46. Bower J. (2013). ‘Reduced to Numbers: From Concealing to Revealing Learning’ in Bower J. and Thomas P. (eds) (2013). De-testing + De-grading schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardisation, Peter Lang: New York Fullan, M., and Hargreaves, A., (2012). Professional Capital – transforming teaching in every school. Routledge: London & New York Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish Lessons – What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Teachers' College Press. (2011), and (2015). Finnish Lessons 2.0 What can the world learn from educational change in Finland. SECOND EDITION. New York: Teachers College Press. Sahlberg, Pasi (2012). How GERM is infecting schools around the world, The Washington Post, 29 June 2012 (column by Valerie Strauss) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-germ-is-infecting- schools-around-the-world/2012/06/29/gJQAVELZAW_blog.html#comments and http://pasisahlberg.com/category/english/ Scardamalia, M. (2002). "Collective Cognitive Responsibility for the Advancement of Knowledge". In: B. Smith (ed.), Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 67–98 Seddon, J., (2008). Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: the failure of the reform regime and a manifesto for a better way, Axminster: Triarchy Press.

Notes Accompanying document: presentation slides of same title Accompanying materials (not published here): artefacts

4 KBSI2018 166 MacBeath, John and Moos, Leijf. (2011) Editorial, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, Volume 23, Number 1. February

Commentary on:

MacKinnon, Niall. (2011) The urgent need for new approaches in school evaluation to enable Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, Volume 23, Number 1. February http://link.springer.com/journal/11092/23/1/page/1

…It is perhaps fitting that the final paper in this volume comes from a Scottish primary school head teacher confronted with many of the accountability issues addressed in the preceding papers and attempting, in David Hargreaves metaphor, to ‘fly below the radar’. Plockton in the West Highlands could not be further removed from the archetypical American inner city. Plockton, the scene for the TV series Hamish Macbeth, is possibly one of the most remote and beautiful sites on earth for a school but this does not guarantee immunity from global performativity pressures. In this edition we introduce for the first time what we have, perhaps ambiguously, termed ‘practitioner papers’. These are intended to deal with the core issues of the journal but with a personal account from ‘the front line’, exploring the relationship between policy and school and classroom practice. The paper by Niall Mackinnon is not a dispassionate account of that contentious relationship (‘inundated by a sort of audit oblivion’) but it is hugely well grounded in the research and policy literature. Niall Mackinnon’s primary focus is on an accountability culture in which he depicts school inspection as increasingly tightly coupled with standards, indicators, together with a ‘dirigiste’ self evaluation framework which, he contends, has lost much of the vitality and spontaneity of what once was. His argument is not for less accountability but for what schools need to do to become ‘account able’, that is, furnished with the tools, frameworks, courage and resilience to compose their own script, to tell their own story. These would be, not formulaic responses to predetermined criteria but a holistic approach to Scotland’s new Curriculum for Excellence, allied with authentic pupil assessment and a developmental review system. Intelligently conjoined these would offer a formative approach, drawn from the same set values and priorities, grounded in the day-to-day lives of teachers and their students. Mackinnon ends pithily with a postscript to this edition of the journal.

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all. (Peter Drucker, 2003:67)

Authors

John MacBeath, Chair of Educational Leadership, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Leijf Moos, Associate Professor and Director of the Research Programme on Professional Development and Leadership at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark Three articles which reference and interlink sequentially to each other:

As I Say Goodbye To Headship by Nigel Utton, departing head teacher (2014), Bromstone Primary School, Broadstairs, Kent, England https://www.teachers.org.uk/files/nigel-utton-expert-view.may-2014.docx

Global Educational Reform Movement is here! by Pasi Sahlberg, winner of the 2013 Grawemayer Award and visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education http://pasisahlberg.com/global-educational-reform-movement-is-here/

Kills 99.9% of GERMs by Niall MacKinnon, departing head teacher (2016), Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland https://www.tes.com/news/tes-archive/tes-publication/kills-999-germs AS I SAY GOODBYE TO HEADSHIP

By Nigel Utton Departing Head Teacher, Bromstone Primary School, Broadstairs, Kent

I have a copy of a letter on my wall which I regularly read to remind me of my moral purpose: "Dear Teacher, I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses, women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmann's. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more humane." Haim Ginott I am proud of the achievements of my school over the past six years. We have received Artsmark and International Gold awards (being described by our Artsmark assessor as the ‘go-to school for the arts in the South East). We have developed lasting links with a school in India and with the Turner Contemporary and the Powell-Cotton and Beanie museums; my children have visited the Houses of Parliament several times, met and debated with the local MP, and we have established a residential trip to France and trips to many places of interest which form the stimulus for our termly topics. Our weekly philosophy sessions have taught the children to debate and particularly to confidently question. As a pathfinder school for Packtypes our children have developed excellent self awareness leading to visitors to the school regularly commenting how confident and happy the children are. Far from being an enemy of promise I have given my children and staff, in the words of our school motto, the ‘tools to lead a wonderful life’.

Earlier this year, due to the school’s excellent reputation for inclusion, BBC radio 5 live asked if they could present a live outside broadcast from my school on the subject of the new changes to the Children and Families Bill. At the time this seemed like a great way of promoting my wonderfully inclusive school in particular and the subject of inclusion in general. In the programme Nicky Campbell asked Joshua’s mum what her son had gained from being at the school. She told him that we had changed his life as we had been the first school that actually wanted her son and made him feel welcome. A story I have heard many times. Joshua confirmed this. Nicky then turned to me and asked how I felt about that. To everybody’s amazement I broke down in tears.

I told the listeners that I was broken hearted. During the Pesach period, when Jews remember their escape from slavery, I had finally made my decision, after 23 years, to leave the profession that I love.

Twitter went into meltdown over the programme with several hundred tweets of support from teachers and parents all agreeing how this broken system of ours is wrecking the lives of children and their teachers. A huge number of Headteachers and senior teachers contacted me saying that they have either recently done the same thing, were thinking of doing the same thing or were ‘not brave enough to do it, but wished they were’. This is a very sad indication of the parlous level of morale in the ‘best job in the world’.

What was heartening was the generosity of colleagues (many of whom I did not know) in phoning, emailing or sending messages of support. What was shocking were the stories from people who had been crushed by the system – particularly teachers and parents of children with SEND who have borne the full force of the dehumanising reforms we have all been implementing. Only today I have had a heart-breaking conversation with a parent whose four year old daughter with special needs has been rejected by several schools who said that she has no future, would never amount to anything and would ‘not be welcome’ in their school.

Many people have asked me what was the final straw. I have found this an amazingly difficult question to answer. Even weeks later, I still cannot identify one single event which made me finally decide that ‘enough is enough’ as I said in the interview.

The best explanation came out of a discussion with my friend and fellow inclusion activist, Micheline Mason. Far from being disappointed that one of England’s most inclusive Headteachers had left the profession, Micheline said she was surprised I had lasted so long.

Education in much of the world is now controlled by, what Pasi Sahlberg has termed, the GERM (global education reform movement http://pasisahlberg.com/global-educational-reform-movement-is- here/). It has a set of principles and practices which are being replicated across the world and is becoming the received wisdom about how we ‘improve education’. Like many right wing ideologies it suggests simplistic interpretations and quick answers to complex problems. Schools in England have suffered at the hands of different Governments in being forced, often against our will, to adopt practices that we know are bad for teachers and for students. The GERM focuses on standardisation; overemphasis on narrow core subjects; minimising experimentation through low risk strategies; economically based corporate organisation and, most damaging of all, high stakes test based accountability.

Anybody who dares to challenge the current orthodoxy is branded a ‘Marxist enemy of promise’ or a member of ‘The Blob’ stifling any intelligent debate about other ways forward.

As a highly creative and risk taking Headteacher, willing to challenge the status quo, I, and many like me have been at the vanguard of fighting the system; boycotting SATs, refusing to do ‘optional SATs’; resisting the worst excesses of performance management; developing a creative experimental curriculum; leading the way on developing Philosophical understanding and higher order thinking; promoting the arts, cultural exchange, and a broad curriculum experience. Even raising standards in the very narrow way that is measured! And yet, like many of my colleagues, I am feeling worn down, exhausted, and generally disillusioned with the system.

The fragmentation into a pecking order of schools from highly regarded public schools through to free schools and academies and then down to the ‘bog standard’ maintained schools like my own, is causing inequalities in the system which are seriously disadvantaging schools like mine. I spent the whole of the last summer holiday planning a building for two hundred and ten new pupils only to be constantly reminded ‘you can’t have that you are only a basic needs build – not an academy’. Why should my children, many of whom come from families living in poverty, be treated less equitably than children in a school next door just because it has a different name? The recent revelations that the Department has diverted £400 million pounds from ‘ordinary schools’ to free schools simply rubs salt into an already festering wound.

During Pesach I realised that I am working in an atmosphere in which I can no longer breathe the air. There is a new vocabulary in education where children have been reduced to statistics. Headteachers live and dream percentages of children at particular levels; they set targets for teachers based on numerical analyses and all to reach the nirvana of an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted. The system has lost its way. Children are officially no longer at the centre of the process. The pursuit of ever increasing exam results is the only valued goal of education in England in the twenty first century.

Children with special needs, whom I passionately believe should all be welcomed into their local inclusive schools, are being marginalised, illegally excluded and concentrated in a minority of schools. With the ‘bias for segregation’ approach led by the current Government many are being sent away from their local area into special schools with Local Authorities spending as much on taxi fares as they do on SEND provision in mainstream schools. My school has ten times more children with statements of special educational needs than the majority of the thirty one schools in my area. We have welcomed one hundred additional children over the past two years – many from academies – the majority with special needs. I have even had parents come to me saying that an academy could no longer meet her child’s needs and suggested they looked around Bromstone – because she had been diagnosed with dyslexia! Many stories like this have been sent to me by many parents of children with SEND over the past couple of weeks and I believe it is the tip of a very large social iceberg which will have serious long term negative effects on an already deeply divided and unequal society.

If I have to pick one event which has provoked my decision now – I would cite the forty five minutes I recently spent with a hysterical ten year old child who was threatening to commit suicide because he had let his parents down because he was only working at level 4a in the middle of year 5. A system which does this to a child is profoundly unwell. Rather than continue to be contaminated by the GERM, I have chosen to leave the heart of the battle (I hope temporarily) until I see that the system is, once again heading in the direction of the child.

I do not believe there is an educational Utopia which we can simply transport into England. Finland and Alberta appear to be doing better in a more human way and we have much to learn from those systems. But ultimately we must come up with our own solutions to improve our broken system.

We need to:

1. Put children at the heart of a fully inclusive education system which values and builds lasting communities. Fully fund SEND provision which follows the child and make it illegal for a school not to welcome a child with open arms.

