Teacher

Volume 6, Number 4, OCTOBERDECEMBER 2012

210

The secret to great teaching Create a brain-friendly classroom

High stakes in testing times Its time to evaluate CCE Curiosity and learning
Create a digital campus

In the cloud

From engagement in school to engagement in learning

A learning ecosystem

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University Teaching in Focus A learning-centred approach Written by internationally acclaimed experts, University Teaching in Focus provides a foundational springboard for early career academics preparing to teach in universities. Focusing on four critical areas - Teaching, Curriculum, Students, and Quality and Leadership, this succinct resource offers university teachers a straightforward approach to facilitating effective student learning. It aims to empower university teachers and contribute to their career success by developing teaching skills, strategies and knowledge, and linking theory to practice. It explores ways that teachers can effectively engage students in life-long learning, extending their capacity to solve problems, enter the workforce, understand their discipline and interact positively with others in a global community throughout their professional lives. Lynne Hunt and Denise Chalmers (Eds) A5257BK $AUD59.95 $AUD53.95 English Language Standards in Higher Education From entry to exit English Language Standards in Higher Education has been written in a context in which the English language skills of students are increasingly under the spotlight due to the monumental impact of globalisation on the higher education sector. The underpinning tenets of the book are that in all contexts in which English is the medium of instruction English language acquisition is central to academic success, and that this requires continuous and systematic development throughout the course of study. The focus of this book and the evidence based suggestions it provides will strongly resonate in countries where English is the main language of communication, as well as in countries where English is used as the medium of instruction in higher education. Sophie Arkoudis, Chi Baik and Sarah Richardson A5260BK $AUD44.95 $AUD40.45 Teaching Ethics in Schools A new approach to moral education Teaching Ethics in Schools provides a fresh approach to moral education. Far from prescribing a rigid set of mandated values, codes of conduct, behaviour management plans, or religious instruction, Philip Cam skilfully presents ethical thinking and reasoning as a dynamic and essential aspect of school life. Teaching Ethics in Schools shows how an ethical framework forms a natural fit with recent educational trends. It demonstrates how an ethics-based model can influence habits of mind and underpin teaching practices to stimulate ethical enquiry, to encourage students to think for themselves and develop good moral judgment, and to promote social values and beneficial outcomes both within the classroom and beyond. Philip Cam A5265BK $AUD39.95 $AUD35.95 What Teachers Need to Know about Social and Emotional Development What Teachers Need to Know about Social and Emotional Development provides practical classroom strategies that teachers can apply in a variety of contexts to support complex and diverse student needs. Drawing on the authentic voice and experience of teachers, students and parents, this erudite book is steeped in the latest research. It includes key indicators that children may exhibit if suffering from depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other serious conditions. The authors note that early intervention is paramount in preventing unnecessary distress and helping children regain their emotional footing when issues arise. This notion informs their approach as they strive to provide busy teachers with strategies that lighten the workload while enhancing students social and emotional wellbeing. Ros Leyden and Erin Shale A5292BK $AUD34.95 $AUD31.45 Creative Arts in the Lives of Young Children Play, imagination and learning Foreword by Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett Creative Arts in the Lives of Young Children draws together two essential strands in contemporary educational discourse the critical importance of high quality care and education in the early years, and the central role that imaginative arts experiences can and should play in the lives of all young children. With contributions addressing topics from play and storytelling, to literature, drama, puppetry, music, visual media and art appreciation, Creative Arts in the Lives of Young Children is essential reading for pre-service and in-service teachers, as well as for parents and caregivers.The rich research base is readily supported by real-world vignettes, practical activities and ideas for further thought. Robyn Ewing (Ed) A5262BK $AUD39.95 $AUD35.95 In the Beginning The brain, early development and learning In the Beginning explores, synthesises and distils current knowledge of child development at the cutting edge of neuroscientific research. The author draws on empirical evidence to explain the brains remarkable capacity to change. From pre-conception to birth, and throughout the preschool and early school years, the importance of the environment and, most crucially, the presence of nurturing relationships will powerfully impact childrens lives. These critical factors will influence the innate ability of children to regulate their emotional responses, develop language skills, form social connections and fulfil their potential. In the Beginning provides a wealth of information for a diverse readership with a shared interest in how the brain evolves, and how lifes experiences can dramatically shape the child. Michael C Nagel A5268BK $AUD39.95 $AUD35.95

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Australian Council for Educational research

Teacher
ThE InTErnATIonAL EDuCATIon MAgAzInE
issue number issn volume

6, number 4 0973-6689

PuBLIShEr

REgulaRs
14 news 44 The last word

20 Testing times: Striving and thriving in high-stakes assessments 22 Assessment: Building expertise in India

Australian Council for Educational research EDITor Dr Steve holden Email holden@acer.edu.au ADVErTISIng Amitav Dutta Email dutta@acer.edu.au ProDuCTIon ralph Schubele Email schubele@acer.edu.au SuBSCrIPTIonS Email subscribe@acer.edu.au ACEr India Contact ratna Dhamija Manager India Australian Council for Educational research 1509 Chiranjeev Towers 43 nehru Place new Delhi Phone +91 11 4650 4535 WEBSITE www.india.acer.edu.au

16

24 The slow pace of learning: Learning in rural schools

EDuCaTiON pOliCy

30 International perspective: Policy, curriculum and quality 26 Shadow education: Private tutoring in the Asian region

FEaTuREs
TEaChiNg & lEaRNiNg

34

4 Curiosity killed the cat? Encouraging divergent thinking 8 Creating brain-friendly classrooms 10 Mental health in schools: Its time to act 12 The secret to great teaching
iNFORMaTiON & COMMuNiCaTiON TEChNOlOgy

Teacher
Volume 6, Number 4, OCTOBERDECEMBER 2012

210

CuRRiCuluM & assEssMENT

The secret to great teaching Create a brain-friendly classroom

High stakes in testing times Its time to evaluate CCE Curiosity and learning
Create a digital campus

16 Evaluating assessment? The time has come 18 CCE: Assessing our students and our teaching

34 Developing a learning ecosystem 38 In the cloud: Creating a digital campus

CONFERENCE REpORT

In the cloud

42 Assessment: A tool for learning

From engagement in school to engagement in learning

A learning ecosystem

iN This EDiTiON
Rob Stokoe gets curious about the conditions required for learning, Lina Ashar evaluates Indias assessment system and Shalini Nambiar explores the secret to great teaching. Sameera Sood looks at high-stakes assessments, Anjum Babukhan shows how to create brain-friendly classrooms and Lant Pritchett explains why the slow pace of learning is denying students an education. Valerie Hannon, Alec Patton and Julie Temperley show how to develop an interconnected learning ecosystem when we shift our focus from engagement in school to engagement in learning, and Satish Keethinedi and Nihar Pradhan explain how schools can use cloud computing to become more efficient and better at monitoring teaching and learning. We also look at lessons to be learned from countries that perform well in international assessments, mental health issues in our schools, the purposes of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation, the effects of private tutoring plus much more in this edition of Teacher. T

All reasonable attempts have been made to trace copyright holders of material published. Material contained in Teacher is protected under the Australian Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968, the Indian Copyright Act 1957 and internationally through the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. No material may be reproduced wholly or in part without written consent from the copyright holders. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Publisher or Editor. The Editor reserves the right to edit, abridge or otherwise alter articles for publication. All photographs have been published on the understanding that appropriate compliance with privacy legislation has been obtained.

contents

Curiosity

killed the cat?

4
teacher volume 6, number 4 , 2012

ROB sTOkOE DECIDED To Look AT ThE ConDITIonS rEquIrED for LEArnIng AnD, CurIouSEr AnD CurIouSEr, DISCoVErED ThAT CurIoSITy IS funDAMEnTAL.

In the words of Thomas Edison, The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child, and every child is born with the instinct of curiosity. We all come into the world with a natural inquisitiveness, wanting to explore, investigate, experience new things and learn, trying to find answers to the questions weve asked and, hopefully, continue to ask throughout our lives. Yet research tells us that curiosity declines as we progress through our education systems. In 1968, George Land tested the capacity of 1,600 five-year olds to think divergently. As Land and Beth Jarman report in Breaking Point and Beyond, 98 per cent had no problem thinking divergently. As Land found, though, only 30 per cent of those 1,600 children thought divergently at 10 years old, dropping to 12 per cent at 15 years old. Of even greater concern, Land found that by adulthood only two per cent could think outside the box. As we grow up, we start believing the answers are more important than the questions. It can be said, though, that the creative adult is the curious child who survived, so adult creativity is still alive and well; theres just not enough of it. Fostering the scholarly attribute of curiosity in learners is or should be at the heart of education as it challenges and promotes active participation in learning. The challenge for us as educators is that curiosity in the classroom on the one hand and on the other the prescriptions of the curriculum and the exigencies of assessment, or at least of exit examinations, appear to be opposed. The curriculum often acts to limit rather than enable students curiosity and discovery, divergent thinking and exploratory learning. Enabling curiosity and discovery in our classroom design and lesson planning is, however, easier said than done, particularly when we begin by addressing the dictates of the curriculum rather than the individual ideas or questions of the student. We need to plan in a thoughtful and purposeful way, creating an environment of possibility that recognises and values our students as the architects of their own knowledge. In essence, we need continually to inspire, not require, by beginning with the individual ideas or questions of our students so as to meet prescriptions of the curriculum and the exigencies of assessment. As James Gentry and Lee McGinnis report in Thoughts on how to motivate students experientially, curiosity is the driving force behind lifelong learning. As Gentry and McGinnis put it, Curious people will learn how to learn. The reason, they explain, drawing on George Loewensteins information-gap theory of curiosity, is that a feeling of deprivation occurs when an individual becomes aware of a difference between what one knows and what one wants to know, as Loewenstein puts it in The psychology of curiosity. The experience, they argue, is much like wanting to solve a puzzle. Learning occurs only when the gap is wide enough that students see there is a purpose in closing it, or when the puzzle is good enough that they want to solve it. To nurture curiosity in our students, we need to develop a thinking curriculum which requires the verbalising of questions, a curriculum where the search for questions far outweighs the search for answers, since the foundation of knowledge is not in the knowing, but in the questioning, not in the powers of recall of what one knows, but in the desire to close the gap between what one knows and what one wants to know.

teaching & learning

To inspire rather than require learning is to conceive of the teaching-learning relationship as a two-way rather than a oneway interaction. It is also to conceive of the teaching-learning relationship as more conversational than instructional, although the two are not opposed. A teacher who supports students in closing the gap between what they know and what they want to know may well move between modes that involve conversation and modes that involve direct instruction. One of the fears may be that beginning with the individual ideas or questions of our students to identify and close the gap between what they know and what they want to know will be time consuming, but the question is whether we are actually providing time for our students learning or simply for our own teaching. Our function as teachers is to support student inquiry and foster learning as much as it is to deliver any given curriculum, but to deliver the curriculum to our students without them learning is simply a waste of time. As Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman write in The creativity crisis, Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why sometimes parents just wish itd stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school theyve pretty much stopped asking. Its no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didnt stop asking questions because they lost interest: its the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions. To use Loewensteins information-gap theory of curiosity, they stop having a feeling of deprivation since they are no longer aware of a difference between what they know and what they want to know. All too often we are missing the opportunity to cultivate their quest to know in favour of curriculum delivery and the need to get through schemes of work. Instead, we need to facilitate or guide learning with our students, first by identifying what they know and second by discovering with them what they want to know.

