Thinking about writing – part 2

So we have been looking at assessment of writing – in our course and in our work in the Cluster, especially through a national values education project which we have been involved in.  In the final report for the project I used some data we collected on student writing using the First Steps writing map. Finding appropriate assessment tools is always a challenge in the context of standardised tests. While we prefer more qualitative data, our directors love a graph (even if it is based on less than reliable data!)

So how to get the balance between quantitative and qualitative evidence continues to challenge us. We decided on First Steps because it is a useful continuum to collect data on students as it also identifies what to do next to support learners to move to the next phase. It has seven phases or stages which the First Steps researchers and developers created by observing writing behaviours in classrooms and grouping the ones that typically occur together into phases.

Evidence in our project was collected on 10 focus students in years 1-4.  Typically students remain in a phase for approximately 18 months and yet six of these focus students moved a whole phase in the six months of the project and four others made significant progress. So we were quite pleased with the outcomes of our project. We recognised, nevertheless, that when you focus on a student in an action research project, there will often be improvement as explained by the Matthew Effect. Perhaps turning this data into quantitative evidence is the way to go. My preference is to look at the qualitative evidence and  analyse it.

A close study of a year 2 focus student who moved from the Experimental Phase (Phase 2) to demonstrating key indicators of the Early Phase (Phase 3), provides qualitative evidence of improvements in literacy but also the importance of belonging. Initially this student was a very reluctant writer, sometimes not engaging with writing at all. She was an Indigenous student and the Learning by Design element she was taught, Dream on, was about Aboriginal Dreamtime stories.

The first example is a typical work sample from term 1. Then a few weeks into the project – there was definite improvement.

In the above writing samples the student has moved from simple recounts to writing extended text including evaluation and compound sentences. This is only after one month. After creating a class book titled Min-Na-Wee or Why the Crocodile Rolls, students were asked to design and create an illustration to match a given part of the text with a partner. The teacher reflected that:

“This was a significant moment for the student (and myself) as she had previously refused to work with a partner during a similar activity for a different class book.  A was able to work co-operatively, with both students contributing to the design and creation of the illustration.”

The final piece of writing showed that ‘…free writing developed from one sentence recounts with many requests for support with spelling, to more detailed narratives incorporating humour; and towards the end of the unit,…an effort  to create a coda..’

The teacher had tapped into the student’s Indigenous  identity and built a sense of belonging for her. There were other great outcomes for this student too. She was more motivated and engaged, and she could work and play more collaboratively with her peers.  She is able to resolve conflicts more appropriately, has pride in her work and loves to talk about her culture.Focusing on what students achieve rather than scores enables assessment for learning and in this case, increased the student’s confidence in her literacy skills as she now perceives herself as a reader and a writer.

Thinking about writing part 1

Writing is a social practice. Through writing we can think, discover, explore, conjecture, delve into our imaginations, form our identities and create. As a social practice, we write for real audiences and purposes.

In my education writing was more of a product than a process. Our journey of understanding the teaching of writing has been enriched by the focus on process writing that came out of whole language and the more explicit teaching of text structures and their language features through genre approaches. Both have been extremely valuable in my teaching career.

Writing has been the focus of our discussions in the last two weeks of our course. There have been readings based on the research of Professor Sarah McCarthy who also led our two sessions. Sarah’s work focuses on English Language learners (ELLs) which in Australia we call Language Background other than English (LBOTE) or English as a Second Language (ESL).

We covered some wide ranging issues about writing and identity, writing as a cultural practice, teacher disposition and the effects of high expectations, parental expectations and support, the importance of students writing often (for ELLs in both English and their first language) for different purposes and audiences, and professional development in teaching writing.

One important issue I engaged with is valuing the diverse forms of language use which children bring to the classroom as a resource in teaching writing. It had strong links to our readings last semester by Lisa Delpit about diversity and also about literacy as a social and cultural practice. What this looks like in the classroom is really challenging to design as it can easily become patronising. However I am now considering new ways of making ‘experiencing the known’ more effective.

For example in a year 9 and 10 unit, we asked students to listen to a short story read with a strong English accent and formal tone. We then asked students to retell the story using more colloquial language and comparing and contrasting the two pieces. This provided students with access to standard English as well as valuing the language they use in speech. It also provided opportunities to critically discuss how the texts might position audiences.

