It’s an indictment on our profession that we have failed to leverage some of the greatest technological advancements in human history to improve the literacy and numeracy education of our children. Large western nations like the U.K., U.S. and Australia are all battling falling literacy and numeracy standards, even as the number of digital devices in classrooms grows and grows. How should we be leveraging this technology, while also heeding the research that shows the teacher in the room is still the most important factor in a student’s success or otherwise?
Over the last few years at Kalinda we’ve been taking the (as far as I’m aware) unprecedented step of building and publishing our curriculum and associated resources online using Google Sites. This allows us to be able to personalise and differentiate the curriculum to an extent that’s never been achieved before.
Let me give you a quick example. Take the Maths concept of fractions. Our teachers have developed a Fractions Google Site. They have mapped each major stage of understanding/skill development as set out in the Australian Curriculum, and each page of the site matches these. On each page they have curated all the best resources they can find on the internet to teach these concept/skills to our specific group of students. The end result is that you have a site that represents the entire continuum of fractions learning, from about a Grade 1 to Year 8 level. Each page has videos, interactives, slide shows, text explanations and related worksheets. The best of the internet packaged up specifically for our students.
When we teach a unit, lets keep the example of fractions, we pre-test our students to see where their understandings sit. They can then reference our fractions site at their point of need, and with teacher support work their way through. In fact, in our large open plan learning spaces, there are specific teachers and spaces that represent each stage of the fractions journey and so each page of the site. The students move to that specific teacher as they reach that point of need. And by Year 5 & 6, this happens for almost our entire curriculum. There has been an exceptional amount of work by our teachers to achieve this. Imagine building a site like this for every concept you teach, not just in Maths, but for reading, grammar, spelling etc.
So you may ask: aren’t there commercial resources already built that do the same thing. Even for free? Why not just sign the kids up to Kahn Academy for example?
I have considered that question carefully as this project has taken off at my school in recent times, and the answer cuts to the heart of the issue of the role of the teacher in the modern classroom.
I see the above question as connected to the ongoing issue about a teacher’s relevancy in the 21st century, which goes something like this: in an age where there is no longer a gap between the student’s desire to learning something and the means by which they can learn it, what role is there left for a teacher? Or put more specifically for the above example, if Kahn Academy can teach every concept there is to learn in Maths, why do we need the traditional classroom with a teacher running the show?
The answer is actually simple.
At a conference recently the presenter asked a group of Secondary Maths teachers who was using Kahn Academy. Only one put their hand up. After being admonished by the presenter, as if this was something to be embarrassed about, one teacher spoke up and said ‘The kids don’t like it. They don’t relate well to it. They prefer if I explain things to them’. Now you could argue that there are some deeper issues at play here, but the central concept that this comment got me thinking about was the role of the teacher in a world where resources like Kahn Academy exist.
The biggest and most obvious thing that a human can do that technology can’t is relate to other humans. A huge part of teaching for as long as anybody can remember has been the relational aspect. Regardless of pedagogy, good teachers have been those that have meaningful relationships with their students. I’ve always thought a ‘really good’ teacher can get almost any pedagogy to work, because their students love them and really want to follow them wherever it is that they will lead. Great teachers have always been really good at relating the curriculum to their students. They establish that initial desire to learn, then they link the student to materials appropriate to them so they can learn it.
This is where technology comes in, because we can now amplify the possibilities of this model enormously. That teacher no longer has to personally instruct each of those students. Or put the other way, each of those students doesn’t have to be held back waiting for the teacher to finally help them with a problem, or even to run a lesson that addresses their particular learning needs. No longer do we have to have classes aimed at the middle, with advanced kids getting bored and struggling kids getting confused.
The teacher should now instead be the master curator -connecting students with information, resources and tools that are on the web that best suit them. A combination of things that can only be put together by a teacher that knows their students well. This curation of content will look different in every school and vastly different from suburb to suburb, town to country as each teacher strives to curate resources that will relate concepts in the best possible way to their group of students. Content that matches their interests, their sense of humour, their stage in their learning. Content that is perhaps partially curated or even created by their own students. And most importantly, content that is differentiated specifically to match where each child is at in their learning journey for each concept you are ‘teaching’ (or ‘facilitating the learning of’?).
The best practice teacher in 2015 and beyond: relational expert, master curator.