2. Rebuild trust in the teaching profession. Stop the assumption that all teachers are bad and need to be punished to make them good. Attach inspirational professionals to support and encourage schools to get better. Restore excellent teacher training colleges which work closely with schools to give both academic and philosophical rigour and practical experience of the amazing job that is teaching.

3. Stop high stakes testing and league tables as a method of measuring a school’s performance. Allow children to prove competencies in different subjects when they are ready, much in the way that musicians take their music grade exams today. Trust parents to make decisions about their child’s school – by visiting them!

4. End the inequality in provision between different types of school. Allow all schools the freedom to innovate, share excellent practice, make mistakes, learn and improve together.

5. Give schools the space to innovate, experiment and improve.

I once told myself the day I stopped enjoying the job – for the sake of the children – I would give up. That day has sadly come. I leave my role as Headteacher with a heavy heart. That particular battle is lost – but for me the war continues. I intend to do all in my power to expose the inequalities and hypocrisy of the current system, and in my new role as Chief of Primary Training at Dragonfly and as a private consultant to help others to put children back where they belong - at the heart of the education system.

https://www.teachers.org.uk/files/nigel-utton-expert-view.may-2014.docx

http://pasisahlberg.com/global-educational-reform-movement-is-here/ Finnish Education Reform Global Educational Reform Movement is here!

Posted on April 2, 2012

In FINNISH LESSONS: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? I conclude that rather than introducing sequential educational revolutions, Finnish education policy has been built upon periodic change and systemic leadership led by commonly accepted values and shared social vision that resonate closely with contemporary ideas of sustainable educational change. Importantly, the main features for developing a equitable, high-performing education system are similar to those underlying the social and economic transformation of Finland into a welfare state and a competitive knowledge society. It is, therefore, difficult to identify particular reforms or innovations per se that served as driving forces in raising the level and quality of Finnish education.

It is necessary to identify broader policies – and especially how different public sector policies are interconnected with the education system. It is also essential to emphasize that although Finland has been called ‘a model pupil’ in listening to the policy advice from the international organizations, especially the OECD and the European Union, the Finnish education system has remained quite uninfected to viruses of what is often called the global education reform movement or GERM. And the reason for that is clear: professional strength and moral health of Finnish schools.

GERM has emerged since the 1980s and has increasingly become adopted as a educational reform orthodoxy within many education systems throughout the world, including in the U.S., England, Australia and some transition countries. Tellingly, GERM is often promoted through the interests of international development agencies and private enterprises through their interventions in national education reforms and policy formulation.

Since the 1980s, at least five globally common features of education policies and reform principles have been employed to try to improve the quality of education and fix the apparent problems in public education systems.

First is standardization of education. Outcomes-based education reform became popular in the 1980s, followed by standards-based education policies in the 1990s, initially within Anglo- Saxon countries. These reforms, quite correctly, shifted the focus of attention to educational outcomes, i.e. student learning and school performance. Consequently, a widely accepted – and generally unquestioned – belief among policy-makers and education reformers is that setting clear and sufficiently high performance standards for schools, teachers, and students will necessarily improve the quality of expected outcomes. Enforcement of external testing and evaluation systems to assess how well these standards have been attained emerged originally from standards-oriented education policies. Since the late 1980s centrally prescribed curricula, with detailed and often ambitious performance targets, frequent testing of students and teachers, and test-based accountability have characterized a homogenization of education policies worldwide, promising standardized solutions at increasingly lower cost for those desiring to improve school quality and effectiveness.

1 A second common feature of GERM is focus on core subjects in school, in other words, on literacy and numeracy, and in same case science. Basic student knowledge and skills in reading, writing and mathematics are elevated as prime targets and indices of education reforms. As a consequence of accepting international student assessment surveys, such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS, as criteria of good educational performance, reading, mathematical and scientific literacy have now become the main determinants of perceived success or failure of pupils, teachers, schools, and entire education systems. This is happening on the expense of social studies, arts, music and physical education that are diminishing in many school curricula.

The third characteristic that is easily identifiable in global education reforms is the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals. This minimizes experimentation, reduces use of alternative pedagogical approaches, and limits risk-taking in schools and classrooms. Research on education systems that have adopted policies emphasizing achievement of predetermined standards and prioritized core subjects, suggests that teaching and learning are narrower and teachers focus on ‘guaranteed content’ to best prepare their students for tests. The higher the test-result stakes, the lower the degree of freedom in experimentation and risk-taking in classroom learning.

The fourth globally observable trend in educational reform is use of corporate management models as a main driver of improvement. This process where educational policies and ideas are lent and borrowed from business world is often motivated by national hegemony and economic profit, rather than by moral goals of human development. Faith in educational change through innovations brought and sold from outside the system undermines two important elements of successful educational change: First, it often limits the role of national policy development and enhancement of an education system’s own capabilities to maintain renewal, and perhaps more important. Second, it paralyzes teachers’ and schools’ attempts to learn from the past and also to learn from each other.

The fifth global trend is adoption of test-based accountability policies for schools. In doing so school performance – especially raising student achievement – is closely tied to processes of accrediting, promoting, inspecting, and, ultimately, rewarding or punishing schools and teachers. Success or failure of schools and teachers is often determined by standardized tests and external teacher evaluations that devote attention to limited aspects of schooling, such as student achievement in mathematical and reading literacy, exit examination results, or intended teacher classroom behavior.

None of these elements of GERM have been adopted in Finland in the ways that they have within education policies of many other nations, for instance, in the United States and England. This, of course, does not imply that education standards, focus on basic knowledge and skills, or accountability should be avoided in seeking better educational performance. Nor does it suggest that these ideas were completely absent in education development in Finland. But, perhaps, it does imply that a good education system can be created using alternative approaches and policies orthogonal to those commonly found and promoted in global education policy markets. This is why I wrote Finnish Lessons.

By contrast, typical features of teaching and learning in Finland are:

• high confidence in teachers and principals as high professionals; • encouraging teachers and students to try new ideas and approaches, in other words, to put curiosity, imagination and creativity at the heart of learning; and

2 • purpose of teaching and learning is to pursue happiness of learning and cultivating development of whole child.

The best way avoid infections of GERM is to prepare teachers and leaders well. In Finland all teachers must have masters degree in education or in the field of their subject. This ensures that they are good in what they do in classrooms and also understand how teaching and learning in their schools can be improved. School principals are also experts of educational change and can therefore protect their schools and school system from harmful germs.

Lessons from Finland help you to kill 99.9% of GERMs.

3 https://www.tes.com/news/tes-archive/tes-publication/kills-999-germs Kills 99.9% of GERMs

Letters | Published in TESS on 11 November, 2011 | By: Niall MacKinnon

Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg was published last Friday. Its subtitle is: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? It has come at the right time for Scotland.

The official message here is that the big curriculum change debates are settled. But if we take a step back, it is clear that a new change is taking place. The 2004-07 phase was about opening up wider capacities, decluttering, deepening learning, personalisation, choice, creativity, professionalism, and the visionary “building the curriculum”. Curriculum for Excellence was a subtle, complex whole. It heralded a professional climate of reflection, responsibility and dialogue.

But there is now an overlay: “required” characteristics of successful implementation, auditing “to” experiences and outcomes - hundreds and hundreds strong, grade matching to existing indicator schedules, “increased expectations” in inspection, and to cap it all now “rolling out” across Scotland, standardised testing. What happened?

The central message of Sahlberg’s book is that Finland established a high-performing education system by adopting policies counter to that which came in across most Western education systems. Sahlberg calls these the GERM - the Global Education Reform Movement.

The features of the GERM are: standardising teaching and learning with common criteria for measurement and data; increased focus on core subjects, particularly literacy and numeracy; teaching a prescribed curriculum; transfer of models of administration from the corporate world; high stakes accountability policies - control, inspection, division between schools and an ethos of punishment (for educators).

Sahlberg observes: “As Finnish teachers were exploring the theoretical foundations of knowledge and learning and redesigning their school curricula to be congruent with them, their peers in England, Germany, France and the United States struggled with increased school inspection, controversial externally-imposed learning standards, and competition that disturbed some teachers to the point that they decided to leave their jobs.”

For us too he notes: “Scotland is currently recovering from a rather serious GERM infection a few years back.”

Indeed. But are we now about to undergo a relapse? Perhaps, without a diagnosis, the infection had not gone away.

The treatment is a full course of Finnish Lessons.

Niall MacKinnon, Plockton Primary. What do we need to do to build cultural capacity for innovation in your context?

A personal perspective of school education in Scotland

Niall MacKinnon, Head teacher, Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland, UK

Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Université Laval, Ville de Québec, Canada, August 2014

Scotland overall: a whirlwind of change – different conceptual currents causing functional tension

Note: the four nations of the United Kingdom are fully devolved for school education and have varying and increasingly divergent school systems.

Cultural capacity for innovation in Scotland currently promoted by: • A new curriculum from 2004 centred around four capacities of children's potential – confidence, responsibility, contribution and learning. • Increased focus on personal development – three of the four capacities • Proclaimed culture of increased professionalism and enhanced local autonomy • Emphasis on 'Assessment for Learning' interpreted as formative assessment • Intention of rounded outcomes and meaningful experiences • Goal of collaborative learning • A widely professed desire for innovation • Pressure of change from the 'real world' our schools serve • Increased international connections

Cultural capacity for innovation in Scotland currently hindered by: • Hierarchical governance through command and control • Strong audit culture based on universalistic idealisations • 'Product model' of curriculum has transferred over to new curriculum • Features of the Global Educational Reform Movement • Mandated list of central outcomes and experiences of new curriculum – formulaic & cluttered • Jargon hindering thinking • Test based accountability and international benchmarks • Transmission model of teacher role and function still dominant • Notion of service provision rather than schools as community • ‘Assessment for Learning’ interpreted as hyper-planning and fragmented 3-part lessons • Low conceptual development • Bureaucratic assessment procedures