This aligns with one of the readings by Dyson, who proposes a ‘new’ basics in the teaching of writing. It includes much more than a list of static writing conventions which students must master. It involves the school valuing the students’ use of language as resources for literacy learning. So rather then correcting students’ ‘errors’ which has been shown to be ineffective in literacy development, students have agency through reading, discussing, enacting and composing a diversity of texts with varied language choices and authorial stances. This can also open up opportunities for talking about the social and ideological effects of authorial decisions, which expand a ‘basics’ curriculum and are so necessary in a democratic society.

I’m too busy to date your avatar

Gaming and literacy

Learning about World of Warcraft (WoW) has been interesting to find out more about what engages some members of my family in the 20-35 years age bracket. While people played up to two hours a day (but not on every day), they had all replaced TV watching with WoW or other virtual world experiences such as Second Life. So really the issue of time is addressed by replacing TV with gaming.

As I heard my family talk about WoW and why they liked it, I could see their levels of motivation and engagement were high; hence Gee’s arguments about applying gaming principles to learning are worth considering. Laura who has two main characters, a Night Elf in the Druid class and a Dwarf in the Paladin class, loves the fantasy genre and given her fascination with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it’s not surprising that she loves WoW. She described the game as ‘complex and layered’ and she liked the way you can customise the characters and build your own identity. She also commented that the quests were challenging ‘but not too hard’ – an important learning principle Vygotsky taught us.  Jonathan who is a Dranei Knight in the Shaman class, likes the choice and how the quest lines are cumulative, building your skill level in each quest and rewarding you. He said the game makers were ‘good at making you feel special’ so he understood how the game tapped into identity and established a sense of belonging. Overall everyone liked the high interactivity and the sense of agency they felt.

The intellectual challenge is also an engagement factor with strategic thinking and problem solving skills as players must analyze and synthesize information and clues in a quest. Glen liked solving real problems and compared this to learning basic skills and rote learning. He loved medieval history and English at school so games like WoW interested him. He also commented on how the game was interactive and how he could choose the pathway for his character. He also commented on rewards which were useful like gaining new armour for his character for a future battle. School rewards such as grades are not nearly as meaningful.

It has been easy to draw out the connections of gaming to literacy. There are the obvious research skills in players finding out more about characters in quests in WoW and also by accessing other Internet sites to develop web based literacy, understanding complex narrative structures, reading sophisticated texts (often much more sophisticated than what we see in school texts), technical language, accessing and comprehending information – ‘just in time’ rather than ‘just in case’ as is typical in a lot of school learning. If literacy involves the reception and production of texts, reception is clearly covered here.

Within the game there are also interesting ways to communicate. The language in the narratives and lore is very descriptive and formal, while in the forums, players use more colloquial language. Players communicate through text which develops writing skills and through voice – being ‘on vent’ is the voice platform.

What really interested me was the spin offs from the game –  fan fiction, fan art, comic contest, Gadgetzan times newspaper, promotional videos, artwork, screenshots, wallpapers, real world and virtual world gaming conventions and soundtracks on iTunes.  It’s quite amazing to see so much creativity in the production of materials showing how computer games develop skills in the production of multimodal texts. Jo, a Human in the mage class with skills in alchemy and herbalism, described one spin off – The Guild, a sitcom web series which satirizes a group of online gamers. The first season was entirely financed by PayPal donations but was so successful it now has sponsors and is in its third season. There have been over 3 million views of the excerpt from the first episode on YouTube.

And nearly five million hits on a music video clip on The Guild – Do you want to date my avatar.

And just to show you the power of spin offs, there is a machinima music video clip in Second Life, entitled I’m too busy to date your avatar with 19,000 views.

And of course there is the WoW wiki, the free Warcraft universe info source anyone can edit and a forum where gamers can seek advice and support from other gamers. This illustrates the amazing learning community of WoW, something that I really love in my Illinois online course. In WoW players make friends by joining a raid and then working collaboratively with even more players in a big quest called an ‘instance’. They set up guilds to support raids and higher level (more experienced payers) support lower level players.

Teachers aspire to make students in schools feel that they belong to a community of learners. So I believe the principles of the world of gaming are worth considering in school learning.