As effective knowledge professionals, our role every day is to create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable about raising questions and enthusiastic about facing problems. As often as possible, we want to leave the ideas, the solutions, the suggestions, the purpose, the questioning and the excitement where it belongs with our students. Activities which allow more student choice are a start. We can encourage students to learn through active exploration. Encourage questions such as, What would happen if ..? or How could you improve this toy/board game/playground/website..? We can also model curiosity, ask questions, engage in exploration alongside students to resolve the questions they pose. By doing this, by building authentic relationships with our students as co-learners, we can demonstrate our enthusiasm for curiosity and model curious learning. What might this look like? Consider Bronson and Merrymans example of Year 5 students at the National Inventors Hall of Fame School in Ohio in the United States. In line with Ohios curriculum requirements, teachers asked the students to design proposals to reduce the noise in the library from a public space outside. Working in small teams, as Bronson and Merryman describe, the students did some fact-finding about acoustics, the way sound travels through materials and which materials reduce sound; then idea-finding to generate ideas about insulating against sound, baffling intrusive sound or masking it; then solution-finding to identify the most effective, cheapest and aesthetically pleasing ideas. The teams then built scale models and developed a plan of action to show their solution was sustainable in some cases persuading others to support them and even combine projects. At the end of the fourweek project they presented their proposals to teachers, parents and inventor and acoustician Jim West. Along the way, observe Bronson and Merryman, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they

arrived at original and useful ideas. And theyd unwittingly mastered Ohios required fifth-grade curriculum from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. Maybe we need to stand back and ask ourselves whether we are like our students. Are we like the 98 per cent of five-year olds, the 30 per cent of 10-year olds or the 12 per cent of 15-year olds George Land found could think divergently? Are we indeed among the two per cent of curious adults? Are we as teachers stimulated by the questions of our students? Are we stimulated in our classrooms in the same way that we might be stimulated by puzzles? Are we driven by curiosity? By personalising the experience of learning for each student we can encourage them to connect with their own intellectual passions. By focusing upon their curiosity we can foster their motivation and desire to learn. Thomas Edison evidently loved the information-gap. As he once said, I have not failed. Ive just found 10,000 ways that wont work, and consider what he created and how much he learned. If you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I would say that curiosity was framed! Curiosity merits our attention. T Rob Stokoe is the Director of Jumeirah English Speaking School in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. REFERENCES Bronson, P. & Merryman, A. (2010). The creativity crisis. Newsweek. Available at www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/ 2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html Gentry, J.W. & McGinnis, L.P. (2008). Thoughts on how to motivate students experientially. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning. 35: 73-77. Land, G. & Jarman, B. (1993). Breaking Point and Beyond. San Francisco: HarperBusiness. Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin. 116(1): 75-98.

teacher volume 6, number 4 , 2012

Creating brain-friendly
ThErE ArE MAny ThIngS you CAn Do To IMProVE ThE quALITy of your LEArnIng EnVIronMEnT AnD ThE LEArnIng ThAT oCCurS In IT SAyS aNjuM BaBukhaN.

classrooms
As humans, explains Eric Jensen in Environments for Learning, we are exquisitely designed to be sensitive to our environment. Since that means our students are exquisitely designed to be sensitive to their environment, its vital that we provide them with brain-friendly learning environments. Such well-planned and enriched learning environments, Jensen notes, both stimulate learning and reduce discipline problems. When orchestrated with other sound teaching strategies, Jensen writes, brain-friendly learning environments strengthen neural connections and aid long-term memory, planning and motivation. Jensens idea of an orchestrated environments for learning encompasses the students, teachers and activities that contribute to the total learning context. Schools need to be socially smart, cognitively supportive, emotionally safe and environmentally friendly, says Jensen. They need to be designed with the whole community in mind to address students cognition, curiosity and social needs, as well as safety, economics and environmental sustainability. To be brain-friendly, they need to be places that are comfortable and aesthetically engaging.

Brain-friendly learning environments

Components of a sustainable school include protecting the environment, channelling daylight into classrooms to reduce the need for artificial light, using recycled products and materials, and incorporating the schools design into the academic program. A sustainable school gives teachers a host of meaningful resources to illustrate lessons in maths, reading, writing and especially

teacher volume 6, number 4 , 2012

science. The school design has not only enhanced the environment for learning, but its also a part of it, explains Jensen. Creating a brain-friendly learning environment, however, doesnt necessarily need a big budget or mean demolition and building. If youre a classroom teacher, you can start creating a brain-friendly learning environment in your own classroom as soon as youve finished reading this article. A good first step is to audit your classroom by asking what feeling your students get when they walk in.

The key item in a brain-friendly learning environment

Whats the first and most important item in a brain-friendly learning environment? Its you. Do your students feel accepted in terms of their culture, gender, race and social background, and do they feel cared about when they walk into your classroom? Neurological research has revealed that the learning brain does not respond well to real, or imagined, threats of harm. As Joseph LeDoux has shown in The emotional brain, fear and the amygdala, threatening environment trigger the amygdala the brains fear and emotional response centre which influences the working memory we need for learning. Think about ways you might make your classroom a safe environment for all of your students. This might involve a simple audit of sight lines: can you see all of your students all of the time and, perhaps more importantly, can all of your students see you all of the time? Are students visible when you are outside the room? Can students move easily around your classroom? Is your classrooms furniture and furnishing safe? Is your classroom well lit? Think about ways you might make your classroom an engaging and interesting environment. Visual displays affect students on the subconscious level. Motivational posters are great. Be aware and try to repair. As Jensen notes, Schools with shattered windows, broken-down restrooms, leaky roofs, insufficient lighting and overcrowding have a

significant negative impact on cognition. Such conditions are frequently found.., and unfortunately, far too many children, especially those in rural or poor urban areas, are schooled in dilapidated, crowded facilities. If youre a school leader, you can start creating a brain-friendly learning environment in your staff areas. Teachers and other academic personnel need comfortable spaces where they can get away from the hustle and bustle, to think, relax, plan and reflect. Just like your students, ask whether your staff feel cared about when they walk into their staff areas. Think about ways you might make your staff areas into more brain-friendly learning environments. Are there spaces for social and professional collaboration? Do members of staff have adequate space?

some general design thoughts

Colours in our environment affect our emotions and behaviours and possibly cognition but according to Pam Schiller in Start Smart! Building brain power in the early years, and also according to Jensen, olfaction the neuroscience of smell also influences our moods and levels of anxiety and fear, and even hunger and depression. Olfactory research, Schiller and Jensen both note, suggests that peppermint, basil, lemon, cinnamon and rosemary enhance mental alertness while lavender, chamomile and orange and rose calm nerves and encourage relaxation. Unpleasant odours, on the other hand are known to inhibit learning. You dont have to be a Zen Buddhist or minimalist designer to know that a cluttered environment can lead to distraction, disorganisation and inefficiency. Its worth making sure your classroom is clean, neat and organised before each learning session. When the electrical charge in the air is too positive, it can cause you to feel groggy, lethargic, sleepy or depressed. On the flipside, do you remember feeling fresh and energised just after a rain shower, by a waterfall, atop a mountain or when you have stepped outside after rainfall? These would be the benefits of negative ionisation. Unfortunately, in areas of higher popula-

tion, the atmospheres healthy balance of positive to negative ions can be disrupted, but ionisers are available in the market. Because ultraviolet light activates the synthesis of vitamin D, which aids in the absorption of essential minerals such as calcium, its important to bring as much natural light into your classroom as possible. Fluorescent lights have been shown to increase cortisol levels, a change likely to suppress the immune system. Low light makes close work difficult on the eyes and nervous system. Noise may have physiological implications. Children in noisy areas have been found to have higher blood pressure and heart rates, and elevated stress levels factors that arent conductive to learning. Pollution combined with noise and overcrowding also causes stress. Not only do plants provide an aesthetic touch, they also help filter the air of toxins and increase oxygenation. Jensen suggests that each learning environment should include four to eight plants. Provide your students with opportunity for sensory stimulation things to hear, touch, see and smell. Jensen predicts that, more and more, traditional classrooms will give way to multipurpose learning studios or learning zones where children can engage in specialised task-specific activities together. Take a look at your classrooms and start listing some of the things you can do to improve them. T Anjum Babukhan is Director-Education at Glendale Academy International and Lead Consultant at Edvantage Teacher Leadership Institute. REFERENCES Jensen, E. (2003). Environments for Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. LeDoux, J. (2002). The emotional brain, fear and the amygdala. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology. 23(4/5): 727-38. Schiller, P. (1999). Start Smart! Building brain power in the early years. Beltsville, MD: Gryphon House.

teaching & learning

Mental health in schools Its time to act

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teacher volume 6, number 4 , 2012

WITh MILLIonS of STuDEnTS WITh MEnTAL hEALTh ISSuES In our SChooLS, IT WouLD BE InSAnE If WE WErE To Do noThIng To SuPPorT ThEM, SAyS suRENDRa Dass.

The number of students in school in India rose from 19.2 million in 1950-51 to 113.8 million in 2000-01, and the Right To Education Act of 2009 means that were now seeing millions more children between the ages of six and 14 attending school. While the government maintains no record of the number of students with psychiatric disorders, conduct disorders or learning disorders, we can draw some inferences from research and with millions in our schools, the picture looks grim. According to research by the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research investigating the extent and nature of psychiatric symptoms in a randomly selected representative sample of 963 school-aged children across 18 schools, as reported by Narender Kumar in an Indian Council of Medical Research technical monograph on mental health research in India: more than nine per cent had psychiatric disorders psychiatric disorders peaked at six to eight years of age anxiety, depression and low intelligence with attendant behaviour problems increased with age whereas special symptoms decreased with age, and children with psychiatric disorders typically experienced greater parental control, which was also associated with childrens negative temperament traits. Even if the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research findings from the sample are an overestimation, schools in India face a massive problem. Beyond the prevailing disorders among children reported by the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, there are three significant disorders faced by educators in schools, namely Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct

Disorder and various learning disorders including Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia. Students with Oppositional Defiant Disorder are typically easily angered, annoyed and irritated, have frequent temper tantrums, argue frequently with adults close to them and deliberately try to annoy others. They typically have low self-esteem, experience anxiety, fear, depression and mood swings, blame others for misdeeds and have suicidal tendencies. Students with Conduct Disorder, as Sujit Sarkhel, Vinod Kumar Sinha, Manu Arora and Pushpal DeSarkar observe in Prevalence of conduct disorder in schoolchildren of Kanke, maintain a persistent pattern of antisocial behaviour, typically aggression to people or animals; destruction of property; deceitfulness or theft; and serious violations of social rules or norms. Sarkhel and colleagues, by the way, found 4.58 per cent of students in a sample of 240 had Conduct Disorder. Two of the most common learning disorders in schools are Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and the associated disorders of Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia. Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder typically have difficulty in concentration and easily forget instructions, move from one task to the next without completing them; are over active and constantly restless; and impulsive, tending to talk over the top of others and accident prone. Students with Dyslexia, Dysgraphia or Dyscalculia typically have difficulty in reading, writing or manipulating or relating numbers or other mathematical properties. With a population above 1 billion, India has one mental health bed for every

40,000 people, three psychiatrists for every one million people and needs 75,000 psychologists to deal with the psychiatric and other behavioural and learning disorders of students in our schools. In the absence of reliable government data, no one can be sure about the exact number of students with psychiatric disorders or Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder and the various learning disorders found in our schools, but we can safely assume that theres a large population of students with disorders in our schools, and that alone argues its time for new strategies if were to prevent them simply leaking into an enormous pool of unproductive and unused manpower. Theres plenty of talk about Indias potential demographic dividend, and the guarantee through the Right To Education Act of free and compulsory education for children between the ages of six and 14 is praiseworthy, but talk and legislation need to be supported by policy and action. When it comes to mental health issues in our schools, it would be insane if we were to do nothing. Its time to act. T Dr Surendra Dass is the Principal of Prelude Public School in Agra, India. REFERENCES Kumar, N. (2005). Mental Health Research in India: technical monograph on Indian Council of Medical Research mental health studies. New Delhi: Indian Council of Medical Research. Sarkhel, S., Sinha, V.K., Arora, M. & DeSarkar, P. (2006). Prevalence of conduct disorder in school children of Kanke. Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 48(3): 159-64. Available at http:// www.indianjpsychiatry.org/text. asp?2006/48/3/159/31579

teaching & learning

11

The secret to great teaching

shaliNi NaMBiaR offErS SoME ADVICE for TEAChErS In ThE fIrST fEW yEArS of ThEIr CArEEr.
When teachers complete their degree and obtain their first position in a school, they often forget many of the pedagogical strategies theyve learned and revert to teaching the same way as they were taught. This is, perhaps, a survival instinct, but few teachers understand that copying one of their own teachers is not likely to be effective. Consider the practice of raising your voice to discipline a class. The beginning teacher who uses this approach, copying the approach of one of her own teachers in school and assuming it actually worked for her teacher, needs to understand when, how and why her teacher used the approach in the first place.

