Last week I wrote a blog post entitled, “There are no curriculum police!” which addressed the very real need of shrinking the number of outcomes taught to ensure essential learning for all students. With the general loss of teaching time from the pandemic, it is imperative that teachers, using their professional judgment both individually and collectively, purposely focus on essential outcomes and make learning deep. While this may seem like a dream to educators, it has been my experience that it is a difficult task to accomplish given the historical mandate of covering ALL the curriculum.
Often there is another barrier to focusing on the essential outcomes that rang true in a presentation I did a couple of weeks ago. The issue, and it has been an “issue” for years now, is that any outcome may be on a provincial assessment and therefore must be taught. In other words, just because it could be a question on a standardized exam, it warrants time in the classroom! Well… in Alberta, provincial achievement tests in grades 6 and 9 and diploma exams are optional this year. Grade 3 provincial achievement tests were dropped a number of years ago. Hence, outcomes that do not serve to address current and future learning success of students DO NOT NEED TO BE TAUGHT!
One of the additional arguments against provincial standardized tests (used by me as well) is that you are so busy covering the curriculum that you don’t have time to really go deep into areas of student interest or ensure competency for all before you need to move on. Schools have done a great job to react to this issue by incorporating passion projects, exploratory options, and Flex Fridays into weekly schedules. However, I’m at a loss as to why (given this time in history) we can’t incorporate these student led/teacher framed concepts into our current curriculum/teaching practice? There is a window open for change, but it will not be open long after the pandemic is over. The time to radically transform the delivery of the education system and as Michael Fullan and associates suggests develop “new pedagogies for deep learning.” is now!
One of the questions I used to ask teachers was:
“If you didn’t have to worry about provincial achievement tests or diploma exams, how would that change your teaching?”
A fairly typical response was around being able to be more creative in the classroom and engaging students with real life learning. I agree! I don’t believe we need more charter schools as some leaders would suggest, to provide some local context for students; we just need some flexibility! And, quite frankly, we have it this year! But we’ve had that flexibility in K-5 here in Alberta for at least 5 years now with the elimination of the Grade 3 Provincial Achievement Tests. So…
“How has your teaching been radically different since those provincial achievement tests were eliminated?”
Through my many, many observations of teaching, I’ve seen some of the most transformational practice in the last 5 years. These teachers (and many throughout the province and country) have embraced the 7Cs as endorsed by the C21 CEO Academy and shared in the document “Shifting Minds” in May 2015. I’ve also witnessed teachers who have not made the shift due to habit or fear, or what might be the toughest challenge…being good! The Canadian education system as a whole, and teachers in general, are good at their craft. As Jim Collins shared in his book “Good to Great”…
“The natural enemy of greatness is goodness!”
Teachers, like most who are good at their particular craft, have a difficult time getting uncomfortable in order to move to greatness. This is certainly not a slight on any teacher, rather merely a fact of human nature. Most of us loathe discomfort and yet that is the only place where growth can occur. Great teaching for the 21st century cannot be the same as great teaching in the 20th century.
In their book “New Pedagogies for Deep Learning: Leading Transformation is Schools, Districts and Systems“, authors, Michael Fullan, Joanne Quinn and Joanne McEachen define traditional education as follows:
TRADITIONAL (Fullan, Quinn, McEachen)
- Teacher driven
- Transmits existing knowledge
- Compliance orientated
- Student is receiver of knowledge
- Learning is impersonal
- Student agency is unclear
- Technology used for transmission and consumption
The traditional approach to education as described above may have been “good enough” for generations past, and may even be “satisfactory” for some students today, but we cannot remain stuck in that paradigm, even if we are good! We still are promoting a system of winners and losers and quite frankly it is unacceptable to have students lose in their learning. The goal of a high functioning and inclusive education system is not to have every student as an honour student but rather to have all students competent in key outcomes that allow them be successful in the world. The diverse nature of our classrooms requires a major shift in our teaching practice to implement deep learning.
DEEP LEARNING (Fullan, Quinn, McEachen)
- Student led – Teacher framed
- Connects students to real world, authentic problem solving
- Builds new relationships between and among learners, teachers, families, and community
- Student is an inquirer and builds knowledge
- Learning connects meaning to student interest and voice
- Deepens human desire to connect with others to do good
- Technology as a connector and amplifier
I’m not against centralized standardized testing as it has some merits, but unfortunately many of the uses of these exams, like ranking schools, systems, and sometimes even classrooms are untenable. This year and maybe only this year, (unless we can demonstrate deeper learning) we don’t have that same top down testing accountability and that optional status needs to be leveraged. At the end of 2014 I wrote the following and it still applies today:
Parents don’t complain when their sons and daughters are engaged in learning, excited about learning and can articulate their learning! That won’t occur for all students if we continue force feeding them a mammoth of useless outcomes!
If we want governments to stay out of the education accountability world, then we need to make sure that parents and the general public are assured of high quality education. One of my favorite leadership quotes around change was “Bottom up when possible, top down when necessary!” This is a time when bottom up, individual teachers, schools, and districts, is possible and that giant leap to move from traditional to deep learning is here before us all. Don’t let the pandemic opportunity pass us by!