Understanding Learning Part 2

In my earlier post I commented on a lesson observation of  a colleague who was teaching a year 7 visual arts class. This is what happened next……..

Being a very committed educator in her first year of teaching, the teacher was very keen to explore ways of making the lesson better. In fact she had two other year 7 visual arts classes that she intended to present the same lesson to, so immediately took up the opportunity to meet with me and reflect on the lesson. We discussed how she could use the knowledge processes of experiencing, conceptualising, analysing and applying to engage students and include everyone in the learning. We talked about explicit teaching and developing knowledge and understanding so that students are supported to produce high quality work. We considered how students needed agency in learning and how talk gave them more agency and scaffolded their thinking and understanding. We also explored inclusive cooperative strategies to support this classroom talk as well as build in accountability.

So in the next lesson  she presented the images of Japanese art without the conceptual questions. She ensured that she valued the prior knowledge, experiences and opinions of students by asking them to look at the images and discuss what they liked or disliked, what it reminded them of or had seen before. This combined experiencing the known and the new. It engaged students in the learning by valuing their lifeworld experiences. The teacher used Think-Pair-Shares to ensure accountability, to use talk to scaffold thinking and to give students agency as they were doing the thinking and talking.

From this the teacher moved to conceptual learning where the students identified some of the artists’ techniques which had been explicitly taught in previous lessons. She used Think-Pair-Shares again to ensure inclusivity.

How has line been used in this artwork?

How has colour been used in this artwork?

How has tone been used in this artwork?

Look at the composition? What do you notice about the buildings compared to the landscape?

This was conceptualising by naming. This naming was vital for students to develop a metalanguage to enable further thinking and discussion and in fact is inclusive in that, once acquired, it enables all students to participate. She then presented some factual information about how Japanese landscapes present universal themes and depict sky, mountains and water as proportionately much larger then human beings. Images were shown that represented these facts and the students were asked to discuss them.

Then by examining how these techniques can be used to represent nature and the environment, the students moved into conceptualising by theorising. They could consider different tones, lines and colours and what happened when the indications of human life were much bigger. By using a placement activity, the teacher could ensure engagement, talk, deep thinking, and agency and accountability.

The analytical activity involved discussing the Japanese attitude to nature and how this affected the way people lived their lives. It enabled the teacher to make direct links to the values of respect and tolerance for others and for the environment. The students then moved from having deep knowledge about Japanese art techniques to developing a deep understanding about how it affected their art and their relationships with each other and the universe.

Here are some of their reflections:

Japanese artists show the unity of the landscape and show that Japan is more than advanced technology.

It shows us how they care for nature. And they have a different point view of nature than we do. They have a good relationship with nature.

They don’t use life much because that defeats the purpose of looking at nature.

The Japanese respect nature very much.

They don’t feel people are as important as the landscape.

It tells us more about how the art work shows the culture and the beauty of Japan.

The teacher then introduced an applying activity before the major applying activity of students creating their own artworks.

Which two images do you like the most?

Write down two points why they are similar and two points why they are different?

Use the language of colour and tone and composition to describe them.

What do the images tell you about the Japanese attitude to nature?

In this activity there was high agency as students could select from seven different images and use their metalanguage and the knowledge and understanding they had developed to describe them.

Here are some examples of the students’ artworks. Applying appropriately and Applying creatively are where the learner transformation is really evident.

Students were also asked to create a water colour of a Canberra landscape and incorporate the Japanese attitude to nature. Here is what they created:

Understanding Learning Part 1

Last week I visited a year 7 visual arts class to observe one of our teachers in our cluster values education project. The teacher has designed a really interesting learning element about 2D art, including printing and painting techniques such as acrylic and water colour. By looking at Indigenous, Japanese, and African art she is also developing students’ tolerance and understanding of other cultures.

Part of the lesson I observed was about Japanese art and tone. It involved experiential, conceptual and analytical learning. Using an interactive whiteboard, the teacher showed some images of Japanese art. The students looked at the images and considered the conceptual and analytical questions which were shown with the slides.

The questions that were presented with this slide were:

Why do you think the Japanese only use small indications of human life ( a little house, person or boat?)

Looking at this painting, what does it show you about the Japanese and their relationship to nature?