Cultural capacity for innovation could be promoted by: • Appreciation of divergent contexts and institutional forms • Lessening enforced initiatives • Promoting conceptual shifts (without overly-imposed operational determinants) • Greater shift to the practitioner perspective in mediating change • Ending fixed mandated graded practice idealisations • Greater emphasis on concepts and their divergent situational application • Awareness and application of Knowledge Building and Systems Thinking • Policy based on knowledge (empirical understanding) not opinion (arbitrary imposition) • Shift of personnel between sectoral roles • Teachers as agents of research – generating empirical knowledge DAY 3: Thursday, August 14, 2014 Time Description 8:00 – 8:45 Breakfast Workshop #5: “Big Data” Framework Workshop #6: Professional Paper Presentation Session #5: Knowledge Building as Curriculum Knowledge building analytics: Where Development Chair: Richard Messina we were, where we are, and where Apprendre une langue seconde #5027 - Going deep into the curriculum: A case study of the online we are headed. Bodong Chen, Chris en réseau: Renforcement de and offline discourse of Grade 2 knowledge building class. Monica 8:45 – 9:30 Teplovs, Jianwei Zhang, Yoshiaki capacité. Christine Hamel Resendes, Derya Kici Matsuzawa, Huang-Yao Hong, Location: DES 0134 #5023 - Innovative Practice in Modern Languages –a flavour of Christian Perreault, Don Philip, knowledge building. Niall Lachlann MacKinnon Marlene Scardamalia, Carl Bereiter Cette activité dure tout l'avant-midi Location: DES 1245 9:30 – 10:15 Location: LAU 1334 10:15 – 10:30 Coffee Break Knowledge Building International – Members’ Meeting 10:30 – 12:00 Chair: Thérèse Laferrière Location: LAU 1334 12:00 – 13:30 Lunch on your own Think Tank Session #2: Collaborative Design of Next-Generation Knowledge Building/Knowledge Creation Think Tank 1: Professional development and knowledge mobilization Think Tank 2: Knowledge Building hubs of innovation 13:30 – 15:00 Think Tank 3: Open source software and assessment Think Tank 4: Teachers’ inventions, students’ discoveries, and “big data” repositories Break-out sessions followed by summaries and discussion of next steps Location: LAU 1334 Building Cultural Capacity for Innovation International Panel Chair: Susana La Rosa 3-minute quick sketches to be compiled into summary report. What do we need to build cultural capacity for innovation in your context? • Brazil: Gisela Wajskop, Instituto Superior de Educação de Sao Paulo • Canada-Quebec: Josée Beaudoin, CEFRIO; Lise Gagnon, Direction des ressources didactiques, MELS; • Canada-Ontario: Bruce Shaw, Ontario Ministry of Education; Linda Massey/Mary Cordeiro/Ginette Huard-Watt, Ontario Principals' Council; • Canada-PEI: Sandy McAuley, University of Prince Edward Island • China: Nancy Law, University of Hong Kong • Colombia: Fernando Díaz del Castillo, Gimnasio La Montaña • Italy: Stefano Cacciamani, Università della Valle d’Aosta 15:00 – 17:00 • Japan: Hajime Shirouzu, National Institute for Educational Policy Research; Mexico: Oscar Hernández, IKIT Mexico • Netherlands: Frank de Jong, Stoas Wageningen | Vilentum Applied University • New Zealand: Kwok-Wing Lai, University of Otago • Singapore: Chew Lee Teo, Ministry of Education; Seng-Chee Tan, National Institute of Education • Spain: Mireia Montané, Collegi de Licenciats de Catalunya; Mercè Bernaus, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona • Taiwan: Huang-yao Hong, National Chengchi University • United Kingdom: Niall MacKinnon, Plockton Primary School, Scotland • USA: Al Rudnitsky, Smith College; Jianwei Zhang, University at Albany, SUNY; Kate Bielaczyc, Clark University Location: LAU 1334 19:00 – 23:00 Dinner Party (Morrin Centre, Old Quebec) http://www.joebower.org/2011/11/finnish-lessons-for-scotland.html

Finnish Lessons for Scotland

Friday, November 11, 2011

Here is a guest post by Niall MacKinnon who is a principal of a primary school in Scotland. by Niall MacKinnon

I am the principal of a small rural primary school in Scotland. I am honored that Joe has asked me to write a guest blog. It is an exciting time to do this.

From half way round the globe I share the excitement of Pasi Sahlberg’s new book Finnish Lessons. Its subtitle What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? has come at the right time for us here in Scotland.

We have just gone through a curriculum review seeking to re-vision education. A welcome policy mix was coming in: opening up wider capacities, de-cluttering, deepening learning, personalisation, choice, creativity, professionalism, and a visionary ‘building the curriculum’. This explicitly gave us local ownership of pathways forward in our own institutions.

The official message here is that the big curriculum change debates are settled. But now there is an overlay. As we embraced principles to ‘build’ in our schools, our inspectors gave us ‘required’ characteristics of successful ‘implementation’. We were asked to declutter through rounded, non-target- driven outcomes based on experiences, but were handed a specified listing hundreds and hundreds strong and told to cross-match our practice to these. We had to continue grading to the existing audit indicator schedules, then were told that inspectors had ‘increased expectations’ in inspections. Now we are to get standardised testing. What happened?

It is Sahlberg who shows how this happened, from the Finnish alternative. We tried to bring in a new curriculum approach without re-thinking the basic underpinning values which would frame it. Whilst our new curriculum asked us to rethink practice, it did not give us the means to think. Scotland could not break free from audit indication, inspection and targetised attainment. Its culture remained top-down.

The critical shift needed is to purposes and principles, giving professional ownership of the means to realise them at the local level. Sahlberg shows that this is what Finland got right. It embraced dialogue basing practice change in reflection over theories and models of education. This is not possible if loaded down with top-heavy audit indication schedules, micro- specification of actions and of curriculum content from the center.

1 The central message of Sahlberg’s book is that Finland established a high performing education system by adopting policies counter to that which came in across most Western education systems. Sahlberg calls these the GERM – the Global Education Reform Movement. The features of the GERM are: standardizing teaching and learning with common criteria for measurement and data; increased focus on core subjects, particularly literacy and numeracy; teaching a prescribed curriculum; transfer of models of administration from the corporate world; high stakes accountability policies – control through testing, inspection, division between schools and an ethos of punishment (for educators).

That is what went wrong. These remained in place in Scotland and so our new vision was never going to succeed. Finland’s success has been achieved by the simple solution of framing the development of the system around professional dialogue. We need to do the same. But to do that we have to strip out the blockages. If we want to rediscover our professionalism and our ‘love of learning’ we need to be GERM free. The real problem in a GERM ridden system is that the simplicity of professional conversation is lost. Of course, what we may then talk about is anything but simple.

This is a lesson for Scotland, and for the world. We all need a course of Finnish Lessons.

2 Seeking Purpose beyond Learning as Knowledge Building

Niall MacKinnon Social Analyst, Avernish Prospect and former headteacher, Scottish Highlands

Knowledge Building: A Place for Everyone in a Knowledge Society 2018 Knowledge Building Summer Institute

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

August 2018 Plockton village, Highland, Scotland, Britain Plockton Primary School Scotland:Scotland: aa newnew directiondirection

2004 curriculum review Founded new direction for Scottish school education An immense realignment of pedagogic approach Redefining and reinterpreting 'curriculum' itself OpeningOpening upup capacitiescapacities Conceptualisation of ‘four capacities’ of children’s learning and personal growth

Not about delivery, or performance.

Fostering capability, awareness and personal development:

 Confidence  Contribution  Responsibility  Learning Purpose to enable ‘four capacities’ of/in young people to become citizens "with" = attributes "and able to" = capabilities:

as set in:

MyMy philosophyphilosophy asas practitionerpractitioner

With and for students/pupils I/we seek to foster:

 Socialisation  Awareness  Capability  Connection toto achieve:achieve: purposepurpose An integral way of school being

Fostering awareness Seeking purpose Authentic discovery Engaging with real issues Enabling thinking in myriad ways Genuine contribution Responsibility from ownership Confidence from worth Building new knowledge across domains Transcending teaching transcending learning Transliterate Becoming School becoming less like school The new amidst the old in Plockton “The children’s comments both during and after the activities indicated a sense of raised esteem, awarness and interest in what had been until then an accepted environment for field notes: them. We observed a chemistry which enthused all the children and transformed the environment from something mundane and accepted to something that was now very interesting and unique”

Sara Neild Teacher Birchley St Mary’s

Other domains of awareness and being

The Bogside Murals!

The Bogside murals started off in anger and frustration. But to me they are a thing the remember about someone or something from the past. However the last mural is of a large dove of peace. It is painted along with the other murals!

School performance in a Knowledge Building sense

When ‘To English’ button is pressed it translates saying: “These are our potatoes. Look how big they are. We won third prize for our potatoes.” EmergentEmergent Insight:Insight: ScotlandScotland

SignificantSignificant challengeschallenges forfor transformationtransformation inin widerwider systemsystem . Fractured or integral . Mandating or enabling . Delivering or constructing/building . Data driven or knowledge based . Metrics or meaning (informed by measures) . Performance management or professional capital . Constraining or supporting . Mechanistic or systemic . 'Wrong' or 'right' drivers children ‘in character’ ready for a videoconference between schools

Steelstown Primary School pupils Now this is what we call vibrant home-school linking – evidencing learning and then eating it! And please note that this photograph was taken during our HMIE inspection of November 2008.

It is what learning is all about, really.

The Local–National–Global Nexus of Education Change

Action Research Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School

Niall MacKinnon

Head Teacher, Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland, UK

A presentation at the 27th ICSEI Congress, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

January 2014

Conference theme

Redefining Education, Learning, and Teaching in the 21st Century

Conference Subtheme 1

School Effectiveness, School Improvement and School Transformation – What do they Mean in Different Contexts and Different Paradigms?

I start my presentation with the definition of a word.

Nexus

1. a means of connection between members of a group or things in a series; link; bond

2. a connected group or series

Collins English dictionary

A closely connected group of people or things, often forming the central part of something

MacMillan dictionary

I make clear that the main theme I wish to cover is that of connection, of a bond, of joining. I live and work in the small coastal village of Plockton in the far North West of Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe. Yet I am now talking to you here in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. I’ve never been here before. Indeed, I’ve never been to Asia before. In terms of the journeying and the travel connections I have had to make to get here this is truly the other side of the world. It is also culturally and psychologically distant for me, yet I wish to make this connection, of places and minds. I am here because I believe we have got something fundamental in common in the journey we are now travelling in school education. That is why I have come here and why I wish to talk to you now, and with you during this congress.

My job role is not that of an academic. I am a practising teacher. I teach in a small primary school, which is beautifully set on the shores of Loch Carron, an inlet of the sea in the Highlands of Scotland surrounded by mountains. Just now it is winter and they are covered in snow, almost down to sea level. The days are short and it is cold, just two or three degrees above freezing. I am a school principal but it is a very small school – just two classes of primary age, 5 to 11 year olds, and a nursery, 3 to 5 year olds. For most of the week I teach. We are a rare survivor of a traditional mid-nineteenth century school building with period architecture. Nonetheless we have been brought into the twenty-first century with modern computing equipment and many other facilities appropriate to the modern age. Our location is rural, some seventy miles from the nearest town. You could not get anywhere more different from where I am talking to you now, certainly in the developed world.

I want to talk to you about practice, but practice set in a context and set in pathways of change. I am doing so because I wish to connect – from me to you, and from you to me. But that is not just because of intention, but because we need to, across this distance. The globalisation of communications, travel, commodities, products, finance and business organisation is leading to another form of globalisation, that of ideas. Central to that is education. All this may be for good or for bad, indeed of itself much may be neutral. Much of it is just happening because it just is. Once there is a link it is utilised. Links do just that. They link. Changed technologies engender changed potential. It is what we do with that potential which matters. We recognise that the potential is to do new things in new ways. And that’s where the fun starts. I mean that ironically and literally.