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teacher volume 6, number 4 , 2012

She also needs to consider what other practices were associated with it: was a raised voice the first step in an escalating series of steps; did it follow a series of steps that involved physical proximity to a student whose behaviour required modification? Was it simply the first step in a series that led to outright shouting and eventual laryngitis? Consider the practice of not speaking until you have the attention of the whole class. Again, the beginning teacher who uses this approach, copying the approach of one of her own teachers in school, needs to understand when, how and why her teacher used the approach in the first place.

Many teachers forget that their best asset is their eyes: really see your students, particularly to see the student who might otherwise be obscured by some silly behaviour or other. If youre finding that difficult in the classroom, try to see your students outside of class around the school when youre not on duty and in extracurricular arts or sports activities. Be enthusiastic about your students learning; tell them when theyre clever youd be surprised how strongly youll establish rapport with a student when you tell them this. Use humour: let them see that youre actually, incredibly and against all probability a human just like them.

Relevance
A basic starting point in pedagogy is to establish relevance. This doesnt mean adapting your content to the latest teen fad. In teaching a unit on area and volume, for example, you might investigate how to measure the area of a basketball court, then the area of the centre circle, then the three-point arc. This might be of significant relevance if your school doesnt have a basketball court and the end point of your investigations is to lay out a court. You might investigate how to measure volume using familiar objects the classroom itself, say, or your students tiffins. When your students can relate the unit to the things around them they may take more interest.

Creativity
Once you get a position, remember that your first years are a rehearsal for the rest of your career. Develop good lesson planning habits; be cautious but dont automatically shy away from controversy. Dont be a technician. Create your own lesson plans. Many new teachers start following other peoples lesson plans. The difficulty here is that, despite the brilliance of other peoples lesson plans, youll struggle to deliver them because you havent developed the intimate knowledge that comes from creating it yourself. Be creative, not just following instructions. This is not to say that you cant use other peoples lesson plans but do insist on adapting them. See yourself as a producer, not just a consumer.

Engagement
Effective teaching depends on social skills that enable the teacher to connect with his or her students. It helps if you actually like children and young people, but keep in mind that connecting with your students doesnt necessarily mean being friendly. One of the most effective ways to connect is by putting yourself on their level. If youre towering over a student and shouting at them, dont be surprised if they become defensive. Bend to the level of your students, and get side-on to them, and youre telling them through your body language that you really are on their side.

aspire to be a great teacher

We ought all to be competent teachers, but we ought to aspire to be great teachers even if great teachers are rare. Great teachers convey to their students the nuts and bolts of the discipline, but they also do something more: they inspire, and in doing that they make a difference in their students lives. Great teachers are not just giving students skills and strategies for learning, more importantly, theyre giving them the confidence and motivation to be life-long learners. I recently asked a group of parents whether they had ever had a college or

university teacher who made a genuine difference in their life in some way. The good news is that 50 per cent indicated that they had. The bad news is that 50 per cent had not yet met such a teacher. I followed up by asking those who had met such a teacher what this teacher actually did to make a difference. Their responses? The most frequent answer was that these teachers had taken a personal interest in them and helped them develop personal insights about how the subject matter was relevant to their lives. The second-most frequent answer was that these teachers had provided encouragement about their work, which gave them confidence that they could succeed in the school and in their post-schooling studies. Coming in a close third was that their teacher had a genuine passion for the subject matter and a genuine concern for their students learning. To make a difference, teachers must be willing and able to create a conducive social environment for learning and students have to be open to the experience of learning in this environment. The question is, of course, how to get this dance started in the first place and then how to keep it going. Making a difference is not about what we teach. Rather, it is about how we teach. We might devote untold hours to preparing lesson plans focused squarely on the subject matter, but we will make little difference in our students lives unless we consider how they will benefit personally and emotionally as well as intellectually from the lessons we plan, and the practices we use to deliver them. Out students only recall their very good and their very bad teachers so rise and shine. Remind yourself that your goal is not to be a competent teacher whose job is only to complete the curriculum, but someone who makes a difference in the lives of young people and deserves the name of teacher. T Shalini Nambiar is Director of the Excelsior American School in Gurgaon, Haryana.

teaching & learning

13

News
In brief
personalised learning and extension
Interactive classroom technology provider Classteacher Learning Systems in July launched iPerform, a web-based platform for personalised learning or student extension in the classroom. The platform also enables students to undertake homework and revision in preparation for exams.

International school population hits three million

Credit where credit is due

Indias second largest private sector bank and the largest issuer of credit cards in the country launched Indias first credit card for teachers on Teachers Day, 5 September, which commemorates the birthday of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indias second President and a renowned teacher. HDFC Bank Senior Executive Vice President Parag Rao said, HDFC Banks teachers credit card is a small token of appreciation towards lakhs of teachers across India who play a pivotal role in shaping the lives of millions of children.

ThE STuDEnT PoPuLATIon In ThE WorLDS InTErnATIonAL SChooLS hAS juMPED froM onE MILLIon In 2002 To ThrEE MILLIon ThIS yEAr, WITh MorE groWTh ExPECTED. sTEVE hOlDEN rEPorTS.

Teaching Resources in africa

A UNESCO Institute for Statistics School and Teaching Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa report has found large class sizes, some multi-grade primary classes and an inadequate supply of reading and maths textbooks in most countries. In four out of 10 countries reporting data there are on average 50 or more students per class. Grade 1 classes in six out of 10 countries exceed 50 students on average, while survival rates to the last grade are low. In Chad the average first grade class has 85 students, compared to 30 students at all grades on average in Mauritius, where survival rates to the last grade are high. Cameroon has on average one reading textbook for every 11 students and one maths textbook for every 13 students, while the Central African Republic has one reading and one maths textbook for every eight students.

According to figures published by ISC Research, two thirds of the growth in the international school market in 2011 was in the Middle East, but that growth was not fuelled by expatriates working in the oil industry. Its the result of increasing enrolments of children from local rather than expatriate families. As demand for international school places increases, prospective expatriates are increasingly seeking guaranteed places in international schools before accepting new placements and that is driving expansion plans by multinational education providers as well as the multinational corporations that need to secure the services of expatriates. Multinational education providers that are expanding operations in the international school market include Educational Services Overseas Limited with schools in the Middle East; Yew Chung Education Foundation with schools in Hong Kong, China and the United States; GEMS the Global Education Management System with schools in the Middle East, India,

China, the United States, Europe and Africa; Nord Anglia with schools in China and Europe; Cognita with schools in Britain, Europe and Asia; Taaleem with schools in the United Arab Emirates; and World Class Learning (WCL) Group with schools in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. One of the new schools, WCL Groups Compass International School, Al Khor, in northern Qatar, opened with 100 students in January. WCL signed a five-year contract with Qatar Shell GTL to operate the new school in 2011. WCL Group also operates six schools in the United States, as well as Compass International School, Doha. WCL Group also provides support to 10 international schools including Kidurong International School and Piasau School in Malaysia, Panaga School in Brunei, PDO (Petroleum Development Oman) International School and Seashell Primary School in Oman, and Shell School in Syria under contract with Shell through its subsidiary, Fieldwork Education. Fieldwork Education also manages the International School Aamby in Pune, India.

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News
US higher education the best Problem solving for CBSE
ThE ToP fIVE CounTrIES ProVIDIng ThE BEST hIghEr EDuCATIon ArE ThE unITED STATES, SWEDEn, CAnADA, fInLAnD AnD DEnMArk. sTEVE hOlDEN rEPorTS.
The Universitas 21 ranking of national higher education systems by Australias Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne aggregates higher education quality in terms of government and private investment; research output and impact; international networks and collaboration; and diversity and participation. Government funding of higher education as a percentage of gross domestic product is highest in Finland, Norway and Denmark. Private sector funding is highest in the United States, South Korea, Canada and Chile. Investment in research and development is highest in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. Unsurprisingly, the United States dominates the total output of research journal articles, but when viewed as a percentage of articles per head of population, Sweden tops the ranking. The highest participation rates in higher education are in South Korea, Finland, Greece, the United States, Canada and Slovenia. The countries with the largest proportion of workers with a higher level education are Russia, Canada, Israel, the United States, Ukraine, Taiwan and Australia. Finland, Denmark, Singapore, Norway and Japan have the highest ratio of researchers in the economy. International students form the highest proportions of total student numbers in Australia, Singapore, Austria, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, yet international research collaboration is most prominent in Indonesia, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Belgium and Austria. China, India, Japan and the United States rank in the bottom 25 per cent of countries for international research collaboration. In all but eight countries, at least 50 per cent of students are female, the lowest being in India and Korea. In only five countries were there at least 50 per cent female staff. According to Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Chairman Vineet Joshi, the CBSE will introduce a problem solving assessment (PSA) for Class IX and XI students from the 2012-13 school year. Speaking at the Second National Conference for Educators hosted by Choithram School, Manik Bagh and Choithram Institute of Educational Research and Training supported by ACER India, Joshi said the PSA will assess students quantitative and qualitative reasoning and understanding of language conventions. Its understood that a problem solving test to assess quantitative and qualitative reasoning will be introduced this year, with the language conventions component to follow later. There will be no separate timetables or periods for teaching or practising PSA in schools, Joshi said. PSA would assess students ability to process, interpret and use information rather than assessing their knowledge of subject matter, he explained. The focus on problem solving is not surprising. Growing numbers of higher education institutions are now using problem solving assessments as a measure for selecting undergraduate students. More than 50 law schools across India now use the Law School Admission Test (LSAT)India, for example. Delivered in India by Pearson VUE, founded as Virtual University Enterprises, for the Law School Admission Council, LSATIndia assesses critical-thinking skills, logical reasoning and problem-solving skills. Read our report on the Second National Conference for Educators on page 42.

universitas 21 higher education rankings 2012

1 United States 2 Sweden 3 Canada 4 Finland 5 Denmark 6 Switzerland 7 Norway 8 Australia 9 Netherlands 10 Britain 11 Singapore 12 Austria 13 Belgium 14 New Zealand 15 France 16 Ireland 100.0 83.6 82.8 82.0 81.0 80.3 78.0 77.8 77.4 76.8 75.4 73.8 73.7 72.5 70.6 69.5 17 Germany 18 Hong Kong 19 Israel 20 Japan 21 Taiwan 22 Korea 23 Portugal 24 Spain 25 Ukraine 27 Poland 28 Slovenia 29 Greece 30 Italy 31 Bulgaria 32 Russia 69.4 68.9 67.4 66.1 62.0 60.2 60.1 59.9 58.6 56.2 55.8 54.7 54.0 52.5 52.4 33 Romania 34 Hungary 35 Slovakia 36 Malaysia 37 Chile 38 Argentina 39 China 40 Brazil 41 Thailand 42 Iran 43 Mexico 44 Croatia 45 Turkey 46 South Africa 47 Indonesia 48 India 51.3 50.8 50.6 50.5 48.9 48.6 48.3 47.2 46.6 45.8 45.3 44.9 44.4 43.4 37.5 34.4

26 Czech Republic 57.9

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Evaluating assessment?
In ThE ErA of ConTInuouS AnD CoMPrEhEnSIVE EVALuATIon, ITS TIME To EVALuATE our ASSESSMEnT SySTEM, SAyS liNa ashaR.
ing and knowledge of a set text, say, or a scientific concept, but also on why they thought about that, and how they presented their work. Ah! Werent our assessments covering every little thing? Werent we so objective now? The problem, of course, was that in the processes of teaching and learning we no longer had much discretion. That may be a fair price to pay, if we have achieved a system that enables robust, reliable and impartial assessment, but to judge whether thats the case we need to ask ourselves a question, and the question is this: has CCE made us better educators and enabled the creation of better learners? The answer, in short, is no. As we teachers continuously and comprehensively meas-

The time has come

What good is an education system that produces toppers in English who cant speak a grammatically correct sentence in English or toppers in mathematics who cant apply their knowledge in daily life? Our teaching regularly and systematically churns out graduates who learn, in the sense that they master courses that are content heavy and pass exams that test their retention of that content, but remain relatively unskilled and unready for Indias 21stcentury labour market. Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), introduced in schools by the central and state governments almost two years ago, has been accepted by most schools across the country. Hailed as revolutionary and forward looking, CCE aimed to modernise Indias assessment system.

