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?

Beyond 20th Century Education

Voicethread is a really useful web 2.0 tool. One of the voicethreads I came across today was a provocative question posed by Professor Stephen Heppell - "It simply isn't the 20th Century Any More, Is It? So Why Would We Teach As Though It Was?" The three questions posed in this voicethread are answered by educators from a number of different countries. It is worth listening to their comments and reading their thoughts.
Voicethread is a useful tool to use in all fields - business and education.

Leaders for Future Schooling

The ULearn conference highlighted the need for our schools to change and showcased many schools and clusters that are using information communication technologies to progress this.The following short video describes how school leaders need to develop the adult learners in their communities. This is the challenge for 21st century leaders. How can we be effective leaders of change through others rather than as the expert in all things...



This video is one of many appearing on EdTalks - a new site featuring short video clips for educators. Check it out at http://edtalks.org/ You can subscribe to these via itunes too!

The 21st century learner

Today I came across this wiki. It provides a good example of resources that are being shared across an ICT cluster in the North Island of New Zealand. There are a number of movies embedded on this site. It is definitely worth monitoring for those of you who are trying to push education forward for the future.

I am currently writing a newsletter for educators on the the topic of student self management. I remain convinced that educators need to let go, to involve students in their own learning. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter go to Think Beyond and subscribe to receive the newsletter. It should be available in the next fortnight.