It is unproblematic to note that across the globe societies are paying special attention to their education systems. What is problematic is how they are doing it. What is even more problematic is consideration of why they are doing it. Is it just to become ‘better’? I place that in inverted commas because we must then have some notion of better for what? Which brings in intentionality, and then purpose, mediated by norms and values. Why are we doing this? Why do we herd children into rooms called classrooms in buildings called schools? What do we do to them whilst there? Who decides? How is that changing (both what we do and what they do and who decides)? Why is that changing? What are these processes changing to?

Since I have told you that I am a practitioner rather than an academic I am not going to presume to tell you that my observations here are the result of a research programme in which I now present my findings. And yet that is what I am presenting here, in a funny sort of way, by a roundabout route, which points to new ways of doing for education systems. I’ll tell you why.

I took up my current position as headteacher in June 2001. It was a move to a new school. In that time, which is twelve and a half years, the job has changed out of all recognition. When I started, the Windows Personal Computer was just coming in to the schools in the North of Scotland. The first email account I was given in a work context in school was in this post in 2001. Prior to 2001 I did not have email contact as a teacher. That is how much has changed in a relatively short time. That would be unthinkable now. In the same way I have spoken to teachers, earlier in my career, but who tell me they remember children in the UK coming to school barefoot. It is hard to believe. Yet since then my practice as school leader and with colleagues here has taken this school into the forefront of e-learning, exploring a large range of technologies and the potentials of pedagogy embedded in those, from animation, to ‘cloud’ based Virtual Learning Environments, and children working interactively in those, including with students in different schools in different countries and right back to 2005, to computer coding using a dedicated programming language for young children (‘Scratch’ by MIT) in 2008 (MacKinnon 2008), e-safety – we made that a major component of activity in 2005 (Plockton Primary School 2005) – and collaborative projects connecting across the globe in which information communications technology was a major means to interact (e.g. MacKinnon 2009). But we’d use old technology when appropriate too, e.g. letters, for they have deep value in their own right employing different media. The forms of interaction engendered new forms of writing, and in other media – graphics, sound etc.

At the same time we were also changing our curriculum in regard to some of the ‘old’ stuff. Thus we have very active engagement with the arts of all kinds but that opens up new potentials, such as for films and recording. Likewise in a horticulture project we worked closely with the village and local community, growing our food and then presenting it in various forms, whether in a display for the horticultural show, a plant sale of what we’d grown from seed, cooking with professional help, and preparing a meal or then making a website about our activities. Older children undertook this task entirely independently. Children here of primary ages have made websites themselves in my class, but with very loose involvement from me as they basically got on with it, collaboratively, thus making artefacts which are structurally and conceptually very different to what went before, just as the means by which they are utilised are different, thus predisposing to new intentionality (MacKinnon 2010); that is, what we are trying to achieve,

3 what we are trying to communicate and how we are doing that – recognising that the ‘how’ changes the ‘what’. Who wants a web site made of a series of long essays?

The children here have made cartoons using dedicated software, and explored the world in different scales, from exploring solar eclipses to microworlds using computer microscopes to literally see the world differently (MacKinnon 2004). I could tell by how they responded, which without my asking them was in writing poems of their reaction to what they were seeing anew – their world transformed in new media, opening up different modes of perception (plockton.com 2005). We have explored computer control and then recorded programming sequences and worked with commercial software companies as they developed their products and asked for our input and advice as they did so (2Simple Software 2008). Art using e-learning is a new medium too, opening up a very different from of art. The ability to replicate, to transform images, to get the computer to take away the graft, using manipulation of commands to create undreamed of patterns and effects is fun, but it is also the serious, dedicated practice of using new media for new purposes (plockton.com 2012). We had fun with that, and thereby it was serious fun.

All this is to dispose the mind to think in new ways, to open up new potential through new technological potentialities, but what is really new is the thinking. Are we enabling that thinking? It offers interactivity with media in ways forming a rift with the technological potentialities of previous epochs. New media enable new forms of human interactivity, bridging time and place to literally create new communication forms. There is also the rapidity of the changes before us and their global reach. These changes permeate the lives of children, which is not to say though that they have been embraced by education systems. Setting targets, content- driven curricula (whether knowledge or skills), rigid evaluation matrices, hierarchical modes of governance and accountability via delivery in the form of outcomes (however defined), rigid accountability templates and methods framed around fixed indicators as now in Scotland (Education Scotland 2013), do not dispose to new mental forms. Deep institutional mindsets have set in place an educational metaformation which itself comprises a theory but which is not made explicit. Thus such notions as that what is learned is what is taught (necessitating elaborated time-depth planning), that children individualise (necessitating tracking, targets etc) and that education is essentially a service (necessitating ‘evaluation’) has led to similar deep assumptions in what is done to schools – how they are governed, assessed, evaluated. But what if these assumptions may be wrong, or a very small subset of what is ‘out there’? Suppose that teaching rarely ‘produces’ learning, or that most real learning (capability to act) is in fact collaborative, or that all the stakeholders of a school are not that at all, but comprise the school? What then? Perhaps to put that more generously, these are such deeply ingrained figments of social reality that the possibility of other modes of thinking and doing are extinguished.

We’ve heard others at this conference provide glimpses and insights into this alternative pedagogic/instructional universe. But perhaps it was always there, and indeed right under our noses. Perhaps what we’ve been doing is annulling them, stifling them. Worse, what are loosely termed 21 st century skills, if brought into the conventional curriculum world, may be subsumed in these meta-assumptions of structure and normative system behaviour and thus be annulled. Except that the repression as it exists in formal school education will not be mirrored in the world beyond school and thus such formulaic treatment of new potential may lead to incongruous juxtapositions of social and technological co-adaptation. There may be innovation 4 side by side with preposterous conservatism and stultified, hideously inappropriate pedagogic and instructional approaches to the incorporation of 21 st technological and communicational capabilities into the institutional landscape of school and school system behaviours. Who wants the three-part lesson for multi-media web blogging, even worse, if that blogging is not part of a computer and media course, but being used in real-time collaboration for a different, again, real purpose? Likewise targets and ‘next steps’. Do the inhabitants of Silicon Valley ‘learn’ in this way? Thus an impact-output, stimulus-response, command-control, specifications-grading mindset of the educational system may not just hinder but prevent forms of innovation whose potential lies in throwing out those precise assumptions. If that is defined as leading change we may find that the system is in fact leading non-change and becomes the primary mechanism for inertia, for anti-leadership (which gets me into the territory of leadership and terminology but I will only touch on that now).

For me the first stage of leadership is seeing, and just trying to remove the blinkers. Impossible of course. But just go ahead and try. Then see potential. That is where your average three-year old excels. We do need constraints, but fear is the most crude. Thereby we need norms and values, which are constructed, and a well-integrated three-year old is cueing into those. That is to the good. We do too, especially in settings of contrast, such as an international conference. The same is true of a classroom, and schools. Classroom, school and school system cultures emerge. Their meaning needs to reveal themselves, and there may indeed not be one, or only one interpretation – which is why I was taken by the search for new tools as we heard at this congress in the use of vignettes as an evaluation tool for innovative learning environments by Michael Schratz and colleagues in Austria; also from Wilfred Schley and colleagues in Germany of new technologies enabling non-judgmental ‘seeing’ (ICSEI 2014), using electronic devices specially adapted for use with pedagogic/instructional interfaces for teacher self-development.

That gets me to thinking of my, and other colleagues’ practice in Plockton Primary School over the last twelve years, which has been innovative, using new, and old media. Children here have done their homework online but using the tools of an e-learning virtual learning environment (VLE) – Oracle Thinkquest. This gives an immediacy to the home school link but does more than that and enables new social potentiality. Feedback from home to school and from school to home is instant, but more to the point, can be stored and be retrieved anywhere. It can then be manipulated in different ways. It is viewable anywhere with access to the internet, thus permitting communication in different settings. The students’ home-school link activities can then be viewed by relatives and friends, wherever the student has access to the internet and wishes to show them. But then they can be worked on by them enabling new forms of knowledge production . At school here students have had to take responsibility for storing their e-learning products or artefacts (I will not call them work) appropriately. Similarly through making links with other schools, and, more to the point, working with them using the connectivity of e-learning we have bridged distance and perception. We had a four-school four- country project running for three years (SOLACE 2008). The new media allowed us to present to each school. We presented information online of our local areas, and then went on virtual explorations, quizzing each other’s school online and via video-conferences. But we went beyond that. We then made a tourist information poster at a distance, of the other schools’ areas, using information supplied by them which with interaction online allowed us to refine the information requests. In another we ‘made’ virtual grandparents, using the Virtual Learning 5

Environment, to store information, but then presented our virtual creations to each school, basing our virtual creations on family interviews, conducted locally. We made the virtual grandparents based on homework research and then created a composite grandparent talking of their lives in times gone by, and interviewed them across schools hundreds of miles apart (Heaney 2007). We presented on message boards on a VLE. The host platform, Oracle Thinkquest, had created e-learning tools offering the potentiality of new forms of communication, specifically collaborative (Oracle Education Foundation 2009). What made these stand out was their interactivity. As we worked across the schools we formed sub-groups of students between the schools, that is groups across the schools, such that groups of students transcended distance and worked in groups which the new technological media had made possible. They then worked together, for instance in drafting, and online feedback. We could create online projects as artefacts, and did so jointly across schools. Collaborating at a distance using e-media we had to learn new codes of conduct, new dangers, new customs of communication and new courtesies. We leaned about e-safety and online etiquette – netiquette. We thus had a different window on the world (MacKinnon 2006). What we accomplished could be viewed worldwide and was, but within a protected electronic communications medium, itself innovative . From my second year in post we had a school website which formed part of the village website whose host manager kindly made that facility available to us and who worked hard to give us our own dedicated section of the village website (plockton.com/primary 2002- 2012).

In this way new media could make new realities, but explore the living present. What made this possible was a changing technology. But that did not make it happen alone. We made it happen. The technology was enabling. The missing ingredient is motive and purpose, seeing the potentiality in media and reconstructing our consciousness to utilise the potentiality of the media. There is also the permissive environment, especially that of the wider system. That is a collective endeavour. In a way children’s thinking is more fluid to such possibility, less hidebound by what went before because to a far lesser degree they did not know what went before. Can the same be said of the adult communities associated with schools?