Rubrics to grade students and observation charts to scrutinise them provided a variety of parameters for each and every aspect of the task at hand. Students could now be graded not just on their understand-

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ure our students, their school lives have become an almost wall-to-wall experience of tests and exams, some announced and others unannounced. Consider a school that offers six subjects for a fifth grader. Each student is scrutinised some 96 to 120 times in a single school year. Teachers have turned into data entry points, with each teacher compiling sheets and sheets of data addressing the various criteria being tested. Teachers have to observe up to 60 students in a class on a daily basis and fill in observation charts. Given that each teacher typically deals with at least five classes, that involves compiling observational data on 300 students how they respond to debates, say,

or engage in discussion, utilise particular problem-solving strategies and so on on a daily basis.

Of course, our students need qualitative feedback. Thats what good teaching and learning is all about. Students need to know how they can write better or how they can apply their maths better, not whether their writing is within acceptable standards or that 50 per cent of what they have done is right. They need to learn how to best use their writing, how best to apply their maths. Our crucial role is to prepare them for the real world, which is beyond marks, rubrics and grades. T Lina Ashar is the Chairperson of Kangaroo Kids Education. LINKS www.kkel.com

How eager will be our students to write an essay when they know that each aspect of their essay will be graded? Rather than put their ideas to the test thats what the verb to essay actually means our insistence on testing the entire process makes our students concentrate on the parts rather than the whole, the details rather than the thinking. Before, we used to assess the end product; now we assess the process as well, so continuously and comprehensively that were stressing our students rather than encouraging their learning.

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CCE

Assessing our students and our teaching

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CCE IS ABouT STuDEnT ASSESSMEnT, BuT ITS ALSo ABouT AuDITIng PoLICIES AnD ProCEDurES In your SChooL, AS WELL AS your TEAChIng STrATEgIES AnD PrACTICES, AS RajEsh hassija ExPLAInS.

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) helps educators to identify growth and development in the learning of students through frequent assessments and also to identify the scholastic and co-scholastic growth and development of students, as Steve Holden explained in Rubrics and portfolios in the last issue Teacher. In doing that, CCE lays as much emphasis on the process of learning as on the learner. Educators the world over have always focused on developing the whole child though relevant pedagogies, conducive environments and positive teacher-student relationships. What is new, as Carl Rogers observed as far back as 1983 in Freedom to Learn for the Eighties, is that, We are...faced with an entirely new situation in education where the goal of education, if we are to survive, is the facilitation of change and learning. The only (person) who is educated is the (person) who has learned how to learn; the (person) who has learned how to adapt and change; the (person) who has realised that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security. Changingness, reliance on process rather than upon static knowledge, is the only thing that makes any sense as a goal for education in the modern world. Given that the future face of a society is decided by the Venn diagram of the education patterns in its classrooms, its essential that we redefine teaching, learning and assessment processes if we are to prepare students for their future. This is the purpose of CCE.

Focusing on students
CCE focuses on helping students learn how to learn by revealing their strengths and identifying areas for our further teaching to support their learning. And because learning is the result of scholastic and coscholastic growth and development, it lays emphasis on the development of students

skills for the 21st century, as well as on their acquisition of essential life skills, attitudes and values, and on the recognition of their interests and achievements. CCE recognises both learning processes and learning products, so it incorporates assessments of academic outcomes, social outcomes and generic skills. The assessment focus encompasses students declarative or content knowledge, their procedural knowledge about the rules to follow to accomplish a task and their conditional knowledge as to when, where and why that procedural knowledge applies. Beyond this, it encompasses their generic skills, such as, analysing, deducing and problem solving, and their capabilities developed in both the scholastic and co-scholastic domains, including emotional, interpersonal and communicative skills, and decision-making skills. CCE assessments in the scholastic and co-scholastic domains are conducted both formally and informally using a variety of techniques that address identified criteria. They add detail regarding the attributes and credentials of our students, essentially filling in the gaps that would otherwise exist in a purely scholastic assessment. What does this look like? In our practice as teachers, our assessment of a student in terms of, say, scientific knowledge and skills may collect together evidence from formative and summative assessments of the students achievement in the scholastic domain, but also from assessments in the co-scholastic domain in terms of activities in a science club, involvement in a voluntary science competition and the like.

pedagogy, the curriculum, the learning environment and the teacher-student relationship. Of course, we conduct CCE in terms of the abilities and achievements of our students, but in doing this we also necessarily audit our own pedagogy or teaching methodology, since the abilities and achievements of our students are, at least in part, dependent on our content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. CCE defines the curriculum content by which we teachers make decisions about the scope and sequence of courses for our students, particularly in terms of the vertical integration of concepts, thinking and analytical skills, and social and emotional skills to support student learning. Because CCE takes a holistic approach to assessment and learning it also promotes the positive learning environments and teacherstudent relationships that are conducive to learning by encouraging professional communities in which we teachers and school leaders collaborate and share, and an academic environment that supports the explicit vision and mission of our schools. We teachers have long known that our fundamental role is to educate the whole child, and to do that we need to understand the whole child. CCE supports that endeavour, not just by providing us with a tool for the continuous and comprehensive evaluation of our students, but also by providing us with a tool to audit the policies and procedures in our schools, as well as our teaching strategies and practices. T
Dr Rajesh Hassija is the Director of the Indraprastha Group of Schools in Delhi, a member of the Committee of Courses, CBSE and CBSE International, and a CCE master trainer. REFERENCES Central Board of Secondary Education. (2009, revised 2010). Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation Manual for Teachers Classes IX and X. Delhi: Central Board of Secondary Education. Holden, S. (2012). Rubrics and portfolios. Teacher. 6(3): 32-35. Rogers, C.R. (1983). Freedom to Learn for the Eighties. Columbus, OH: Charles Merrill.

Focusing on systems
Improving and sustaining quality in education cannot be achieved without explicitly focusing on educational systems and processes, and a culture of performance and quality. CCE focuses on these in terms of

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Testing times
hIgh-STAkES ASSESSMEnTS WILL ALWAyS BE STrESSfuL for STuDEnTS, BuT AS TEAChErS WE CAn MAkE ThEM WILT AS A rESuLT of our unDuE PrESSurE or WE CAn hELP ThEM STrIVE AnD ThrIVE WITh our EnCourAgEMEnT AnD hIgh ExPECTATIonS. saMEERa sOOD ExPLAInS.
Weve seen several policy changes to our examination system in recent times one of which has been the shift from a marks system using percentage to a grades system. Strident voices had been raised for some time about how the marks system caused frantic competition between students and a terrible amount of stress. The superficial change to the grades system was meant to address this. Effectively it was like saying to a student, You must strive for an A+, instead of, You must strive for a mark above 90 per cent. How these two statements would appear to be any different to the student is, however, anybodys guess. Lets step back for a moment and reflect on the nature of life and work after schooling. Can you single out a job that is completely

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Stress in high-stakes assessments and goal theory

My teacher says exams are just like worksheets that we do in class all the time. They are only a bit longer. For students like Akshat, annual examinations, continuous assessment and the grading system are all the same. While the assessment experience may be stressful, students are typically not anxious about an examination until adults make it seem that their entire worth is dependent on the grades they receive. (See sidebar at right.) So, no matter what the mode of assessment is, as long as we adults continue to pressure students, there is no solution to this examination conundrum. The only way we can prepare students for the future is by creating an atmosphere where they want to do the best for themselves, where they are guided by their natural instincts to excel and achieve in any area of their interest, and not just maths or language or science. Lets not make them wilt as a result of our undue pressure. Lets rather help them strive and thrive with our encouragement and high expectations. We need to reflect on the role we play as facilitators to educate students who are informed and prepared for their future without having undergone unnecessary stress. This is not to say that we should avoid exposing our students to stress, pressure and competition, but that we should ensure that they experience stress, pressure and competition in perspective, as a means to an end: to develop the academic, vocational, personal, social and civic skills and attributes that will enable them to become happy, healthy and productive members of society. T Sameera Sood, with Radhika Suri, forms the executive team of Inspire. Inspire provides efficient customised curriculum, training and school set-up solutions. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on the Inspire Education blog at http://inspire-tional.blogspot.in LINKS www.inspireedu.org
Consider the message were giving our students when we help them prepare for high-stakes assessments, and when we discuss their performance afterwards. We can let them think that their entire worth is dependent on the grades they receive, often framed in terms of a ranking, as better or worse than others. Alternatively, we can let them understand that the grades theyve achieved reflect their current mastery. Its worth considering this in terms of the goal theory literature, as discussed by Jennifer Fredricks, Associate Professor of Human Development at Connecticut College, in the latest issue of The Indian Journal of Educational Assessment, a sister publication to Teacher published by ACER India. The goal theory literature, notes Fredricks, has focused primarily on two contrasting goals that have been shown to lead to different motivation and learning outcomes. A mastery or task goal orientation reflects a focus on learning and understanding while a performance or ego goal orientation reflects a focus on demonstrating ones ability or competence, often in relation to others. In general, mastery goals are associated with adaptive patterns of socioemotional and learning outcomes and performance-avoidance goals are linked with negative outcomes. In other words, its more beneficial if we frame high-stakes assessments and our students performance in them in terms of the mastery of tasks rather than their success or failure as a person. In essence, task-involved students are less threatened by failure because their success or failure is about mastery of the task, not their selfconcept. Ego-involved students are more threatened by failure because their success or failure affects their self-concept. REFERENCES Fredricks, J. (2012). How measuring non-academic contexts can guide school practice: What makes a difference? The Indian Journal of Educational Assessment. 2(1): 16-31.

devoid of stress? Can you name an area of expertise where people dont face competition? Do you gain joy from achieving something that is easy, and do you gain more joy from achieving something that is difficult? If our students future lives are going to involve experiencing and managing a certain amount of stress, pressure and competition, then how useful is it if we shield them completely from it in their present lives? Examinations can be stressful for students who are unprepared and have not learned time management skills, and can be monstrously stressful when adults parents, teachers, the media increase the pressure. Consider Akshat, a sixth grader who is appearing for a formal examination for the first time. Is he stressed? No, he replies.

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Assessment
ThErE ArE PLEnTy of InTErnATIonAL AnD nATIonAL ASSESSMEnTS ThAT MonITor SChooLS AnD SySTEMS, BuT hoW MIghT SChooLS BEST go ABouT DEVELoPIng ASSESSMEnTS ThAT hELP IMProVE TEAChIng AnD LEArnIng AT A MorE LoCAL LEVEL? aNNiE BROwN hAS SoME AnSWErS.
International assessments like the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study make the headlines. So do national assessments like the National Achievement Survey in India, the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy in Australia and the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the United States, and even school-based assessment driven by Indias Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation curriculum reform. The focus in international and national assessments is on enabling system monitoring and improvement over time, but how might educators best go about developing assessments that help improve teaching and learning at a more local level? Thats a question being asked by staff at the Azim Premji Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation working with teachers and educational leaders to achieve quality universal education in India. The answer? By building capacity in the area of testing and test development for assessing students and teachers.