How does the information you just read give you some insight into Japanese landscape work?

About three students responded to the teacher when she prompted them with the questions. No wonder – they are very hard questions! Nevertheless these three students presented some good ideas, showing they were really thinking deeply about the subject matter of the paintings. It seemed to me that the majority was not engaged; Vygotsky has taught us that when things are out of our proximal zone of development we tend to switch off, as these students did. However because the teacher had such excellent student management skills, using proximity and gentle encouragement to get students to settle, they complied with her request to look at the slides, albeit passively. Most were probably just waiting for this part of the lesson to end so they could go and paint.

Students then moved into the art room to apply their learning by creating water colours, incorporating some of the Japanese artistic techniques.

By including experiential, conceptual, analytic and applied learning, the teacher was incorporating a range of pedagogies and ways of knowing to cater for the diversity of learners in the class. However the experiential, conceptual and analytical learning was covered during the first 20 minutes of the 90 minute session. These knowledge processes provide opportunities to engage and excite students about the learning, to explicitly teach concepts that you want students to understand and analyse so that they can apply them in the artworks or knowledge they create.

By covering them so quickly in order to ensure time for the students to create their own watercolour paintings, only a few students were able to engage and develop any understanding of the concepts. So naturally the final products of the applied learning did not reflect these understandings. Creating their artworks was really a form of busy work for the majority of students and intellectual quality was lacking.

A reflection

As we get closer to the end of our current unit in the New Learning, New Literacies course, Knowledge, Learning and Pedagogy, I’ve been thinking of how further study motivates and provides opportunities for reflection on our teaching practices. So here is my latest reflection…..

A teacher’s day is generally very busy – teaching classes, playground duty, preparing materials for lessons, being reactive to students’ needs, organising excursions, sports carnivals, parent evenings and then in the evenings there’s marking and lessons to prepare. No wonder it’s so hard to prioritise strategic thinking about your practice through designing and documenting curriculum.

 Last week I received a call from a colleague who had done some initial work with Learning by Design a couple of years ago but didn’t take it much further. Last year she completed a graduate certificate about the Quality Teaching framework which is based on the Productive Pedagogies (Qld) and Newmann’s ideas of authentic teaching and learning. She told me that with time to reflect on her learning in the course, she kept making connections to Learning by Design and how it enacted the dimensions of quality teaching – intellectual quality, quality learning environment and significance; she kept thinking, ‘That’s what Rita was talking about!’ Now she’s ready to go further and I’m meeting with her next week.

 To really get to the crux of what is quality teaching and learning, as I feel we are doing in our University of Illinois masters program, I think all teachers need to complete some postgraduate study or a masters of education like the Finnish teachers. Treating them as professionals would be much more productive for our students’ learning than the blame game.

 Of course we would also have to educate our politicians to understand learning a lot more, especially to understand the role of standardised testing; but that’s another discussion.

Committed Knowledge and Afghan Star

I watched a documentary last week, entitled Afghan Star. It was about the first season of a very popular TV show in Afghanistan which is based on pop idol shows like Australian and American Idol. The doco was on the first season of the show.  As I watched it I made connections to our readings this week on knowledge and learning.

The most controversial contestant on the show was a young woman, Setara, who danced as well as sang and let her scarf slip from her head. The movements were quite modest according to western standards but they caused an uproar in Afghanistan. Some people commented that she should sing by Islam rules and even that her behaviour justified an honour killing. The Islamic Council tried to ban the show and yet the show has continued into its fourth season.

This show confronted the ‘committed knowledge’ of the Islamic religion.  Followers of Islam are committed to the authoritative truth of the Koran which presents absolute rules for behaviour. Singing challenged this authority as did the fact that three women auditioned to appear on the show (there were 2000 men). So no wonder the dancing caused such controversy.

Committed knowledge can be based on religious truths, empirical truths, rationalist truths and canonical truths. The sort of pedagogy that would be typical in contexts of committed truths would be quite didactic. There would be no tolerance of other viewpoints, no questioning, theorising or challenging of the truths. Understanding would be based on rote learning and all students would be on the same page at the same time. This way of knowing is not tolerant of diversity and takes no account of students’ backgrounds, what they bring to the learning, engagement and how they belong.