The medium changes the message. We interact with new media in very different ways to old media, whether for better or worse. The media relate to real life, but also form real life, which is true of all epochs. We use language to communicate but it forms cultural artefacts, some of our most prized, whether works of literature, songs, recitations or modern forms such as stand up comedy or TV shows. New media are utilised in the same way, forming new potentials of communication and new artefacts (MacKinnon 2009). Thus a website or an internet Virtual Learning Environment forum are media to be utilised but also repositories, and they become an artefact. That is why even now there are websites storing the web at different times, to make a living record of a new form of cultural history. All this requires new skills and new forms of knowledge, indeed new forms of being. Fundamentally, it is just difference. The world of the 21 st century communicational knowledge age is different. Thereby the forms of learning to enable it are different too.

Schools have to fit into all this. Thus the types and forms of school-based learning are currently undergoing rapid changes. Consciousness and thereby the inherent potential of learning itself is also undergoing a fundamental transformation as our forms of social interactivity, interaction 6 with knowledge, skill sets and social processes are all shifting. School has to be relevant to these changing forms, not just in terms of technical skill but the forms of awareness they engender. We now think differently and thus learn differently, not just in a transmissive sense, of learning through a medium, but in terms of the consciousness that medium restructures in our minds. We can see this in language, when we google something, or boot it up, hyperlink, place an item on a desktop or take a selfie. A specialist meaning rezones awareness and transmits its additional mental functionality to new situational applications, even beyond IT. Remembering is now not so central but having a mental placemarker of where to look, what to search for and how to assimilate a large mass of information are central skills, resculpting thought and thinking. So too, as there is so much more information available, we have to develop skills to filter and scan, and to develop a sixth sense of trust, to know how to validate data to ourselves. Again there are also complicated negotiations of permission needed, even simply to say, “no that new PDF will not be opened because it is the twenty fifth from you in two days and I’ve got a real job to do”. All that has to be learned through a building of awareness, new awareness, from new social processes, enabled essentially by changing technology disposing to new communicational modes. We must learn how not to submerge in data, and to learn the difference between data and information and how both can assemble knowledge, but don’t form it. Those are high order skills. They are acquired not taught, though a teacher can frame opportunities which dispose to their occurrence amongst an interacting community of learners.

Schools prepare their pupils and students as citizens who will take part in, as well as themselves shape, these societal changes. As per the proverbial opening sentence of L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. That is fundamentally true for me. Given the nature of the developments in new technology which we embraced shows into even more stark relief how the nature of my job is unthinkably different to what it was twelve years ago, when I came into this post as a new principal of a small village primary school. The changes from when I began teaching thirty years ago render that another world, far further apart than that between Java and Scotland now. The complexity of my job role is vast, since in a sense I teach everything, and manage everything. I am not a subject specialist. That job role is not linear, nor in a sense within the compass of any one human mind. I am reminded of ‘the total perspective vortex’ in the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, when the nature of all reality is revealed at once to the unfortunate Arthur Dent. It was supposed to burn away his consciousness in total knowing. But it didn’t. I think that was meant to say something about him. But you can see where I am heading. My job has felt like that, and at times has done that to me. A sense of all-knowingness has rendered me static. All that complexity and hyperawareness is itself subject to a whirlwind of change. Can I control that, or even steer it? Or make sense of it, in a total sense of knowingness? No.

Which brings me back to the nexus and here to Yogyakarta, Java and ICSEI. It also brings me mentally back to Scotland, where I shall return this week, in the cold mid-winter. By the way, the summer is very agreeable, as it stays light all evening close to midnight, and thus there too is difference, as for me the seasons encapsulate difference. To come here is for me to celebrate difference of a different kind. I am propelled into tropical heat, but that is itself very different to our summer, even though we had one of our warmest summers for many years in 2013. Yes, Java is still a pretty different place from Scotland, summer or winter. But what joins us? It is change. But more fundamentally it is change of the same things, not of different things. Some 7 fundamental innovation of information communications technology as it emerges will spread almost instantly round the world. Thus whether it is twitter, or animation, or a Cloud Virtual Learning Environment, it is accessible globally. When it changes it changes everywhere. An innovation in this realm becomes instantly accessible across the globe. Thus I state here that the change is the nexus. Thus where once there would have been lateral difference, and still is, it is lesser. The fundamental changes joining us are vertical, embedded in change. Those are the changes which join us – a conjoined change. What is new for me is new for you. What is new for you is new for me. But the communication links are nearly instant. For those aspects, time is a far greater separator than geography, and that is what links us. That is also the national-global- nexus of education change, since we have to learn about that, and through that, and we are in essence now learning the same things, even if in different settings and cultural contexts. I hope we can hold on to our horizontal difference. Cultural diversity is there to be celebrated. I know that itself has given rise to the need to value heritage. For instance the dual Gaelic language heritage of the school I teach in is a conscious focus on the need to celebrate difference by valuing different traditions, to know who we are now by holding on to a sense and knowledge of where we come from. That is very important and to be valued. But the vertical difference is a form of change which unites us, uniting us in the verticality of difference. That is in a sense a paradox.

I want to use that to jot down a few implications for education change. How do we steer that change? Indeed should we? My answer is yes, but only by tearing our assumptions to shreds, ridding ourselves of fixed methods and specifications, to be replaced by principle and purpose as an array of potential (including the experience of others but not as prescription).

So, I stated that I am not giving you a result of a research programme, as such. Yet in a way I am. The innovations of practice in Plockton Primary School under my leadership, but also of, by and through the leadership of other staff members, and student, parent and community members, benefited from considerable external funding. Much of that we bid for, competitively, me and also other colleagues here. We are grateful to those who made available those opportunities and to those who saw in our proposals sufficient merit to award funding when faced with a range of applicants and a restricted pool of funding. Those ranged from the directly empirical such as our four-school computer microscopes microworlds project (MacKinnon 2004), to those with strong conceptual elements, such as trialling approaches in assessment for learning (MacKinnon 2005, 2006a, 2006b) and altering planning to fit with the new capacities’ orientation of Scotland’s incoming curriculum around children’s potential (MacKinnon 2007). Likewise the Oracle Foundation funded our collaborative four-school project using their Thinkquest Virtual Learning environment. It was their innovation which loosely steered our innovation. As we formed a project with our own stamp on it, essentially for a period merging four schools at an extended distance in joint activity, our differences were what linked us, the interest of difference. Then the Oracle Foundation published our work as a case study (Oracle Education Foundation 2007). Thus knowledge begat knowledge, co-creation, metaknowledge, and it was through collaboration that new forms of knowledge arose, mediated at the level of the student, educator, school, software company and from each to each, and through to those who supported us, such as our ‘enterprise in education’ initiative of our local authority, here in Highland Council, and the Oracle Foundation itself as they developed the e-learning tools based on feedback from schools, deriving from the projects they hosted and supported (Oracle Education Foundation 8

2009). To do that they had to think about pedagogy and that for me encapsulates the forms of learning for educators which now needs to guide and steer change. It cannot be specifications and scalar judgement. It must not be top down. There is no ‘How good is…?’ because there is no ‘What good is…?’ either from school to school, or student to student. There are norms, and zones of coherence, and incoherence, but appearances are very deceptive. On first impression I thought these avenues and thoroughfares in Yogyakarta were chaotic. They are not. They embody flow, very efficiently. My classroom has so often been far more like a Yogyakarta street than some production line delivery channel, and you see now how deep understandings come to the fore, and in there form a bridge to pedagogy.

Efficiency is in flow. There is purpose and its realisation, which is changing, set in the context of the potentiality of a vast diversity of human potential – our students, who they are now and what they may become, which is itself undergoing vast change. That to me was the essence of the new ‘four capacities’ focus of Scotland’s curriculum reform of 2004. The approach was saying reach out and explore the potential in our students. That is what we tried to do in this school. Basically we created orders of meaning. To make this happen we had to think and collaborate. There was no plan. But neither was it incoherent or spasmodic. We worked within the principles of the new national curriculum framework, then loose and not overloaded as they are now. Each layer of potential once realised, within the new curriculum framework, engendered further potentials and those were then explored. What I am saying is, such a mode of change becomes organic, like a life form, as our development and its articulation in time – past, present, future – becomes an entity, which is both coherent yet loose, structured yet fuzzy. It is an altered from of evaluation, and development. Yes we had plans, in accordance with our official, bureaucratic mandates, but for us this was something different – a metaplan, framed around purpose and thus indistinct and fuzzy. Barriers were circumvented, or an insurmountable block would lead to a new path. We found ways through. All this is a new conceptualisation of learning – individual, educator and institution – pointing to yet a higher order of learning – system.

Neither is this improvement, nor even development if thought in grading or specification terms. It is not a set path to a fixed future, climbing up the fixed notches of a ‘National Performance Framework’ (Scotland and other countries). It is not a ‘Race to the Top’ (US), nor a ‘Journey to Excellence’ (Scotland), nor is it ‘raising the bar’ (Ugh). It is finding out about something in the here and now and transforming it from within, also in the here and now. It is finding a new us – students and educators, and our wider communities. We need to shift from the notions of deficit.

There is no mythical excellence (MacKinnon 2008b, 2011b), only an optimal fit between current action, current purpose and a loosely configured future, and for each individual. That fit will be essentially the same over time, as new awarenesses, new contexts, new purposes, adapted from those which preceded them, as the future itself orders, demand a new fit. Withstand that and attempt to hold it up or chain it down at your peril. We are exploring purpose and making it happen. This is also how I teach. We live by intention, not targets. As we realise intention we assemble or access knowledge or skills. A student who may seem demotivated in a sea of learning targets can become energised in a sea of purpose, intention, ambition, desires, motivation and goals, once owned. To be owned they have to be co-owned. They have to want

9 to do this. For me that is the trick of teaching, which is actually not teaching at all but connecting.

Teaching is not about delivery, it is about potential and purpose, motivation and goal, and encapsulates in wholes, as a student seeks to do something, make something, achieve something (for itself, not a label as in a test mark). My job is then to assist them in garnering the wherewithal to achieve that, which includes knowledge and skills. But they are not framed as learning targets. Certainly within those arenas of sense more formally understood learning may occur, but the overall task being related to wholes becomes collaborative. The process can also be intense, to enable a performance, acquire mastery of a subject, or understand a process. Real artefacts may be produced, which may be ephemeral or tangible. There may be intense concentration. Or silence. Or a mad melee.