Building expertise in India

Thats what the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the APF have been doing since 2008 through collaborative programs and initiatives. ACER and the APF share the same goal: to apply international best practices in educational research and development to support school improvement and learning outcomes. Following up on a workshop by Prue Anderson and a visit by APF staff to ACER in Melbourne, my colleague Research Fellow Helen Lye from ACERs Assessment and

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Reporting Division and I have been working in the last year with staff from the APFs Institute for Assessment and Accreditation and APF field officers in Bangalore, with a focus on developing and analysing student assessments across a range of subjects as part of an ongoing program to support the APFs assessment work. Our work has included a 10-day workshop for 30 field officers and staff from the Institute for Assessment and Accreditation. The APF, founded in 2001 by Azim Premji, a business leader and chairman of Indian software giant Wipro, seeks to implement scalable proof of concept reforms that can be adopted by education systems. Its focus over the last decade or so has been on primary education, partnering with governments in 13 states across India to pilot initiatives in more than 20,000 schools that have the potential for systemic reform. Besides school-based initiatives, though, the APF has increasingly turned its attention to initial and ongoing teacher education and professional development for school leaders through the APF Institute for Learning and Development, the Institute for Assessment and Accreditation and the Azim Premji University, founded after passage of the Azim Premji University Act of 2010 in the state of Karnataka. The Institute for Assessment and Accreditation is a critical component of the APFs work to spread awareness of, and create demand for, assessment-driven quality improvements in education. The aim of our 10-day workshop was capacity building in the area of testing and test development for assessing students and teachers, to equip participants to design standardised tests for student and teacher assessments. The workshop addressed basic assessment concepts like validity and reliability; interpreting test scores; normreferenced and criterion-referenced tests; the development of assessment frameworks and blueprints; item writing, item facility, item discrimination and distractor analysis; developing stimulus materials, openended questions and scoring criteria, essay

prompts, assessment rubrics, marker training and moderation; and the rationale for and process of panelling. This was followed by sessions with a focus on literacy, numeracy and science assessment. All the participants were subject specialists in one of the primary school subjects, or in teacher education. Those in the teacher education field were in the process of developing a teacher competency framework on which they intended to develop an assessment, for use with teacher trainees undertaking education in their newly established Azim Premji University. The university, which was formally opened while we were there, specialises exclusively in teacher education. We designed the workshop to lead into a small-scale test development project. The participants worked in subject groups to develop a test construct and blueprint, followed by test items for the subject area they were interested in. These were English, science, environmental science, maths, and student responsibility. They then panelled items and produced final versions of the tests. We then piloted them on students in a nearby school and finished off with data entry and item analysis so we worked through the whole cycle. The workshops are an important step in building capacity in the area of testing and test development for assessing students and teachers. T Dr Annie Brown is a Principal Research Fellow in the Assessment and Reporting: Humanities and Social Sciences research program of the Assessment and Psychometric Research Division at the Australian Council for Educational Research. Pictured, ACERs Helen Lye, centre, back row, and Annie Brown, centre, middle row, with Azim Premji Foundation field officers and staff from the Institute for Assessment and Accreditation at the ACER-Azim Premji Foundation 10-day assessment workshop in Bangalore in July 2011.

The aim of our 10day workshop was capacity building in the area of testing and test development for assessing students and teachers, to equip participants to design standardised tools for student and teacher assessments.

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The slow pace of learning

SChooLIng IS SuPPoSED To BE ABouT oPEnIng uP oPPorTunITy Through LEArnIng, BuT rESEArCh ShoWS ThAT ThrEE ouT of four ChILDrEn In rurAL SChooLS In InDIA ArEnT rEALLy LEArnIng, AS laNT pRiTChETT ExPLAInS.

One of the big advantages of the approach to testing children out of school used by the Assessment Survey Evaluation Research (ASER) Centre is that it can assess the performance of children at a wide variety of grade and age levels. Rather than seeing just a snapshot of how children at one grade do against some grade-based standard, the ASER approach shows the entire learning profile of the fraction of children in each grade at which level of performance on literacy and numeracy.

In the case of the ASER data, this is easiest to interpret at the highest and lowest categories of performance, for instance, what fraction of children can read a Level 2 story and what fraction of children can do division of a one-digit number into a threedigit number. The point I want to make about these learning profiles is that the differences across grades reveal important facts about the dynamics of learning, in particular the fact that progress is so slow that four out

of five children who do not have mastery will fail to acquire mastery in an entire year of schooling. Let me explain using the overall results from the Annual Status of Education Report Rural, for 2010. Table 1 indicates the fraction of children who can read at Level 2 or do subtraction, both Grade 2 curricular objectives. Many children finish Grade 2 not having mastered these simple skills, which is not perhaps shocking. What is shocking is the bottom line for reading, addressing the average

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gain from Grades 3 to 8, which shows that 75 per cent of children three out of every four who do not acquire reading or arithmetic mastery at the grade appropriate level dont acquire it in the following year either, and three out of four of those who still dont master these skills wont get it even after another entire year of schooling. This implies that only one in four students is making progress across these very low thresholds of literacy and numeracy per year of schooling. Ill explain this simple calculation using reading from Grade 4 to 5. The fraction of students that could read a Level 2 text in Grade 4 was 38.1 per cent and in Grade 5 was 53.4 per cent, so the proportion that could read increased by 15.3 percentage points. But many children already could read, so if we want to see what fraction of those who could not read acquired this ability, lets adjust this gain by the fraction who could not read in Grade 4, which was 61.9 per cent (100 38.1 per cent). So the gain from Grade 5 over Grade 4 as a per cent of those who could not read in Grade 4 was 24.7 per cent (=15.3/61.9). This implies that one of each four children who entered Grade 4 unable to read at Level 2 passed that threshold of literacy during that year. But it also means that three out of four children who came into Grade 4 not reading at Level 2 progressed on to Grade 5 without having learned how to read at Level 2. Overall this problem is exactly the same in arithmetic, with a slightly different pattern. More children pick up basic arithmetic quickly, so that, by Grade 3, 36.4 per cent of children can do subtraction. But in the five additional years from Grade 3 to Grade 8 only 49 per cent gain that level of arithmetic capability. This is because progress peters out and by Grade 8, even though 15 per cent still cannot do subtraction, there is almost no progress at all. This formulation of the learning problem in Indian rural basic education comes from seeing the entire learning profile and has been a contribution of the ASER approach. The flat learning profile which is the result of most students making no

Table 1. Childrens gain in skills as they progress through grades

grade Can read a level 2 texta 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3.4% 9.1% 20.0% 38.1% 53.4% 67.5% 76.2% 82.9% 5.7% 10.9% 18.1% 15.3% 14.1% 8.7% 6.7% 62.9% 12.3% 75.9% (3 of 4 do not gain mastery in a year of instruction) 94.1% 88.0% 77.4% 75.3% 69.7% 73.2% 71.8% Reading gain from grade to grade Fraction of those who do not learnb Can subtract (or above) a 5.5% 17.1% 36.4% 57.4% 70.3% 80.1% 84.3% 85.4% 11.6% 19.3% 21.0% 12.9% 9.8% 4.2% 1.1% 49.0% 11.4% 75.4% (3 of 4 do not gain mastery in a year of instruction) 87.7% 76.7% 67.0% 69.7% 67.0% 78.9% 93.0% Arithmetic gain from grade to grade Fraction of those who did not learnb

Total gain from Grades 3 to 8 Average gain from Grades 3 to 8

a. Data from Annual Status of Education Report Rural, for 2010, Tables 4 and 6. b. Formula is 100 ((gain from previous grade)/(100 fraction that could do in previous grade)) x 100.

progress in answering particular questions has now been replicated in studies in Andhra Pradesh by the Andhra Pradesh Randomised Evaluation Studies and in the work of Education Initiatives which have asked common questions across grades. See my paper with Amanda Beatty, The negative consequences of overambitious curricula in developing countries, for more on this. The fact that three out of four children dont learn enough to pass a low threshold in a year is both stark and striking. Imagine youre a child who came to school with the hope and promise that getting an education could transform your and your familys future by opening up the opportunities that learning enables. You perhaps arent school ready and so in Grade 3 you still cannot read a Level 2 paragraph, but you still have hope. The odds, though, are three out of four against you learning in Grade 3. So now you are passed along to Grade 4 as one of the 62 per cent still not reading. You come again hoping that someone will notice, someone will help. Again the odds are against your hope, that is, three

out of four that you dont learn in Grade 4 either. The result is that you could easily be one of the one in three children who complete lower primary schooling, passing through five entire years of schooling, having spent roughly 5,000 hours in school, still lacking the most fundamental of skills. And so, year after year, a dream deferred becomes a dream denied. T Lant Pritchett is Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School and a member of ASER Centres advisory board. This article was first published by ASER at http://images2. asercentre.org/aserreports/ASER_ 2011/ Articles/lant_pritchett.pdf Reproduced with kind permission. REFERENCES Pritchett, L. & Beatty, A. (2012). The negative consequences of overambitious curricula in developing countries. New York: Center for Global Development Working Paper 293. Available at http:// www.cgdev.org/files/1426129_file_ Pritchett_Beatty_Overambitious_ FINAL.pdf

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Shadow education
Private tutoring in the Asian region

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ThE PrIVATE TuTorIng InDuSTry In SouTh AnD EAST ASIA IS BooMIng, AnD A nEW rEPorT SAyS ThAT ShouLD BE CAuSE for ConCErn. sTEVE hOlDEN rEPorTS.

Shadow education is expanding at an alarming rate. It is already most extensive in the Asian region, and increasing proportions of household income are being spent on private tutoring. Thats the view of Jouko Sarvi, Practice Leader for Education in the Department of Regional and Sustainable Development at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). What is shadow education? Its private supplementary tutoring in academic subjects that is provided for a fee and outside school hours and its a booming industry. According to Sarvi, speaking at the release of the ADB report Shadow Education: Private supplementary tutoring and its implications for policy makers in Asia, in Manila in the Philippines last year, As a whole, the trend (to the increasing use of private supplementary tutoring) reinforces poor education practice and inequality in education provision in societies. It also has negative implications for education planning and sustainable public and private financing of education. Professor Mark Bray, Director of the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong and co-author of the Shadow Education report with Chad Lykins, said, Policy makers would be wise to look at why parents feel they need to engage private tutors, and think about ways to ensure shadow education works with rather than against the mainstream system. Costs associated with shadow education are staggering. In Pakistan, expenditures on tutoring per child averaged the equivalent of $3.40 USD a month in 2011, a significant amount considering 60 per cent of Pakistans population reportedly lives on less than $2 USD per day. In Hong Kong, China, the business of providing private tutoring to secondary schools reached $255 USD million in 2011. In Japan, families spent a whopping $12 USD billion in 2010 on private tutoring. In Korea, expenditure on private tutoring reached a staggering $17 USD billion in 2010.

Effects of private tutoring

The demand for private tutoring is partly driven by negative perceptions of traditional schooling and the belief that extra lessons are essential for academic success. There are problems, however. Private tutoring is not always effective in raising academic achievement; and in some schools students commonly skip classes or sleep through lessons because they are tired after excessive private tutoring. This means that the shadow system can make regular schooling less efficient.

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Policy makers across the Asian region need to take a closer look at how shadow education affects family budgets, childrens time and national education systems.

According to the report, Among the beneficial dimensions of private tutoring are the ways in which it can help slow learners to keep up with their peers, and can help high achievers reach new levels. The extra learning may contribute human capital for economic development, and many families consider extra lessons to be a constructive way to use the spare time of adolescents who might otherwise be at loose ends. On the negative side, private tutoring may dominate the lives of young people and their families, reducing the time available for sports and other activities, which are important for well-rounded development. Shadow education also maintains and exacerbates social inequalities. Rich families are clearly able to pay for better quality and greater quantities of tutoring than can middle-income and poor families, and disparities may threaten social cohesion. Moreover, tutoring can create inefficiencies in education systems. Particularly problematic are situations in which teachers deliberately reduce the effort that they devote to their regular classes in order to reserve energy for private tutoring. A further problem is that teachers who provide extra private lessons for students for whom they are already responsible in the school system deliberately teach less in their regular classes in order to promote the market for private lessons. The report says policy makers across the Asian region need to take a closer look at how shadow education affects family budgets, childrens time and national education systems. Policy makers should then design regulations to protect consumers while focusing on improvement in mainstream schools in order to reduce the need for private supplementary tutoring.

