Thinking Differently About Teacher Education

In a recent paper, Steven Barnett makes reference to a substantial body of research that establishes early childhood education (ECE) can improve the learning and development of young children; the effects varying in size and persistence by type of programme. ‘Well-designed’ preschool education programs, he says, produce long-term improvements in school success, including higher achievement test scores, lower rates of grade repetition and special education, and higher educational attainment. Some preschool programs are also associated with reduced delinquency and crime in childhood and adulthood. Significantly, the strongest evidence suggests that economically disadvantaged children reap long-term benefits from preschool.

The ramifications of this for economic development are enormous, which is why the Millennium Development Goal #2 aims at ‘Education for All’ by 2015. The problem is that an estimated 18 million extra teachers will be required to meet this goal, and to achieve that kind of scale within this time frame requires a paradigm shift in thinking as far as the process of educating prospective teachers is concerned.

In India alone, an extra two million teachers will need to be recruited. Given existing public policy settings, the chances of this happening are slim. There is also the problem of getting existing teachers to turn up. It is estimated that in any given day, teacher absenteeism is of the order of 25%.

Radical solutions are called for, and public-private partnerships may be one option. A model based on that used by Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Sustainable Social Development Institute is worth contemplating, which brings together private and public organisations to serve low-income communities, through its Virtual University and 1400+ Community Learning Centres.

Is it possible, for example, that a young Indian woman, having matriculated from junior high school, could pursue a foundation degree in ECE teacher education and learn while she is on the job? This is far from the ideal, but it is infinitely preferable to the alternative. With a satellite dish, a solar panel and an interactive whiteboard, it is technically possible to ‘beam in’ an international standard ECE curriculum (appropriately modified to be culturally inclusive), for the ‘apprentice teacher’ to deliver to children in an isolated rural community. The same technology would enable her to network with others in her situation, studying online to work towards a formal teacher qualification.

Shock news: Most faculty don’t use Twitter …

Image source: scienceroll.com

There was a piece in Campus Technology recently that revealed the ’shocking truth’ that the majority of higher education faculty do not use Twitter. A survey of 1,958 higher education professionals conducted by Faculty Focus in July and August of this year recorded that 69.3 percent of respondents do not use Twitter in any capacity, and 56.4 percent have not tried it at all. Some of the reasons advanced by faculty members for not using Twitter included lack of relevance to education, the danger that microblogging might contribute to poor writing skills, that they don’t understand how to use it, or that they simply don’t have the time for it.

I’m sure a survey focusing on the usage of PowerPoint in the mid-1990s would have generated a broadly similar response. The fact is, notwithstanding the huge growth in twitterers, we are still very much in the innovator/early adoption stage in the technology adoption lifecycle as far as the educational applications of Twitter are concerned. Personally, I was on Twitter for six months without really knowing why and I was quite comfortable about this because it only by immersing yourself in these technologies that you come to appreciate their usefulness (or lack thereof). The twitterisation process has some way to go in the education sector yet and, as someone who is typically an early adopter, I am still very much in the experimentation phase.

Disruptive education

I gave a talk this morning at a conference for teachers, public servants and industry partners connected with the Singapore FutureSchools project. A sum of S$80 million is being invested over a period of four years (2008 to May 2012), involving a pioneer batch of six schools. The distinguishing feature of these schools will be their capacity to leverage the latest ICTs and innovative school design to deliver an engaging learning experience for students. Collaboration with business is important and there are around 25 industry partners including Microsoft, HP and Pearson among others. The focus of my presentation was how mainstream education practices are being disrupted by the burgeoning growth of social media, and how this is changing the way people learn.

The Social Media Revolution

This video clip accompanies the new book which came out last month entitled: Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman. It is interesting that some of the feedback commentary I’ve seen suggests that, while the video is good, there is some doubt over the veracity of the statistics cited. I guess one has to read the book to be sure of this. Alternatively, one could check the list of references here. The primary focus of the book — which is available on Kindle, of course — is how social media is impacting upon the way people conduct business. The issues raised, however, might equally apply to the way we deliver education.

The edupunks are coming

umwdtlt’s photostream

I was referred by a friend to a very good article in Fast Company magazine this week by Anya Kamenetz that provides a good overview of the edupunk movement that is starting to disrupt the higher education scene in the US and elsewhere.

The term edupunk was coined by Jim Groom and is defined as an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do-it-yourself (DIY) attitude, and one that avoids mainstream tools like PowerPoint and Blackboard. The ‘punk’ part of the word is to draw a parallel with the rebellious attitude of 1970s bands like The Clash. The punkesque nature of the phenomenon has been captured admirably in this mashup by Tony Hirst.

In the Kamenetz article, Groom argues that higher education institutions are ‘financially cannibalising’ their mission in that they have become outrageously expensive. Meanwhile, he says, there is a general refusal to acknowledge the implications of new technologies.

The end game here is disruptive innovation. As more and more ‘edutechpreneurs’ arrive on the scene, the transformation of the education sector may happen faster than people think.

The word ‘university’ comes from the Latin ‘universitas’ which, as the Kamenetz piece points out, does not mean campus, or class, or a particular body of knowledge, but ‘the guild, the group of people united in scholarship’. Nine hundred years ago, such groups formed in Bologna, Oxford, and Paris ‘around a scarce, precious information technology: the handwritten book’. Images of this era show the sages of the time at a podium lecturing from these revered books, with rows of students sitting attentively with quills and inkwells at the ready; a format not too dissimilar from classes in universities almost a millennium later.

As Kamenetz concludes: ‘Today, we’ve gone from scarcity of knowledge to unimaginable abundance’ and it is only natural, therefore, that new, rapidly evolving information technologies will convene new communities of scholars, both inside and outside existing institutions.