These thoughts derive from practice, from my desire to connect with the students to best help them develop and acquire the wherewithal to steer their own pathways of and for their futures, from now. That is why I commend the concept of the now decade old ‘new’ Scottish curriculum approach (Scottish Executive 2004), centred on four capacities of student potential and capability. I consider that the essence of children’s development in the knowledge age is confidence, responsibility and contribution, as identified in the report, and that learning has to fit those as an equal partner, in essence serving those high ideals, making the set of four capacities framing Scotland’s new national initiative from 2004. That is, or could still yet be, a major reconfiguration of schooling, for it is not driven by learning but being. That being, framed in responsibility, confidence and contribution may be served by learning, but is not its master. For me that is what is transformational about Scotland’s new approach, which has been spawned by 21 st century technological and communicational potentialities. But it may philosophically be closer to those who inspired and who laboured to construct the Buddhist temple at Borubudur which I visited here last week, than it is to the industrial production line assumptions framing earlier delivery-oriented curricula in Scotland, such as the one we have just moved from, officially dropped only three years ago. But I fear that the process of change has not been grasped in Scotland, on which I spoke at ICSEI Santiago last year (MacKinnon 2013,a,b,c), so won’t express this argument in depth. But such notions as tracking, fixed arrays of new curriculum content in clumsy, wordy and prescribed Es & Os (experiences and outcomes) and an inspectorate enforcing a fixed, rigid “right direction” (HMIE 2011) and specified “characteristics of successful implementation required for successful implementation” (ibid – my emphasis) for the new curriculum in a set formula with static indicators, is taking us away from that higher order reconceptualisation of pedagogy which is emerging from children’s own responses to changed media and changing roles, as pedagogy is reconfigured from delivery/transmission to something more creative and adaptive, yet fuzzy. If the evaluation won’t change what hope is there for pedagogy/instruction? (MacKinnon 2011a)

These are problems of implementation, but arising where power structures latched on to certain conceptual archetypes are hindering transformation. Thus in terms of realising an expressly new curriculum, ‘making it happen’ is another thing altogether. A truly radical new curriculum can be no more than a set of principles and requires fundamental examination of power, structures, assumptions and processes, which are worked in to normative transformation (MacKinnon 2008b, 2011a, 2012). That has to be a systemic and organic process of change, where ‘making it 10 happen’ is simply to wade into the middle, just as I did hiring a motorbike rider to take me round Yogyakarta. Suddenly in that weaving, pulsating, throbbing traffic I felt that sense of flow, for immediately I was in the hands of a master of his craft – the Yogyakarta motor bike taxi rider. There lies the Local-National-Global Nexus of Education change. I was doing some sightseeing, but also thinking.

I remind you that I speak as a practitioner, as one who sought to make a realignment of pedagogy happen on the ground. It has not been easy, but it has been difficult in ways I had not preconceived. Or should I say, it has been made difficult. The children have not been the problem. There have been children with problems – major problems – but they are part of the normal ‘variety’ of this job, to be ‘absorbed’. The real problems lie elsewhere, in the system 1, in procedural, conceptual and structural presuppositions which have hindered the flow of transformation (MacKinnon 2011a,b,c,d).

There is no supra-national governance in education, yet a currency of ideas has gone global in ways unprecedented compared to previous epochs, and pulling in different directions, e.g. ‘The Fourth Way’ (Hargreaves and Shirley 2009), ‘performativity / neoliberal governmentalities’ (Ball 2003; Ball & Olmedo 2013; Reeves 2008, 2013), Finnish Way/GERM – Global Education Reform Movement (Sahlberg 2011); ‘Professional Capital’ (Hargreaves & Fullan 2012); Knowledge Building (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1993; Scardamalia 2013) system versus specifications/drivers (Seddon 2008; Fullan 2011). My own journey of ideas in education is global. I make a plea to my Scottish colleagues, some of whom are present here at this congress and who are also speaking of change in Scotland, to pay closer heed to these theories, rooted in empirical evidence, and within which lies the realisation to pay closer heed to me, and to those like me, to those who do the work. Grasp our perspectives, not as objects but as subjects. Probe meaning and transformation, not preconception and specification. As Pasi Sahlberg noted of me in his book Finnish Lessons , “The voices of practitioners are rarely heard in the education policy and reform business. Educational change literature is primarily a technical discourse created by academics or change consultants” (Sahlberg 2011:104). That is what needs to change.

For me this is a sign that our education system in Scotland, and far beyond, is stuck, and it is stuck in not developing the self-awareness of how to mediate change, across all the players who operate in that ‘space’, that of the practitioner-policy interface (MacKinnon 2014). My answer is to grasp the nexus – the Local-National-Global Nexus of Education Change. The commonality of change may be embraced in flow, a different process to the one-way streaming of targets, delivery, specifications and challenge. It pertains to the properties of a system, related to purposes framed in principles. Let us go with it. It is ours to celebrate, from Plockton to Yogyakarta.

1 See the work of John Seddon (2008) across the British public sector on this point, and from whom I took the word usage ‘absorb variety’. 11

References

2Simple Software (2008), 2Control NXT in Scotland , Illustrated brochure based on the practice of Plockton Primary School http://www.youblisher.com/p/770789-2Simple-2Control-NXT- in-Scotland-Plockton-Primary-School-2008/ Ball, S. (2003), The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 18, No. 2, 215-228. http://www.scribd.com/doc/70287884/Ball-performativity- teachers http://seced2012.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/review-the-teachers-soul-and-the- terrors-of-performativity-ball-2003/ Ball, S & Olmedo, A (2013), Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities, Critical Studies in Education , 54:1, 85-96 Bereiter, Carl and Scardamalia, Marlene (1993), Surpassing Ourselves – an inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise, Open Court: Chicago and La Salle, Illinois Education Scotland (2013) Inspection advice note 2013-2014 http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/ESInspectionAdviceNote2012-2013_tcm4- 684008.pdf Fullan, Michael (2011), Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform , Centre for Strategic Education, Victoria, Australia. http://www.edsource.org/today/wp- content/uploads/Fullan-Wrong-Drivers1.pdf http://education.qld.gov.au/projects/educationviews/news-views/2011/nov/talking-point- fullan-101117.html Fullan, Michael and Hargreaves, Andy (2012), Professional Capital – transforming teaching in every school . Routledge: London & New York Hargreaves, Andy and Shirley, Dennis (2009), The Fourth Way – the inspiring future for education change , Corwin: Thousand Oaks CA Heaney, Peter (2007) What was life like back then?’ Times Educational Supplement. 16 November 2007 http://www.youblisher.com/p/793203-What-was-life-like-back-then-TES- 16-11-2007/ and http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2463340 HMIE (2011) HMIE Inspection Advice Not e , Livingston: HM Inspectorate of Education (now Education Scotland) ICSEI (2014), papers presented at the 27 th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Indonesia http://www.icsei.net/index.php?id=1656 MacKinnon, Niall (2004), Microworlds, in: Connected, Learning and Teaching Scotland http://wayback.archive- it.org/1961/20121215223030/http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/Connected11Aut umn04_tcm4-121481.pdf MacKinnon, Niall (2005) Assessment is for Learning: Rediscovering the Heart of the Curriculum? Report on ‘Assessment is for Learning’ Project January - September 2005, Plockton Primary School/ Highland Council http://www.youblisher.com/p/795437-Plockton- Primary-AifL-project-report-2005/ MacKinnon, Niall (2006), Thinklinks, Project Report to Highland Council ‘Determined to Succeed’. The joint work and joint working of: Steelstown Primary School, Derry, Northern Ireland. Birchley St Mary’s Primary School, St. Helens, Lancashire, England. Plockton Primary School, Plockton, Highland, Scotland. St John Paul II Primary School, Twardogora, Poland. Plockton Primary School. http://www.youblisher.com/p/792344-Thinklinks-2006/ MacKinnon, Niall (2006), AifL - Assessment is for Learning: Questioning strategies in Plockton Primary School, Highland . Learning and teaching Scotland (website) http://wayback.archive- it.org/1961/20100625100412/http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/assess/sharingpractice/for/highqu alityinteractions/plocktonps.asp

MacKinnon, Niall (2006), AifL - Assessment is for Learning: Monitoring and planning for improvement in Plockton Primary School, Highland. Learning and Teaching Scotland http://wayback.archive- it.org/1961/20100730123808/http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/assess/sharingpractice/of/monitori ng/plocktonps.asp MacKinnon, Niall (2007), Formative Fun at the Heart of Learning: approaches to integrating A Curriculum for Excellence and Assessment is for Learning at school level AifL Project report July 2007 to Learning and Teaching Scotland as funding body. Plockton and Elgol Primary Schools http://www.youblisher.com/p/768007-Plockton-Elgol-Primary-School- AifL-project-report-July-2007/ MacKinnon, Niall (2008a) The Perils of Permanent Perfection , Times Educational Supplement for Scotland , 21 March 2008. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2596504 MacKinnon, Niall (2008b), ‘There is no such thing as the right way’, Times Educational Supplement for Scotland , 4 July 2008. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2644274 MacKinnon, Niall (2008c) Scratch computer programming, Plockton Primary School http://www.youblisher.com/p/792526-Plockton-Primary-Scratch-programming-2008/ MacKinnon, Niall (2009) Weather Watch 2009 , Plockton Primary School / Kherad School, Tehran, Iran / Delat School, Penang Malaysia / Virtual Learning, Kent http://www.youblisher.com/p/792864-Plockton-International-Weather-Watch-2009/ http://rabbani.sch.ir/guidance/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=366%3A20 12-04-28-09-39-08&catid=85%3A2011-11-16-11-33-45&Itemid=80&lang=en http://microsites2.segfl.org.uk/archive.php?id=95 MacKinnon, Niall (2010) A taste of local food – practice, theory and curriculum change , Plockton Primary School, http://www.youblisher.com/p/767998-Plockton-Primary-School- A-Taste-of-Local-Food-2010/ MacKinnon, Niall. (2011a), The urgent need for new approaches in school evaluation to enable Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, Volume 23, Number 1. February http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11092-011-9116-4 http://link.springer.com/journal/11092/23/1/page/1 http://www.youblisher.com/p/792380-The-urgent-need-for-new-approaches-in-school- evaluation-to-enable-Scotland-s-CfE/ MacKinnon, Niall. (2011b), ‘Let’s re-energise 'living learning', Times Educational Supplement for Scotland. 18 February. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6070694 MacKinnon, Niall (2011c) Finnish Lessons for Scotland, online article in Bower, Joe ‘ For the love of learning ’, Alberta, Canada (11 November) http://www.joebower.org/2011/11/finnish-lessons-for-scotland.html MacKinnon, Niall (2011d) Kills 99% of GERMS Times Educational Supplement for Scotland (11 November) http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6134006 MacKinnon, Niall (2012), ‘A Scottish Headteacher’s View of the Effectiveness Challenge’, ICSEI Express and Digest , The International Congress of School effectiveness and Improvement, May http://www.icsei.net/index.php?id=1592 MacKinnon, Niall (2013), A systems thinking approach for school enhancement , 26 th International Congress of School effectiveness and Improvement, Santiago, Chile http://pasg.cl/icsei/download.php?file=envios/ab29b9905935e05341b0b5c61d7f7466.pdf http://pasg.cl/icsei/download.php?file=envios/ef2a05a5db035c1a40dfe6ce9e0a082b.pdf MacKinnon, Niall (2013) Systems thinking for public sector scrutiny , 26th International Congress of School effectiveness and Improvement, Santiago, Chile. http://pasg.cl/icsei/download.php?file=envios/ab29b9905935e05341b0b5c61d7f7466.pdf http://pasg.cl/icsei/download.php?file=envios/ef2a05a5db035c1a40dfe6ce9e0a082b.pdf