In Japan, 16 per cent of primary school students and 65 per cent of junior secondary school students were tutored privately. In China, 74 per cent of primary students were receiving supplementary lessons, including in non-academic subjects, in 2004. Proportions in lower and upper secondary were 66 per cent and 54 per cent respectively. A 2010 survey of 6,474 students in Jinan Province found that 29 per cent of lower secondary students were receiving tutoring in mathematics, and 30 per cent were receiving tutoring in English In Hong Kong, 73 per cent of lower secondary students, 82 per cent of middle secondary students and 86 per cent of senior secondary students were privately tutored in 2009. In four states in India Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh 59 per cent of Grade 10 students were receiving private tutoring in 2011, while 57 per cent of primary students were receiving private tutoring in West Bengal in 2010. According to the Shadow Education report, data from a nationwide rural survey showed rates of private tutoring in Grades 4 to 8 ranged from three per cent in Chhattisgarh to 77 per cent in Tripura in 2011. In rural areas of Pakistan only 80 per cent of children attend school, but among those who do, 14 per cent received private tutoring in 2011. In Sri Lanka, 64 per cent of households, spent money on private tutoring in 2006-07, up from 23 per cent in 1995-96, while 92 per cent of Grade 10 students and 98 per cent of Grade 12 students receiving tutoring in 2011.

haves and have-nots

A survey of primary education in West Bengal in 2001-02 and 2009-09 by the Pratichi Trust, established in India by Amartya Sen, found many shortcomings in the education system in 2001-02 and significant progress by 2009-09, but also noted a growing dependence on private tutoring. According to Sen, There has been a real regression, as opposed to progress, on the dependence on private tuition. The propor-

The extent of shadow education in south and East asia

According to the Shadow Education report, 88 per cent of Korean primary school students, 73 per cent of middle school students and 61 per cent of general high school students were being tutored privately in 2008.

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tion of children relying on private tuition has gone up quite a bit 64 per cent from 57 per cent for students in standard primary schools, and 58 per cent from 24 per cent for students in Sishu Siksha Kendras (rural and community-based primary schools). Underlying this rise is not only some increase in incomes and the affordability of having private tuition, but also an intensification of the general conviction among the parents that private tuition is unavoidable if it can be at all afforded (78 per cent of the parents now believe it is indeed unavoidable up from 62 per cent). For those who do not have arrangements for private tuition, 54 per cent indicate that they do not go for it mainly or only because they cannot afford the costs. As Sen noted, most of the content in private tutorial classes could and should have been taught in regular classes in school. As the Shadow Education report notes, Sens conclusion is that, (Private tutoring) divides the student population into haves and havenots; it makes teachers less responsible and it diminishes their central role in education; it makes improvements in schooling arrangements more difficult since the more influential and better placed families have less at stake in the quality of what is done in the schools (thanks to the supplementation outside school hours), and it effectively negates the basic right of all children to receive elementary education. According to the Shadow Education report, Shadow education is much less about remedial help for students to keep up with their peers, and much more about competition and creation of differentials.

beginning of the next school year, school teachers find that some students have already mastered the curriculum while others have not. According to OECD Economic Surveys: Korea 2012 of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), After-school education has been a major factor behind the excellent performance of Korean students in international tests, such as PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment).... Participation in private tutoring appears to contribute to successful education outcomes for parents able and willing to purchase such services for their children. According to OECD Economic Surveys: Japan 2011, The growing investment in juku (private supplementary tutoring)...suggests that they positively influence students school performance and their success rate on school entrance exams...and may also contribute to Japans results on the PISA assessments. Nevertheless, juku can...create and perpetuate inequality.., and unduly dominate childrens lives...in ways that are detrimental to their well-rounded development.

When education authorities insist that teachers must have training to enter classrooms, how is it that many families and students are willing to pay for the services of untrained tutors, some of whom are themselves only university students or even secondary students? Why are at least some tutoring companies much more clearly at the cutting edge of technology and curriculum development for effective learning and teaching than schools, even in wellresourced education systems? What are the implications for fee-free education policies of the fact that many parents across the region are clearly able and willing to pay for shadow education? To what extent could mainstream schools provide the same sort of flexibility in timing and content of teaching and learning that is provided in the shadow system? What do tutors emphasise in their advertising, and what does that tell about parents state of mind and reasons for hiring tutors? Should policy makers actively seek to manage perceptions of mainstream schools? T

key policy questions

Key questions for policy makers from the Shadow Education report include: What does the shadow system offer to parents and students that schools do not offer, and how can schools expand and improve their services? How do tutoring companies attract clients, and should schools also be more client oriented? How do tutoring companies attract staff, in some cases from schools, and what implications does this have for mainstream education systems? When teachers and governments claim that effective teaching and learning cannot take place in classes of 40 or more, how is it that at least some families and students are willing to pay for huge lecture-style classes of star tutors in such cities as Bangkok, Colombo and Hong Kong? Download Shadow Education: Private supplementary tutoring and its implications for policy makers in Asia at http://bit.ly/KNhk65 REFERENCES Bray, M. & Lykins, C. (2012). Shadow Education: Private supplementary tutoring and its implications for policy makers in Asia. CERC Monograph Series in Comparative and International Education and Development, 9, for the Asian Development Bank. OECD. (2012). OECD Economic Surveys: Korea 2012. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD. (2011). OECD Economic Surveys: Japan 2011. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Curriculum effects
According to Bray and Lykins, the subjects most in demand for private supplementary tutoring usually include mathematics, the national language, and an international language such as English. One of the effects of private supplementary tutoring is that it can alter the sequence of curriculum delivery in schools. In Korea, for example, where tutors teach students for two months during the vacation before the

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International perspective

Policy, curriculum and quality

InTErnATIonAL ASSESSMEnTS LIkE PISA AnD TIMSS CAn EnCourAgE An InVESTIgATIon of SuCCESSfuL SySTEMS, BuT WE nEED To BE CArEfuL ThAT WE DonT LEArn ThE Wrong LESSonS, SAyS sTEVE hOlDEN.
Results from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the three-yearly survey of 15-year olds in the principal industrialised countries for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, shows that in reading, the first ranked country or economy was Shanghai, followed by Korea, then Finland. In science, the first ranked was Shanghai, followed by Singapore, then Hong Kong. In maths, the first ranked was Shanghai, followed by Finland, then Hong Kong. So countries that want to improve their education systems should model their curriculum on the Shanghai, Korea, Finland, Singapore or Hong Kong model, right? Wrong, says Tim Oates, Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment.

lets do what they do in shanghai, korea, Finland, singapore and hong kong?
Consider the case of Singapore. Just by looking at the (Singapore Ministry of Educations national curriculum statements), one is not looking at the other, very significant, things which are used for curriculum control. The current success of Singapore was secured through policy tightly directed at enhancing teacher expertise and, critically, by promoting curriculum coherence through approval of textbooks and teaching materials. Besides its curriculum, Oates also notes, primary school students in Singapore sit a competitive high-stakes assessment that steers their placement in secondary schools. Likewise in Finland, many educators point to that countrys curriculum which

gives a high level of autonomy to schools and the absence of streaming as the cause of their success. On school autonomy, as Oates observes, Finnish society has since 1686 legally enforced literacy by demanding it as a requirement of marriage. Its also had a national curriculum since 1881 and the reforms in the 1960s that pushed student performance upwards in international assessments were tightly controlled by the central bureaucracy. Explains Oates, Finland tightly controlled textbooks and teaching materials, then relaxed that control once the necessary curriculum coherence was in place. The difficulty in using the results of international surveys like, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International

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A key element of a coherent curriculum is assessment to ensure that curriculum content is aligned with agerelated progression.

Reading Literacy Study is that such international surveys are really taking a snapshot of education that happened years before. The problem, in a word, is timelag. It is a mistake to look at the success of a national system in the surveys and then assume that the countrys current arrangements should be copied, explains Oates, we can only use the outcomes of a survey like PISA to make claims about the form of the system in which the 15-year olds who were tested in PISA were educated. We can attend with confidence only to the things which made their systems a success, says Oates. The things which they are doing now the reforms which they are introducing are of interest, but are unproven.

school, and into vocational education and training or higher education.

assessment
Assessment as the tail that wags the curriculum dog is worth looking at in some detail. Oates pays particular and useful attention to five assessment problems: overloaded assessment; over-generic assessment; assessment structured inappropriately in terms of learning progression; assessment with irrelevant content; and assessment of superficial learning. As Oates explains, A bloated specification can promote overassessment leading either to tests which are excessively long, or are short....It is difficult to have reasonable expectation of what is in the tests, and they will be an inadequate measure of what learners may have achieved. An over-generic specification will tend towards promoting considerable diversity in learning programs and thus in what learners will have achieved. The difficulty then is in developing fair tests that measure the actual attainments of all learners. Teachers have little choice under such circumstances to do anything other than relate learning to past test papers rather than the objectives of the curriculum, Oates observes, since the curriculum offers inadequate guidance as to what will appear in the tests. Where a curriculum specifies content in an inappropriate framework of progression through the phases of learning, assessments are likely to demonstrate peculiar patterns of student attainment. Who does well and who does badly, says Oates, may be subject to peculiar reversals at different phases. If the specifications contain irrelevant content, there will be erosion of face validity of assessments and qualifications, leading to a loss of confidence in national assessment and public qualifications. Where a curriculum focuses only on a narrow range of surface elements of subjects without identifying those elements essential to progression such as from primary to secondary schooling tests are

policy control factors

In essence, says Oates, a countrys national curriculum needs to be considered in relation to 13 policy control factors: curriculum content in terms of national curriculum specifications, textbooks, support materials and the like assessment the national framework for education in terms of student pathways towards various kinds of certification inspection in and of schools pedagogy professional development in terms of the level and nature of teacher expertise institutional development in terms of the level and nature of expertise available in institutions institutional forms and structures to do with the size of schools, and transition points from early childhood to primary education and so on the degree of integration of schooling with social care and health care the level of funding and mix of public and private funding governance in terms of autonomy or regional or central control accountability arrangements, and selection and gatekeeping procedures, particularly those that direct students into particular types of secondary

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likely to be narrow in scope, and lead to teaching to the test.

Curriculum coherence
According to William Schmidt and Richard Prawat, in Curriculum coherence and national control of education: issue or nonissue? Recent studies show that national control of K-12 curriculum yields important payoffs in terms of greater curricular coherence and, as a result, higher test performance on international tests such as those used in TIMSS. Schmidt and Prawat examine the connection between national control of curriculum and curricular consistency and coherence. The results of their analyses reveal that national control of curriculum makes no contribution to curricular consistency or coherence. Whether the curriculum is determined in a top-down way by a bureaucracy or a bottom-up way by autonomous schools is irrelevant. What matters, they say, is curriculum coherence. By curriculum coherence, Schmidt and Prawat mean that curriculum content is aligned with textbooks, teaching materials and pedagogy, and assessment, and is sequenced in terms of dependent material to enable the progression of student knowledge and skills. There are two ideas implicit in this. The first idea is that a coherent curriculum is one without gaps. Textbooks, for example, address curriculum. The idea of no gaps, however, is fundamentally related to assessment. Given that most schooling is structured in terms of age-related progression, a key element of a coherent curriculum is assessment to ensure that curriculum content is aligned with age-related progression. This is a two-way street: the coherent curriculum directs the learning that is to occur in terms of the dependent content that must be learned before students can go on to learn further content; but equally the coherent curriculum recognises from assessments whether the learning of curriculum content is being achieved, and adjusting textbooks, teaching materials and pedagogy, and potentially even curriculum content, in the

event that the curriculum is over ambitious and forces an undue pace. Discussing the national curriculum for England in support of a reduction in bulk, Oates argues that an overblown curriculum specification can give rise to undue pace, and that undue pace erodes deep learning, promotes a tick box approach to learning amongst both teachers and learners, and compromises genuine accumulation of learning (characterised by retention and redeployment of knowledge and skills). In support of a narrower focus, Schmidt and Prawat observe that, Curricular materials in high-performing nations focus on fewer topics, but also communicate the expectation that those topics will be taught in a deeper, more profound way. The second idea is that in order to align curriculum content with textbooks, teaching materials and pedagogy, and assessment in a sequenced way that enables progressive learning there must be some form of control. Control, as Oates observes, need not be top-down or state control. Curriculum control.., he points out, can be enacted in very different ways some systems emphasise high levels of teacher qualification, others emphasise tightly controlled curriculum materials, and so on. Its possible to imagine curriculum coherence being controlled by a mix of the 13 policy control factors described earlier. Whats important is identifying the most pragmatic policy control factors that we can use to maintain curriculum coherence, not slavishly doing what they do in Shanghai, Korea, Finland, Singapore or Hong Kong. T REFERENCES Oates, T. (2011). Could do better: Using international comparisons to refine the National Curriculum in England. Cambridge: Cambridge Assessment. Schmidt, W. & Prawat, R. (2006). Curriculum Coherence and national control of education: Issue or non-issue? Journal of Curriculum Studies. 38(6): 641-58.

