Perturbation

I am getting perturbed. For a while I have been pondering where we are heading with educational leadership. I have read the latest books by Michael Fullan and I think he makes some good points. Trouble is there is a little voice nattering in my right ear... "but is that going to be enough in the future?" My worry is that we keep talking about leadership of schools from a past paradigm and I have a sneaking suspicion we need to move on... In fact it's more than sneaking...it's perturbing.

When I read the blogpost from Singapore Education Consultants, Education in Singapore - TIMMS and the "New Stupid" it confirmed my thinking. The blog quotes Mike Schmoker as raising the question whether the data that that has been collected by schools promotes 21st-century teaching and learning? Those schools that are achieving high test scores in the model of today's education say why would we change - we are successful. Schmoker's argument is that you can increase test scores without offering students tasks that are intellectually stimulating.

So if we are saying that students need to be multiliterate, to think for themselves, problem solve, think critically, be self aware, be flexible and relate to others why are we measuring learning in the same old ways. Can't we have 'and-both'? As leaders, what are we doing to drive education forward for new times? Measurement using educational standards have been tried in a number if countries with dubious success. Unintended results include teaching to the test, and the narrowing of the curriculum to be mainly focused on literacy (from a narrow perspective) and numeracy. Is that enough to create leaders for the future? I don't think so.

So here are some key questions to think about for principals and administrators:
What do we consider the essential competencies or dispositions for the 21st century to be?
Does the data we collect enhance learning for the 21st century?
Are we looking out to other schools, or beyond schools to other educational learning centres, beyond educational frames to look at global trends, busines, web 2.0...
What literacies do we need for the 21st century - just reading and writing?
What are we going to do about it?

Forecast for the future

Today I have been pondering future trends for our planet - the exciting possibilities and the growing negative impact of mankind on the planet. I was looking at the Futurist Magazine's forecast for 2008 and beyond, and it all seemed pretty grim stuff. Yet the outcome can be altered by us - one person at a time. Tony Ryan refers to this as the ripple effect. This ripple can alter the course of history. In terms of leadership, each of us has an important role to play. Educators can explore some of these issues in more depth with their students eg the water wars of the future... As leaders, whatever our role, we need to be constantly scanning the future, discussing our preferred futures and working towards those futures. We need to be leaders who take a stand, who get on with things, who are not happy with the status quo, who take risks....as Seth Godin suggests, become a heretic.

The OECD Book Trends Shaping Education 2008 is one useful reference for thinking about where we are headed. It poses some interesting questions at the end of each section. For example, in the section Towards Web 2.0? it talks of the following: "With the increase of user-created content, the Internet is no longer just about down-loading - up-loading is becoming important too." It then poses the questions: "Is this undermining the status of schools and established curriculum knowledge or is it reinforcing the quality of education? Or instead is it not especially relevant to the core business of education?" What do you think?

If the trends indicate that there is a steady increase in self expression you can bet that students, colleagues, employees and society in general are going to want an increased say, and to tailor their environments to meet their needs. At the same time we need to look at this in the context of the social world and be aware of the intricate interdependencies of our planet. This is not an either/or approach - rather an and/both approach. We need to manage these polarities - and understanding ourselves and others will never be more important.

The shrinking world

The use of web 2.0 tools has flattened the landscape as people begin to blog, twitter and skype etc more often. Many of the online environments I explore are still populated by many examples from the USA (eg You Tube videos) yet this has started to change, and with it a greater understanding that it's a whole new world. One of the websites I came across today, through twitter contact Angela Maiers was dotsub The thing I liked about this site was its ability to for you to translate videos into any language. The subtitles then appear when the video is played. As a New Zealander, I was thinking it would be great to read some of these in Maori. Or for students learning another language to add translations.

One of the examples is below. This video is an updated version of Karl Fisch's and Scott McLeod's 'Shift Happens'. It is called 'Did You Know?' It contains updated statistics and questions, and a new layout. You will see that you can add language subtexts at the bottom. Check it out...