MacKinnon, Niall (2013) GERM Outbreak in Scotland, presentation at the 3P Network Forum for Policymakers, Politicians and Practitioners, 26th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Santiago, Chile. http://www.youblisher.com/p/792375- GERM-Outbreak-in-Scotland/ and in shortened form at: http://www.joebower.org/2012/11/new-germ-outbreak-in-scotland.html MacKinnon, Niall (2014) The Practitioner Policy Interface – Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School and The World, Presentation at the 3P Network Forum for Policymakers, Politicians and Practitioners, 27th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia http://www.youblisher.com/p/793045-ICSEI- 2014-3P-Practitioner-Policy-Interface/ Oracle Foundation (2007), The Perfect Place – schools unite to create the perfect place , Oracle Foundation explanatory publicity leaflet of collaborative on-line project using Think.com virtual learning environment 2006-07 for the Thinklinks, Project: The joint work and joint working of: Steelstown Primary School, Derry, Northern Ireland. Birchley St Mary’s Primary School, St. Helens, Lancashire, England. Plockton Primary School, Plockton, Highland, Scotland. St John Paul II Primary School, Twardogora, Poland. www.thinkquest.org/promotion/case_studies/Sample.pdf Oracle Education Foundation (2009) The Power of Learning with Thinkquest http://www.thinkquest.org/promotion/white_papers/WhitePaper.pdf plockton.com (2005) Epitaph to a salmon alevin, March 2005 http://www.plockton.com/primary_archive/reports/webreports_04-05_spring.shtml plockton.com (2012) Computer art , January 2012 http://www.plockton.com/primary/index.shtml plockton.com/primary (2002-2012) Plockton Primary School website within Plockton village website, http://www.plockton.com/primary/index.shtml (and previous years listed) Plockton Primary School (2005) Internet safety competition, School News , 31 August 2005 http://www.plockton.com/primary_archive/news_050831.html Sahlberg, Pasi (2011), Finnish Lessons – What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Teachers' College Press. (2011), http://www.finnishlessons.com/ Scardamalia, Marlene, (2013), 21st Century Competencies environments and Assessments , keynote speech, 26 th International Congress of School Effectiveness, Santiago, Chile http://www.icsei.net/fileadmin/ICSEI/icsei_2013/documents/Scardamalia_2013-ICSEI- http://www.icsei.net/fileadmin/ICSEI/icsei_2013/css/video_scardamalia.html Scottish Executive (2004). A Curriculum for Excellence. Report of the Curriculum Review Group. Seddon, John (2008), Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: the failure of the reform regime and a manifesto for a better way , Axminster: Triarchy Press. SOLACE (2008), Adding extra value – schools unite to create the Perfect Place using Think.com, Steelstown Primary School, Derry, Northern Ireland. Birchley St Mary’s Primary School, St. Helens, Lancashire, England. Plockton Primary School, Plockton, Highland, Scotland. St John Paul II Primary School, Twardogora, Poland, Focus – the electronic newsletter of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, http://www.solace.org.uk/library_documents/SOLACEFocus-April08.pdf (page 40)

14 TheThe Local–National–GlobalLocal–National–Global NexusNexus ofof EducationEducation ChangeChange

Niall MacKinnon Plockton Primary School, Scotland, UK

ICSEI Congress, January 2014 Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia Plockton Primary School and village Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia The globalisation of communications, travel, commodities, products, finance and business organisation is leading to another form of globalisation, that of ideas. It is unproblematic to note that across the globe societies are paying special attention to their education systems. What is problematic is how they are doing it. What is even more problematic is consideration of why they are doing it. Is it just to become ‘better’? For what? How determined? The first email account I was given in a work context in school was in this post when I started in 2001. Prior to 2001 I did not have email contact as a teacher. That is how much has changed in a relatively short time. Since then my practice as school leader and with colleagues here has taken this school into the forefront of e-learning, exploring a large range of technologies and the potentials of pedagogy embedded in those. Animation ‘cloud’ based Virtual Learning Environments computer coding using a dedicated programming language for young children e-safety children making websites Computer art Computer microscopes Internet linked books (media bridging) collaborative projects connecting across the globe via new technologies in new media New interactive tools opening up new pedagogical approaches The forms of interaction engendered new forms of writing, and in other media – graphics, sound etc.

They also engendered new forms of math, science, art, and… Pupil constructed animation Mixed media and cross-curricular – school website At the same time we also were changing our curriculum in regard to some of the ‘old’ stuff.

Thus we have very active engagement with the arts of all kinds but that opens up new potentials Models became computer controlled All this is to dispose the mind to think in new ways, to open up new potential through new technological potentialities, but what is really new is the thinking.

Are we enabling that thinking?

Deep institutional mindsets have set in place an educational metaformation which itself comprises a theory but which is not made explicit.

Inter-school collaboration, online, lots! From 2002: 21st century skills

Commissioned and published as a case study by The Oracle Foundation Suppose that teaching rarely ‘produces’ learning’ or that most real learning (capability to act) is in fact collaborative.

Perhaps there are such deeply ingrained figments of social reality that the possibility of other modes of thinking and doing are extinguished. The missing ingredient is motive and purpose, seeing the potentiality in media and reconstructing our consciousness to utilise the potentiality of the media. There is also the permissive environment, especially that of the wider system. A specialist meaning rezones awareness and transmits its additional mental functionality to new situational applications, even beyond IT. As per the proverbial opening sentence of L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. The changes from when I began teaching thirty years ago render that another world, far further apart than that between Java and Scotland now. But what joins us? It is change. But more fundamentally it is change of the same things, not of different things.

Thus I state here that the change is the nexus. Thus where once there would have been lateral difference, and still is, it is lesser. The fundamental change joining us is vertical, embedded in change. Those are the changes which join us – a conjoined change. The forms of learning for educators, which now need to guide and steer change cannot be specifications and judgement. There is no ‘How good is…?’ because there is no ‘What good is…?’ either from school to school, or student to student. There are norms, and zones of coherence, and incoherence, but appearances are very deceptive. On first impression I thought these avenues and thoroughfares in Yogyakarta were chaotic. They are not. They embody flow, very efficiently. My classroom has so often been far more like a Yogyakarta street than some production line delivery channel. Efficiency is in flow. The essence of the new ‘four capacities’ Scotland’s curriculum reform since 2004 was saying reach out and explore the potential in our students. Basically we created orders of meaning. To make this happen we had to think and collaborate. There was no plan. But neither was it incoherent or spasmodic. The real plans we were mandated to produce, at length, had little relevance to this This was something different – a metaplan, framed around purpose and thus indistinct and fuzzy. There is no mythical excellence, only an optimal fit between current action, current purpose and a loosely configured future, and for each individual. That fit will be essentially the same, as new awarenesses, new contexts, new purposes, adapted from those which preceded them, as the future itself orders, demand a new fit. Withstand that and attempt to hold it up or chain it down at your peril.  We live by intention, not targets.  As we realise intention we assemble or access knowledge or skills.  A student who may seem demotivated in a sea of learning targets can become energised in a sea of purpose, intention, ambition, desires, motivation and goals, once owned.  To be owned they have to be co-owned.  They have to want to do this.  For me that is the trick of teaching, which is actually not teaching at all, but connecting. The essence of children’s development in the knowledge age is confidence, responsibility and contribution. learning has to fit those as an equal partner, in essence serving those high ideals. That could still yet be a major reconfiguration of schooling, not driven by learning but being. That is what is transformational about Scotland’s new approach, which has been spawned by 21st century technological and communicational potentialities. New pedagogies may philosophically be closer to those who inspired the Buddhist temple here at Borubudur than to the industrial production line assumptions framing earlier delivery-oriented curricula in Scotland But I fear this process of change has not been grasped

Develop the self-awareness of how to mediate change. Do this by doing it. Grasp the nexus. The Local-National-Global Nexus of Education Change. The children are doing it anyway (Classrooms – Malawi & Plockton) Reckoning with a New Curriculum

Talk given at the Annual Conference of the Association of Head Teachers and Deputies in Scotland – November 2009

Niall MacKinnon, Head Teacher, Plockton Primary School, Highland.

Curriculum for Excellence is leading us towards new principles of experiential relevance, contextual linkage, wider capacities and deeper potentialities beyond attainment. Assessment for learning places new emphasis on identifying and assisting paths forward in pupil learning. A child-centred approach is re-emerging in a modern guise.

Yet Scottish school education is only just coming out of a phase of tightly bound programmes, elaborated content, top-heavy planning, time balances, and over-riding emphasis on attainment. Audit had shifted to fixed measures, specifications, scaled indicators and idealised descriptors of grade levels. Accountability had become the imposition of external judgement. Inspection had turned into quasi-judicial process, rendered by snapshot. Evaluation had narrowed in meaning to grading.

Scottish education underwent a profound change through all this and it was not for the better.

The incoming curriculum philosophy and approach now requires a profoundly new approach for quality review. Of necessity the development and realisation of the new curriculum must become a collaborative endeavour. It’s time to stop asking: “What are they looking for?” We can no longer have it done to us and for us. Evaluation needs now to become formative process, founded on solution-focus and assessment for learning, but now for us too. Developmental progression must now emerge through ongoing interpretation, grounded in mutuality. Accountability must shift to become moderation of process, focused on realising learning pathways.

1 In this way the shifts in the content and nature of curriculum, and the forms and methods of learning for pupils, may then be enabled by similarly matched changes in how we enable and review this learning, in an integrated way throughout the system. Therefore Scottish education needs to become an integral learning system: successes and difficulties, whys and wherefores, causes and solutions, perceptions and interpretations. It needs a similarly transformative change in the nature of how it reviews itself and learns about learning.

To achieve this we need to take a fresh look at fundamental concepts within quality engagement just as are now occurring for the curriculum itself. Self-evaluation can no longer be ‘How good is…?’ to fixed indicator descriptors, measured by six-point scales. This is a mindset imposed on us. Instead it should be about collaboratively making sense of where we are at, what we are trying to do, in the light of our circumstances, our contexts, and founded on interpreting a very rapidly changing policy framework of Curriculum for Excellence. But inspection turned our evaluation system into a control system, channelling us into one mode of thinking about learning, centred on a de- contextualised notion of performance. Grade measuring this major curriculum transition by a concept as vacuous as ‘improvements in performance’ renders it senseless. In so doing, Curriculum for Excellence, in terms of its emergent principles and concepts, is being sidelined, and the high-pressure performance management culture is denying it the nurturing space to grow to the transformative vision at its core.

