Education Readings
By Allan Alach
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come
across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz
Pass on to creative teachers you know
Helicopter Parents Are Raising Unemployable Children
‘Helicopter parents are in the news a lot
these days. These are the parents who can't stop hovering around their kids.
They practically wrap them in bubble wrap, creating a cohort of young adults
who struggle to function in their jobs and in their lives. Helicopter parents
think that they're doing what's best for their kids but actually, they're
hurting their kids' chances at success. In
particular, they're ruining their kids' chances of landing a job and keeping
it.’
The Reading Achievement Gap: Why Do Poor
Students Lag Behind Rich Students in
‘What has become clear over the past 35 years is that low-income students learn as much during each school year as do middle-class students (Alexander, Entwisle & Olson, 2007: Hayes & Grether, 1983; Heyns, 1978). But every summer, when school is not in session, kids from low-income families lose two or three months of reading growth, and middle-class kids add a month of reading growth.’
http://bit.ly/2sCZSwR
Play Misunderstood: The Divide Between Primary Classroom Teachers
And Senior Managers
‘Teachers of children in years 1–3 are now recognising the need to
respond to their students in a more developmentally appropriate manner at a
time when more and more children are struggling to fit the mould that once was
the traditional classroom. Yet many of these teachers report a key barrier to
effectively implementing a learning-through-play approach in their classroom to
be that of their school management team and colleagues.’
Rock On! How I Taught Focus to a Class That Wouldn't Sit Still
‘As a teacher, every now and then we come across a class with an
abundance of energy. Sometimes so much energy that teaching seems like an
impossible mission. Students fidget with their hands, feet, dance in their
stools and engage in constant side conversations with their classmates.’ |
| The author |
Your Pedagogy Might be More Aligned with Colonialism than You Realize
‘What if I told you that prevailing attitudes toward the language
practices that students bring into the classroom are rooted in colonial, often
racist, logic? What if I told you that by not disrupting these kinds of
attitudes in your classroom, your pedagogy might be more aligned with
colonialism than you realize?’
Paperwork
 |
| Paperwork!!!! |
‘There is something childishly naive about
the bureaucratic belief in the power of paperwork to bend reality. This is not
a new feature in education. You may recall that Race To The Top and RttT Lite
(More waivers, less money) both featured a required plan for moving
high-quality teachers around to districts in need. Nobody ever figured out how
such a thing could possibly be achieved-- but everybody had a plan about how to
achieve it. The grandaddy of modern useless paperwork would have to be all the
district plans for "aligning" curriculum…’
Contributed by Bruce Hammonds:
National Standards and the Damage Done,
by Martin Thrupp
 |
| Martin Thrupp |
‘We will all have our views on the pros
and cons of the National Standards policy and there’s likely to be some truth
in even highly divergent points of view because education is complex and
contextualised and so much depends, doesn’t it – it depends on the school, the
classroom, the teacher, even the individual child. But my argument will be that
on balance the National Standards are taking us down a data-driven path that
will be very damaging for the culture of our schools and classrooms and for the
education of individual children.’
Schools don’t prepare children for life.
Here’s the education they really need
 |
| Lucy Cosslett |
‘It’s only after you have left school
and, in adulthood, gained a bit of distance, that you can be fully aware of the
gaps in your education. History is a prime example. A group of British people
together around a pub table and can probably weave together some kind of
cohesive narrative across the centuries. In isolation, however, what you
discover is that one person did the Romans, another the second world war, and a
third spent two years on medieval crop rotation. Meaning that as a school
leaver, you’ll have a vague idea about how it all fits together, but whole
epochs remain shrouded in mystery.’
Finland's new, weird school 'courses' say
a lot about how we teach our kids.
I don't know if you've noticed this, but
there is no such job as “math."
‘Rather than teach subjects as dry,
separate ingredients, from now on, it's all cooking together.Finland's concept
is called "phenomenon-based learning." Here's how it works:Rather
than focus on one subject like math, students and teachers sit down and pick a
real-world topic that interests them — climate change, for example — which is
then dissected from different angles. What's the science behind it? How are
nations planning on dealing with it? What literature is there about it?’
Back to the Future: How has economic
policy influenced the development of education policy and how the educational
achievement of children in New Zealand primary schools is measured?
‘My final assignment for my Masters of
Education paper, Education Policy traces the history of Standards in primary
education and how we have come full circle from our original Standards
From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:
Creative Leadership lessons from Stoll and Temperley
‘Creative schools depend on creative leadership. The trouble these
days is that the pressures on
Bring back the Jesters
Modern boards of directors are a bit like medieval courts where no
one questions the king or the senior courtiers because they have become far too
important to challenge. And as long as they can’t possibly be wrong, they can
continue doing the wrong things all the time and never know it.The idea is
worth spreading throughout all organizations to combat the blindness created by
past success. It is one way to counteract the conformity which pervades top
down management.
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