So does this have a place in modern education? The literary canon has merits in that it includes the great texts of all time. In the modern past we would teach these texts in authoritative ways by reading the literary critics and regurgitating their conclusions about the text. Maths formulae and scientific facts can also be presented to students as committed truths. What is interesting is that when students do challenge or theorise about these truths is that they move from knowledge to understanding.

Understanding seems critical to developing more tolerance and a more just and cohesive society. And in fact the Afghan stars see their participation in the show as a way of breaking down barriers between ethnic groups and promoting peace after many years of war.

Life long learners and metacognition

Have been thinking more about intrinsic motivation and life long learners which I wrote about in my last post.

 Developing life long learners (and life wide) who are intrinsically motivated is one of the higher goals of learning and much more important that teaching students to accumulate facts and rebotically regurgitate them in a test. Given the importance of rewards (especially in the form of grades) and punishments and consequences in schools (and indeed in most aspects of their lives), the move from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation seems too great a challenge for many of our students. This has made me consider what is it that still helps us to develop life long learners. So a few more thoughts…….

Student agency seems critical so students can actively construct their knowledge and contribute to knowledge production. They need to be critically questioning the content they work with and move beyond the passivity which didactic approaches promote. Some critics of education argue that they need the facts first, before they can critically evaluate and questions. I believe they happen together. It’s not a first…then… approach.

Students need to be members of ‘communities of practice’ in which they have high agency and are communicating and collaborating in the discussion of dynamic ideas and in the production of knowledge. This sort of learning which is ‘co-constructivism’ – the teacher still has a role to explicitly teach.

Students also need metacognitive knowledge which helps them to understand how they learn. This might help them understand the importance of gaining conceptual knowledge and how this can be transformed into deep understanding through analytical learning.

This makes me think that we need to be even more explicit in communicating about the knowledge processes of Learning by Design to our students. It’s great that students can access the leaner side of a learning element but I think they need more. It reminded me of a story Rachael Radvanyi told me about some senor students (years 9 & 10) who asked to change classes. Typically this request is made because of some clash between a teacher and a student. However the students claimed that they quite liked the teacher as a person. The reason they wanted to change classes was because they didn’t like how they were learning in this class (it was textbook and worksheet oriented) and preferred the way they learnt in another class where Learning by Design was implemented. These students recognised that something was significantly different but they did not have a metalanguage to describe it. 

Perhaps my next learning element is about learning to learn – linked to a content area or knowledge. In experiencing the known students would reflect on learning experiences – the good ones and the not so good ones; in conceptualising by naming students would definitely develop the metalanguage of Learning by Design – experiencing, conceptualising, analysing and applying. And of course this would be linked to the relevant content of the subject or knowledge area.

This would also reinforce our key value for our Cluster schools – that what matters most in our schools is learning.

Belonging and Intrinsic Motivation

After reading everyone’s posts about behaviourism, I could really see the importance of ‘belonging’ in learning.

 A teacher establishes belonging for her students by engaging them in learning. This can be through valuing what they bring to the learning context  – sharing what they already know about the topic or brainstorming their ideas which also involves their background knowledge and connecting what they are learning about to their own life worlds..

 Belonging can also be established by presenting new materials and exposing students to some new ideas – reading or viewing a new text, going on an excursion, doing a survey or experiment etc. By sparking their interest teachers have an opportunity to engage them and develop belonging.

 Thinking about why the learning is significant or important also develops belonging. Students may connect it to their own lives and experiences or to other people they know or to universal issues such as effects on the environment or society.

 For students to belong, they also need agency, ie that they have some control over their learning, make decisions, negotiate, talk and think rather than the teacher doing all the talking and thinking and all authority about the topic is with the teacher or the textbook. Agency also involves the students as the creators or makers rather then receivers of knowledge.

 Talk is a key way that students can have agency so cooperative learning activities are very useful as students can all have a voice in a small group discussion. Feeling confident and accepted in small group discussions is another way that students feel they belong too.

 In our course many of us have developed a strong sense of belonging evident in our posts and comments. Once you do belong you start to feel a stronger sense of accountability – to yourself, your peers, your class and your teacher. As we found out when we looked at citizenship, belonging to an online community means we respect each other and we act in ways that ensures that our online community can operate successfully. People who don’t belong might try to undermine the operation of a community; perhaps this explains why governments are always trying to legislate about controlling the internet and online environments.