Within this audit culture we cannot enable the new curriculum in the real sense in which the term building the curriculum was originally intended. How can we set about thinking about curriculum differently when asked to grade ‘the curriculum’ as an indicator at the very moment we are implementing a very different notion even of what the term curriculum comprises and at an interim stage of the implementation of the initiative? This does not make sense. Packing the whole of Curriculum for Excellence into one quality indicator sends the message that the new curriculum is just reformulated content, to be rolled out for implementation in schools, then measured in terms of impact. But the new curriculum endeavour is so much more. The curriculum itself cannot be an indicator as

2 HMIe have set it out in their inspection system. It does not indicate anything. To try to grade it as an entity separate to its realisation is to deny the essence of what this initiative is about. It is not essentially about content. It is about realising new transformative principles in learning relevant to and for the transformational social, technological, economic, communicational and cultural changes now occurring at breakneck speed all around us – in leisure, in work, in family, in communities, locally, nationally and globally.

Yet the Building the Curriculum process which was to realise this action-based professional learning approach has been squeezed out of our development at school level since this engagement and formative process depends on a different notion of self- evaluation to that within HMIE’s How Good Is Our School?. There is thus now a stark choice for quality audit, of summative judgemental imposition using graded fixed specifications to imposed commentaries, or realising new forms of practice to new principles through dialogue and action implementation, with reflection pertaining to realisation of purpose at the local level relevant to local contexts and circumstances, a summative process or formative process, How Good Is… or Building the Curriculum. They are different paradigms, different thought universes, different conceptualisations of the inner nature of learning and the means to realise it. Which remains dominant will determine the future direction of Scottish education. Currently Building the Curriculum is not at the fore. If it were then school and local authority evaluation processes and quality reports would be framed around the core concepts of the incoming curriculum and the reflective questions of these five documents, yet they are not. But if they were then we could embrace the new principles at the core of our development and evaluation, including, centrally, self-evaluation. But self-evaluation is not currently considered in these terms, not by the arbiters of what this term is permitted to mean within Scottish education, currently matching to fixed auditor-derived level descriptors of practice idealisation on a one-size-fits-all basis.

Through these contradictions we have been overloaded and de-skilled by procedural clutter and administrative complexity, from a system of top-down command and control

3 coming at us from the application of the audit tools and measures. This has been hindering new ways of thinking about curriculum, not just of content but of its nature and meaning, and of deepening learning for schools in applying this visionary process of active curriculum review. Therefore inspection as concept and method needs to go, along with its summative notion of evaluation and self-evaluation, to be replaced with new formative and participatory processes of engagement focused on what we are trying to do and how we are getting on, in the context of our own schools to the new curriculum framework and principles. This would be a new form of accountability focusing on locally-determined purpose as relating to the broader policy frameworks. It would be externally moderated, but in a new way to a new mutual ethos of developmental engagement, moderated through dialogue. The fundamental output of these new reviews would be pathways of action and systemic learning to emerging practice principles, not grades to prescribed measures and fixed assumptions. Commentaries would be negotiated and perspectives reached through dialogues and an essential core ethic of mutuality.

In this way the re-thinking of core concepts and principles for children’s learning should now be applied to the systems by which we review that learning. As we move to new concepts in the education of children these need to function in an integrated way at all levels of the system. In doing so we may then create a school education system at ease with itself in a way in which it has not been for a long period, which generates deep learning, this time for the education system itself and its staff, along with that of the education we envisage for our pupils.

We thus need to build a single and integral learning system, linking development and evaluation of Curriculum for Excellence in the next stage of its development. To do this we need to build a system of evidenced-based quality review, rooted in purpose, founded on mutuality, with joint ownership of reporting and paths forward. This would be a review process for schools founded on the Assessment for Learning and solution-focused approaches which we apply in schools, thereby giving us ownership and a renewed sense of purpose to take this enormous initiative forwards into practical reality.

4 Through such means we may then look together at how we are realising change towards Curriculum for Excellence. These would enhance accountability, but through moderated engagement, not inspection. This process would engage through questions pertaining to the realisation of practice to the new principles. Thus: What has been easy to achieve? What is difficult? What are the blockages? How have they arisen? It would then penetrate interpretations through dialogue. But these are not and cannot be quality indicators to be grade ranked. The central task is a question: ‘why?’ to be mutually explored and determined, not measurement. This is because the process of action implementation to the new transformative principles cannot be measured or pre-specified; it can only be interpreted. We are going somewhere new, somewhere where none of us have been before, whether practitioner, student, pupil, parent, manager, adviser or auditor.

What is needed is the unravelling of meaning in context, penetrating interpretations, exploring and reporting on the practical implementation of new principles and forms of teaching and learning. These questions must be asked, directly, respectfully and non- judgmentally. Then we need to ask a fundamental question at a higher level. Is the whole system pointing the same way, really? What is it like out there for those steering these changes in schools? Have we actually asked? Is the accountability and quality assurance industry asking this, and listening, closely, respectfully and intently? Are we working with head teachers and school staff to identify pathways forward to realising the new curriculum principles guided by the Building the Curriculum documents, based on constructing knowledge of what is actually going on at school level, and how things really work, as told directly by school staff? Are we focusing on the issues as they emerge, whether successes or difficulties? Or do we have performance management to fixed measures, specifications, grading and judgement still at the core, albeit now in supposedly slightly lighter-touch fashion? Is the culture still essentially fault-finding plus imposed action planning?

If we do not now take this opportunity to grasp new means of realising the transformational learning contained within Curriculum for Excellence, embracing diversity and genuine innovation, then its development and implementation will become

5 stunted and it will not flourish. The signs are there now and right before us. Internal debates and those in the educational press have adopted a new fractious tone. The findings of the independent Scottish Head Teacher Recruitment and Retention Survey are of a core job which has become overloaded and unattractive. The Crerar Review spoke of the high burden of scrutiny across public services, the need for a system approach and for central audit to ‘let go’. These should provide the wake up call to the actions now needed at the heart of our education system to free up the way forward.

We need to replace indicators with purposes, measures with questions, inspection with dialogue, grading with action pathways, snapshot with ongoing process, action plans with feedback loops, judgement with interpretation, accountability with responsibility, institutional reporting with thematic review. The new curriculum approach needs a profoundly new culture of respect, empathy, esteem and intrinsic listening. It should be founded on a core ethic of a new communication-rich professionalism. Graded accounting to fixed specifications now needs to be replaced with systemic learning relating to purposes and principles to differing contexts and circumstances.

Schools, their communities and their staff, and the overall education system, need to learn, and to learn together.

6 http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1rftx/HolyroodmagazineIssu/resources/90.htm http://goo.gl/graog

Holyrood Magazine 11 March 2011

Times Educational Supplement for Scotland , 18 February 2011 http://www.pedagoo.org/edupic11-part-ii/

#EduPic11 Part II

October 3, 2011 in Curriculum, Ideas by chrisleslie

I liked the idea of EduPic as soon as I was told about it. An egalitarian environment in which people would be asked to contribute honestly to the debate about Scottish education was an attractive prospect. At the event, I found myself at a various tables in the company of forthcoming and passionate learning professionals, and some weighty discussions took place.

We discussed the topic of equality, and were asked to imagine how equality could be achieved if there were no constraints in place. We first of all considered that equality means a curriculum every pupil can engage with. In my time as a teacher, there were many occasions where I saw pupils underachieving in English as I tried to persuade them of the importance of writing a critical essay on a work of literature, which was realistically of no conceivable interest to them.

CFE should mean that these shackles are removed somewhat. Teachers can engage with the wider text, meaning greater freedom of choice about what to teach. However, the problem I expressed with this was that CFE has placed on teachers the responsibility for developing means of learning and assessment, without providing any real time to get this done. If I wanted to do a unit of work on a film, quite often I had to develop the resources from scratch. The pace of teaching often defeated me: I tried to create interactive lessons involving ICT, wider texts and topical lessons, but found I was working late into the night, without a social life bar Saturdays. I was surrounded by colleagues during my time at Inveralmond High School who were working even harder, and have found the teaching profession to be full of people prepared to give generous amounts of time to delivering the best for young people.

We moved on quickly from this to other discussions, and then people began to share some inspiring things. Kay Ramsay, head of Park Primary in Stranraer, gave the name of a book, The Spirit Level, in which Richard Wilkinson champions social equality and tries to map out a way to achieving it. Paul Campbell of CPD Strathclyde outlined a digital literacies project he had undertaken. Someone else mentioned Studio Schools, an English initiative which could point the way towards equality of choice in the curriculum. And as more and more people shared their knowledge and ideas, I felt increasingly that I could have cut my workload as a teacher by going and finding out more from others, gathering resources.

As Niall MacKinnon from Plockton Primary stood up to argue that CFE Experiences and Outcomes should be scrapped, I felt that this was an argument underlining the professionalism of Scotland’s teachers, and their resistance to delivering another prescriptive curriculum. It was encouraging to see that people don’t want to be hemmed in, and want to deliver lessons tailored to the best interests of the particular set of pupils in front of them. And I found it encouraging to think that teachers will have more sense than to relentlessly document the CFE outcomes they are hitting, and concentrate on delivering learner-centred education in their own way.

Scotland’s teachers are working harder than ever to enhance young people’s learning experiences. Give them the tools and the professional autonomy, and they will continue to deliver.

Making external school review effective findings

Country/context Authors Lessons for policymakers Conference Robust frameworkRobust viewsstudent and Parent Skilledreviewers transparentObjectiveand Alignedschoolreview with Explanatoryreporting backfeedforward Feedand localsystem to Matched to not with, Done Qualityconsistency

Hong Kong Wong and • Effectiveness is achieved through a balance of Hiu Li (2011) internal and external evaluations with a focus on • • • • • school empowerment and improvement.

Perspective Gaertner and • Robust validity of the process and criteria used in and review Pant (2011) inspection is essential for effectiveness, particularly • • • of evidence in ‘high stakes’ contexts.

Scotland MacKinnon • Identifies issues that can arise when there is a (2011) mismatch between concepts and structures used in • • • school evaluation and policy aims.

Ireland and McNamara • Teachers need support to carry out effective self- Iceland et al. (2011) evaluation. It should not be assumed that they are able to do this without training and skills. • • • • Support does not have to be extensive but it does have to be there.

England Allen and • Schools only just failing see an improvement over Burgess the following two to three years; this improvement (2012) occurs in core compulsory subjects. • There is a less positive impact on lower-ability • • • pupils. Tackling schools that are ‘just’ satisfactory or ‘coasting’ could be a potentially important area for development.

The Netherlands Ehren et al. • Where specific test results are part of an (2012) accountability system, schools may not adhere to • • • guidelines for administration.

England Perryman • Inspection may have negative emotional impacts. (2007; 2009; • Notes that there is a risk that schools identified as 2012) weak may focus on just the process of passing an • • • inspection, rather than the wider goals of school improvement; and it may even result in some schools attempting to fabricate evidence.