An overblown curriculum specification can give rise to undue pace, and undue pace erodes deep learning, promotes a tick box approach to learning, and compromises genuine learning.

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Developing a learning ecosystem

To DEVELoP An InTErConnECTED LEArnIng ECoSySTEM WE nEED To ShIfT our foCuS froM EngAgEMEnT In SCHOOl To EngAgEMEnT In lEARning, AS ValERiE haNNON, alEC paTTON AnD juliE TEMpERlEy ExPLAIn.
The argument that education needs to change in order to adapt to the needs of the 21st century has been exhaustively rehearsed, but is no less valid for that. One driver, digital technology, both exerts pressure for change because the new technologies demand a new set of skills and provides opportunities for transforming pedagogy because it provides access to information, networks for communication, and new means of presenting learning. Globalisation also exerts social and economic pressure, and provides opportunities for wider, richer learning.

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Digital technology is not only transforming what young people need to learn, however; its also expanding how they can learn.

On the other hand, economic recession, demographic pressures and environmental stability are primarily felt as pressures rather than opportunities although in responding to them, educators are coming up with innovations that enrich learning and help them in dealing with specific challenges. These pressures and opportunities require people to acquire new kinds of literacy, including information literacy, crosscultural literacy and ecological literacy in order to be lifelong learners, because technology, politics, economics and the environment are changing so quickly. This demands a shift away from focusing on engagement in school to engagement in learning. It also requires an examination of what sorts of environments are most conducive to learning in and for the 21st century. In the current educational landscape we need to distinguish between formal learning and informal learning contexts, and education provision delivered by existing providers and new entrants, and we need to understand how new digital technologies have the potential to radically transform learning, particularly in terms of learner ownership, in which learners become coproducers of learning rather than just consumers. Education systems have much to gain by fostering an interconnected learning ecosystem, that connects formal and informal learning, existing providers and new entrants, and service providers aka, mostly, teachers and service users aka, mostly, students. In order to bring about this interconnected learning ecosystem, system leaders need to reposition themselves so that rather than being primary providers of education, they provide a platform for a diversity of providers.

The role of digital technologies in education

Technology is exerting pressure on education by transforming our environment from one of information scarcity to one of information superabundance. Digital technology

is not only transforming what young people need to learn, however; its also expanding how they can learn. One of the most striking examples of the new opportunities afforded to education by digital technology is the work of financial analyst Salman Khan. In 2006, Khan made a few YouTube videos in order to tutor his cousins in maths, and he discovered that strangers began watching them and commenting that they found them useful. Since then, Khan has recorded more than 2,100 videos, which have been viewed more than 43 million times, and launched the notfor-profit Khan Academy. Users have free access and can learn at their own pace, solving computer-generated problems tailored specifically to them based on their earlier performance. Khan Academy is a good example of the phenomenon of Napsterisation, that is, the transformation from a straightforward delivery-consumption model to a webenabled sharing model much like the transformation by the peer-to-peer file sharing internet service Napster of recorded music from something that you bought in a shop, to something you downloaded and shared across an online network. Inevitably, free online resources like this will change the relationships between learners and teachers potentially leading to much greater personalisation and much more time for teachers to work one-on-one with learners. Were also seeing the first stirrings of the phenomenon of gamification. Video game designers have become the modern worlds leading experts on how to keep people excited, engaged, and committed and around the world, educators are beginning to work with them on transforming how people learn both in and out of school. This has led to a growing number of educational computer games for example, the Global Conflicts series, in which players take on roles including an investigative journalist in Jerusalem, a representative from the International Criminal Court in Uganda, and a representative from the fictitious European Leatherwear Industries investigating child

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Case study

changes learners relationships to each other, to their teachers, to the rest of the world and to the very material that they are learning. Valerie Hannon is a founding director of Britains Innovation Unit as a government organisation, and was its first managing partner when it became an independent not-for-profit. She now serves as a board director and consultant. Alec Patton is a researcher and project coordinator at the Innovation Unit. Julie Temperley is the program manager for the Innovation Units Global Education Leaders Program. This article draws on content from Valerie Hannon, Alec Patton and Julie Temperleys paper, Developing an Innovation Ecosystem for Education, published by Britains Innovation Unit for Cisco, with kind permission. REFERENCES n.a. (2011). All Korean textbooks to go digital by 2015. eSchoolNews. Available at http://www.eschoolnews. com/2011/07/01/all-korean-textbooks-togo-digital-by-2015 LINKS Read the complete version of Valerie Hannon, Alec Patton and Julie Temperleys paper, Developing an Innovation Ecosystem for Education, at http://www.innovationunit.org/sites/ default/files/Developing%20an%20 Innovation%20Ecosystem%20for%20 Education_Cisco-IU_0.pdf Visit Khan Academy at http://www.khanacademy.org Visit Global Conflicts at http://www. globalconflicts.eu Visit the Science Leadership Academy at http://www.scienceleadership.org Visit Britains Innovation Unit http:// www.innovationunit.org

The Hole in the Wall project

In 1999, computer science professor Sugata Mitra put a rugged computer into a hole in the wall in a slum in Kaskaji, New Delhi. The computer was loaded with software which encouraged self-led, collaborative, play-based learning. There is no training for the kids, and no compulsion. The educators simply set up the computer, which looks quite a lot like a cash machine, and let the kids work out how to use it. Since then, Mitra and his team have continued to develop the concept, and to introduce it in towns and cities both in India and internationally. Results have often been remarkable. In one town, known for its singers, children without adult help worked out how to record their own songs within 24 hours. The Hole in the Wall project is, at its heart, driven by digital technology, but what makes it work is the fact that children use it for themselves, because it harnesses their intrinsic motivation to learn. They own their learning as individuals, while learning to collaborate with their peers. LINKS Watch Sugata Mitra on child-driven education in a 2010 TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_ education.html

slavery in Bangladesh but it has also led some people to apply game dynamics to learning more widely. For example, Quest to Learn, a school in New York, is pioneering mission-based learning, in which students carry out extended projects modeled on the missions that characters carry out in computer games. These missions integrate real-world learning with virtual reality, computer games and online social networking. Harnessing digital technology need not entail extra expense for schools. In fact, using free resources like those from the Khan Academy in order to teach shortage subjects can actually save money. Schools are also taking advantage of more conventional online tools. At the Science

Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, for example, students run their own science groups on Facebook. These become repositories for useful information, with revision material, videos, links to articles and discussions to which other schools can contribute. According to an eSchoolNews report, South Korea is on track to replace all textbooks with digitised materials by 2015. Using smart phones, tablet PCs and smart televisions, school students of all ages will be able to view the content of existing textbooks. Nationwide academic tests will also be held online. The way that digital technology is harnessed in these instances not only improves learning, it also fundamentally

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In the cloud

SChooLS ThAT uSE CLouD CoMPuTIng To CrEATE A DIgITAL CAMPuS CAn BECoME MorE EffICIEnT AnD BETTEr AT MonITorIng TEAChIng AnD LEArnIng, AS saTish kEEThiNEDi AnD NihaR pRaDhaN ExPLAIn.
School leaders and their staff in schools face a multiplicity of tasks on a daily basis from properly conducting the admission process to ensuring the updated curriculum to analysing students assessments to communicating effectively with the parents. Those tasks can be supported by information and communication technology (ICT), but increasing the number of computers alone is not necessarily a solution. The truth is the number of computers in schools is increasing anyway, particularly in government schools as a result of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and public-private partnerships. By and large, though, thats not leading to improved efficiency since few government or private schools are using ICT systems particularly well. This is because ICT use has usually grown in schools mostly for educational purposes in support of classroom learning, with ICT in school administration typically tacked on in an isolated and unsystematic way. In some cases ICT use has grown in

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Cloud computing offers a technology solution that addresses this fundamental problem, since it enables schools to increase capacity and add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the internet, extends existing capabilities.

and at the same time web connections are not accessible. To encourage the acceptance and use of technology for both teaching and non-teaching purposes, school leaders need to ensure that an adequate system with web connections is available to staff and that access times are not restricted. Teachers in particular need adequate opportunities to practise using the rapidly changing technology in order to gain confidence in its applications.

iCT in schools: The on-the-ground reality

If you want to integrate ICT systematically for educational and administrative purposes, though, it makes sense to conduct a detailed study of the on-the-ground realities to find out how schools function in order to develop an in-depth understanding of the problems encountered by school leaders in the effective administration of schools, and the effective monitoring of teaching and learning. To do that, weve collected detailed data to better understand the needs of school staff, as well as their assumptions, in order to design and develop an innovative and integrated ICT system. The process has included: detailed studies of the on-the-ground processes and procedures of schools from Ivy League Academy Hyderabad to Oakridge International School in Bangalore and Hyderabad to Delhi Public School interviews with more than 100 principals and teachers across private and public schools to understand their key problems in school management interviews with education experts to verify and validate data collected from the previous detailed studies and interviews process mapping and analysis, and design and deployment of the Digital Campus ICT solution.

Detailed findings
Our findings in detail address five key challenges: communication with and the engagement of parents; the ways principals control academic and administrative functions; timetabling, examinations and other assessments and their analysis; admissions processes and the management of student records; and teacher recruitment, retention and training. Communication with and engagement of parents The relationship between parents and the school is the most vital facet for enabling the continuous and comprehensive development of the student. How one builds an effective and engaging relationship with parents remains a big question for school leaders, since it involves more than one-off face-to-face parentteacher meetings. Its worth remembering that communication doesnt necessarily have to be face-toface, but it does have to be timely. The ways principals control academic and administrative functions School principals are looking for ICT systems that give them control over academic and administrative functions. The principal role requires continuous monitoring of members of the teaching staff, who in turn are continuously monitoring their students, in order to provide appropriate inputs for continuous improvement of the performance. To enable that, principals need a birds eye view of whats happening across the func-

school administration, with ICT for educational purposes tacked on. In either instance, schools face a missed opportunity, since clearly planned ICT systems and well-documented ICT processes can support more efficient administration, and improved teaching and learning. Its still the case, though, that even where ICT is integrated systematically, it can be expensive and ICT staff in schools can struggle to cope with the rapid change in the technology, while schools can struggle to train and retain those ICT staff.