 After all of our readings and discussion, I can see that when students belong, they begin to develop intrinsic motivation. They no longer have to be motivated by rewards or punishments, they are motivated because they are engaged, because they have agency and because they feel accountable. This also has benefits for developing relationships between students and with the teacher (and even the institution of schooling!) which we know is central to effective learning too.

 Initially some students seem to need to be positively or negatively reinforced in order to engage with learning. However once engaged they are on the journey to becoming intrinsically motivated and to becoming life long and even life wide learners.

Behaviourism and Learning

Reading about behaviourism in our New Learning, New Literacies course has made me think even more about learner transformation.

Behaviourism is a school of psychology that observes human behaviour and draws conclusions about how environments affect behaviour and shape interactions. While there are many debates about the pros and cons of behaviourism, it is evident in many aspects of our lives including schools, workplaces, parent-child relationships, computer games, advertising and even social engineering. Behaviourists such as Skinner, Pavlov and Watson were very committed to understanding human behaviour in order to create better lives for the human race.

Compliance in schools
In schools, behaviourism is evident in reward systems such as grades, certificates and stickers and in consequences such as detentions, suspensions and the withdrawal of privileges. In many modern schools student management focuses on compliance so the school can function and operate. Such compliance creates power relationships between teachers and students with many teachers striving to establish and then maintain their positions of authority; likewise many students strive to challenge these positions! Rewards and punishments are seen as essential to maintain these relationships.

So what happens when the focus is on learning rather than on student management is a topic we discuss frequently in the Lanyon Cluster. Firstly the discourse with students when there are behaviour issues is about concerns about the impact on their learning and the learning of other students. We use restorative practices and try to avoid confrontations which will build student resentment and non-compliance. This also establishes a safe environment for learning.

Behaviourism seems very logical when considering the idea of breaking down complicated tasks into smaller steps and then providing reinforcement along the way. Once the skill has been mastered then reinforcement is unnecessary. However what happens is that when learning a new skill, then reinforcement is expected again. This might be okay for simple repetitive tasks but nit where understanding is required. However when a task cannot be broken down into smaller steps or it is a difficult complex task, then there is no ongoing reinforcement and students tend to give up.

The effects of rewards
Kohn (1993) found that ‘students who are encouraged to think about grades, stickers, or other ‘goodies’ become less inclined to explore ideas, think creatively, and take chances. At least ten studies have shown that people offered a reward generally choose the easiest possible task. In the absence of rewards, by contrast, children are inclined to pick tasks that are just beyond their current level of ability’. Kohn also found that, ‘In general, the more cognitive sophistication and open-ended thinking that is required for a task, the worse people tend to do when they have been led to perform that task for a reward’.

Gee’s work with computer games in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy shows the complexity of understanding motivation and learning. He has developed 36 learning principles which are built into games. For example, games include just in time learning – when and where it can be used; they challenge but are doable and repeat a cycle of expertise in which players problem solve, form strategies, practise them and then develop them further in a new round of challenges; and enable players to form identities in which they think and learn in new ways. It’s not just about rewards and scores!

A focus on learning
Rather than rewards, teachers who focus on learning think more deeply about addressing the diverse needs of their students in their classes, of scaffolding learning, of engaging students and connecting them to their learning, of providing intellectual challenge and ensuring learner transformation. This is reflected in our work with Learning by Design.

Our assessment practices also focus on learning by providing useful information to support further learning rather than feedback about success and failure. This is reflected in our work with CQ (Criteria/Quality) rubrics which are based on explicit criteria and high expectations which are clearly communicated to students. Grades on the other hand tend to promote extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation. Of course we must still grapple with all of the accountability pressures.

This distinction between intrinsic (an interest in the task for its own sake) and extrinsic motivation (in which completion of the task is seen chiefly as a prerequisite for obtaining something else) is central to learner transformation. There are many teachers who will use extrinsic motivation because they see it as one end of a spectrum from which they are moving students to intrinsic motivation. It is not one or the other but an ongoing journey. Breaking the habit may be harder for some then others. Nevertheless when a learner has become intrinsically motivated then they will have been transformed into self directed and life long learners.