Broad findings
Our findings from that detailed study are that, in many schools, ICT is neither easily accessible nor effectively used by teaching or non-teaching staff. This is because systems are not always available to teachers,

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The digital campus model significantly enhances the efficiency of school administration, and teaching and learning.

tions of the school to be able to see the complete dossier on teachers and their students. Timetabling, examinations and other assessments and their analysis A common and pressing problem is the time and effort required to prepare school timetables, class timetables, and teacher allocations and student timetables. Significant time at the senior level is devoted to the management of the timetable, which is in essence an administrative activity that does not contribute significant value to the academic development of students. The administration of student assessments and examinations is reasonably straightforward, but the methods by which assessment and examination data are compiled and analysed are not. For many schools, the compiling and analysis of assessment and examination data in terms of the multiple dimensions of the progress report as stipulated in boards of study guidelines is a herculean task. Admissions processes and the management of student records The starting point for a school is admissions management, which includes the handling of enquiries, the conducting of screening processes and the selection of students. In many instances this is a manual operation, involving the considerable time and effort of senior teaching and non-teaching staff. The huge task of tracking the complete record of a student over their years of schooling is likewise a manual operation in many instances. There is a clear need for an automated process which integrates with all other processes. Teacher recruitment, retention and training As the educational landscape rapidly changes, a significant challenge is the recruitment and retention of teaching talent. At the same time, school administrations need a better understanding of contemporary teaching techniques, skill scaling and curriculum design, as well as a better understanding of contemporary creative

tools for enabling continuous training and professional learning. In essence, no investment in school administration is complete without investing in the capability of teachers to embrace change.

addressing the challenges

ICT has a critical role to play in addressing all five key challenges. In our view, a digital campus is the most effective way to address them. A digital campus literally involves the conversion of an educational campus into a knowledge campus. Were enabling schools to become a digital campus by using integrated, intelligent and innovative ICT solutions based on a cloud computing software-as-a-service model to provide schools with 25 modules from admission to alumni management encompassing more than 100 critical processes and more than 500 reports. The digital campus model significantly enhances the efficiency of school administration, and teaching and learning, because ICT is accessible through multiple devices from smart phone to iPads, and because its a cloud-based model, schools arent faced with the costs of maintaining a large team of ICT staff. The Digital Campus approach enables: real-time communication with parents the provision of intelligent reports to parents the on-demand generation of analytical reports for the school leadership and teaching staff a birds eye view of teaching and learning for principals a birds eye view of administrative operations for principals and bursars reduced teaching and administrative work leaving more time for teachers to focus on teaching and learning a collaborative culture in schools, and a significant reduction in hardware, software and support costs. T Satish Keethinedi is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Digital Campus. Nihar Pradhan is a co-founder and the chief operating officer of Digital Campus.

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order before 31 December 2012 for a 10% discount. Quote TEACHER at the checkout Bring Your own Technology
The BYOT guide for schools and families
Mal Lee and Martin Levins ACER Press 2012

In time, all schools in the developed world will move to students using their personal mobile technology in class, rather than it being provided by the school. It is not a case of if, but when. BYOT is like a tsunami coming across the horizon. The forces impelling the change and the potential educational, social development, economic, technological and political opportunities opened by the development will soon fundamentally change the nature of schooling, teaching, the technology used, home-school relations and the resourcing of schools. The potential implications of the development are immense. BYOT is far more than a technological change. However, its full potential will only be realised by schools, their leadership and their communities collaborating astutely to achieve the normalised 100% student use of the technology. That challenge will be considerable. This book, drawing on the work of the pathfinding schools and education authorities in the UK, US and Australia, is designed to provide teachers and parents alike an insight into: why the development needs to be embraced the imperative of authentic collaboration between home and school

what each school needs to do to ready itself how to deal with the raft of options the kinds of whole school community implementation strategy required the practicalities of achieving sustained total student usage and the many dividends that will then flow. To help further that understanding join the authors at the BYOT blog at http://www.byot.me
ABoUT THE AUTHorS

Mal Lee is an author and educational consultant specialising in the use of digital technology in the evolution of schooling. He is a former director of schools and secondary college principal who writes extensively on effective use of use of technology in teaching. He is the coauthor of Leading a Digital School, The Use of Instructional Technology in Schools, The Interactive Whiteboard Revolution and Developing a Networked School Community. Martin Levins is Director of Information Technology at The Armidale School. A pioneer in the use of the digital in teaching in Australia Martin for the last two decades has been one of the gurus in the use of Apple technology in education. As the education columnist for MacWorld Martin continues to shape the astute use of Apples technology in teaching. $AUD34.95 $AUD31.45

Order online at http://shop.acer.edu.au

Assessment
The second National Conference for Educators, hosted by Choithram School and Choithram Institute of Educational Research and Training in Indore in August, addressed the theme Assessment: A tool for learning. Assessment is an important tool for students, teachers, parents, principals and management and acts as a great motivator if honest and positive feedback is given, keynote speaker Vineet Joshi told close to 100 principals from around the country at the conference. As Joshi, Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), told the conference attendees, Recognising that every individual is unique and important, the present system of Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation adopted by CBSE provides a meaningful feedback. This is in stark comparison to the earlier dry feedback provided in the form of marks wherein it was difficult to assess the actual learning of a child. Formative assessments diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of students, and thus play a pivotal role in providing diagnostic feedback for students and guiding remedial action by teachers, Joshi

A tool for learning

RajEsh awasThi rEPorTS on ThE SEConD nATIonAL ConfErEnCE for EDuCATorS, hoSTED By ChoIThrAM SChooL AnD ChoIThrAM InSTITuTE of EDuCATIonAL rESEArCh AnD TrAInIng In InDorE In AuguST.
explained. Formative assessment tasks should be inter-disciplinary, completed in class, not as homework, and administered during a course of instruction and not at its completion. Joshi also addressed changes to be introduced by CBSE to address problem solving assessment in Class IX from the second term of this session to test students skills in creative thinking, decision making, critical thinking, problem solving and communication. To provide a strong base for values among children, values-based questions will be included in the content of sub-

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jects in Classes IX to XII from this session. Assessment of speaking and listening skills in English language will be introduced from the next session. Jocelyn Cook, Principal Research Fellow and Manager of the Perth office of the Australian Council for Educational Research, addressed developmental assessment. Developmental assessment, Cook explained, is the process of monitoring students progress so that decisions can be made about the best way to support their learning. Central to the concept of developmental assessment is the progress map that describes the way skills, knowledge, understanding, attitudes and values that students develop in a particular subject, she explained. Progress maps make explicit what is valued in the curriculum as well as defining the direction of growth of a student. Evidence of student achievement can be gathered through a range of assessment methods, including performances, projects, paper-and-pen assignments as well as portfolios. Assessment methods, however, need to be curriculum relevant, reliable, practically convenient and fair, and possess instructional utility, she said. Endorsing the central concern of education systems being to develop student learning, she advised that good decision making about teaching and learning depends on accessible, relevant and reliable information about student learning. To support learning, teachers assessment results need to have diagnostic meaning beyond norm referencing, and teachers need to share information about student skill development and progress in their reporting, and develop class assessment plans that apply the key principles of learning assessments. Dr Upinder Dhar, Vice Chancellor of J.K. Lakshmipat University in Jaipur, addressed the measurement of student learning through different kinds of assessment that are progressive in nature. By measuring student learning in terms of competencies, teachers can provide accurate feedback to students about their progress and next steps in learning as well as provide information to stakeholders that their insti-

tution is meeting its educational goals, Dr Dhar explained. Learning outcomes must be observable and measurable, and data collection must be regular if it is to inform the learning progress of students and program improvement. Dr. B.K. Passi, Ex-Vice Chairman of the National Council of Teacher Education, addressed the benefits of an informal learning approach to meet the learning needs of non-literate communities, citing the example of Barefoot College in Rajasthan. Dr. Passi said the way to bridge the gap between formal and informal education is to encourage approaches where students learn from students, teachers from teachers, parents from parents, principals from principals and management from management. Rajesh Awasthi, Principal of Choithram School and Choithram Institute of Educational Research and Training in Indore, addressed the inadequacies of A, B, C, D or E gradings as a way to report a students learning and showed how the Choithram Assessment Program (CAP) designed in his school enables teachers to evaluate the quality of learning by measuring students ability to apply what they have learned to real-life situations. CAP aligns assessment with new curriculum mandates that curriculum be literature based, value laden, culturally rich and integrated across content areas. Awasthi explained how CAP enables teachers to assess students analytical, organisational, interpretive, evaluative and communicative skills by using a rubrics-based approach to assess answers to open-ended questions, concept building activities, project based learning and integrated performances. In several interactive sessions, principals explored their thinking regarding assessment for the future and innovative assessment techniques practised in their respective schools. T Rajesh Awasthi is the Principal of Choithram School and Choithram Institute of Educational Research and Training, Indore. Email principal@choithramschool.com

good decision making about teaching and learning depends on accessible, relevant and reliable information about student learning.

choithram conference

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The last word

A matter of judgement
WErE ConSTAnTLy MAkIng InTuITIVE juDgEMEnTS In ThE CLASSrooM, BuT SoMETIMES our BEST guESSES ArE Wrong. sTEVE hOlDEN ExPLAInS Why WE ThInk ThE WAy WE Do.

We all make intuitive, and often wrong, judgements in our day-to-day teaching because we rely on what psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman calls the availability heuristic. The availability what? As Michael Lewis explains, writing in Vanity Fair on the work of Kahneman, its the fancy term for the way we assess the probability of an event on the basis of information that is cognitively available or can be easily remembered. Theres a reason why we think this way: making quick, intuitive judgements with easily available information is an efficient way to do things, and our judgements are often right. And if our judgement is wrong? We can always slow down and make a more careful evaluation. Heres Lewiss summary of Kahnemans argument in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow: The story (Kahneman) tells has two characters he names them System 1 and System 2 that stand in for our two different mental operations. System 1 (fast thinking) is the mental state in which you probably drive a car or buy groceries. It relies heavily on intuition and is amazingly

capable of misleading and also of being misled. The slow-thinking System 2 is the mental state that understands how System 1 might be misled and steps in to try to prevent it from happening. The most important quality of System 2 is that it is lazy; the most important quality of System 1 is that it cant be turned off. We pass through this life on the receiving end of a steady signal of partially reliable information that we only occasionally, and under duress, evaluate thoroughly. According to Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett and Reginald Adams, in Inside Jokes: Using humour to reverse-engineer the mind, the availability heuristic is also the reason we find something funny. Inside Jokes came out of Hurleys puzzlement not as to why we find certain things funny, but why we find anything funny. Why, Hurley wondered, do we have a sense of humour in the first place? Chris Berdik in the Boston Globe explains, Hurley and his coauthors begin from the idea that our brains make sense of our daily lives via a never-ending series of assumptions, based on sparse, incomplete

information. All these best guesses simplify our world, give us critical insights into the minds of others, and streamline our decisions. But mistakes are inevitable, and even a small faulty assumption can open the door to bigger and costlier mistakes. Enter mirth, a little pulse of reward the brain gives itself for seeking out and correcting our mistaken assumptions. A sense of humour is the lure that keeps our brains alert for the gaps between our quick-fire assumptions and reality. Heres Hurley, in a Q&A with Berdik: We do a quick and dirty assessment and make a lot of best guesses. But this fills our mental spaces with junk, small mistakes that could trigger a cascade of errors if they go undetected, leading us to waste a lot of energy and resources and, in the worst case, inviting disaster. Finding and disabling these errors is a critical task. But its a resource-hungry job that has to compete with everything else our brains are doing. We think the pleasure of humour, the emotion of mirth, is the brains reward for discovering its mistaken inferences. Basically, the brain has to bribe itself to do this important work. In essence, having a sense of humour keeps us fit as thinkers so that were aware when the availability heuristic leads us to make dumb intuitive judgements. Youd have to want the fast-thinking System 1 to be busily helping while youre teaching, but are System 1s intuitive judgements about, say, student aptitude accurate? Its worth slowing down and getting lazy old System 2 to collect all the relevant data to help us make accurate judgements. REFERENCES Hurley, M., Dennett, D. & Adams, R. (2011). Inside Jokes: Using humour to reverse-engineer the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Allen Lane. Lewis, M. (2011). The king of human error. Vanity Fair (December). Available at http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/michael-lewis-201112

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BENCHMARK YOUR ACHIEVEMENT AGAINST THE WORLD

The International Benchmark Tests (IBT) is an internationally administered program of assessments in Mathematics, Science and English developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research, a world leader in educational assessment and reporting. The IBT benchmarks student performance against a broad, international cohort of students and to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), in which more than 50 countries participate worldwide. The IBT provides a comprehensive assessment of student performance and ability and provides school, country and international comparisons. It is available for students in Class 3 to 10 in English and Mathematics, and in Class 3 to 8 in Science. The IBT currently operates in India, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Africa.

To find out about participating in the IBT in your country, including costs and test dates, visit our website www.acer.edu.au/tests/IBT
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