Key points
Part 1:
- Customisation equivalent to Personalisation, which leads to Transformation, not Improvement.
- Just a Thought: It's about transformation, it's a change... it's not about re-dressing the old issue. How many existing systems or organisations could afford a complete transformation? The courage and the ability to deal with transitions (and issues arise from the change) and the change of mindsets.
- Mass customisation means ... is the capability to change the design or appearance of a product or service in direct response to a customer’s needs – without incurring significant additional costs in the production or delivery of the product/service.
- Just a Thought: It's oxymoron here - to customise to the mass?! It's still one size fit all (but a small group). Look at the streaming of our P6 students in the early years - when it was first introduced - 4 streams catering to the students of different academic/hands-on inclination. However, within each stream, there was a pre-defined set of subjects and assessment modes (eg. coursework, practical exams and the traditional pen-and-paper). To be fair, yes, the nature of the subjects have been customised... teachers have to prepare a wider range of activities for similar topics. However, if we observe how the curriculum within each stream has evolved... yes, as of today, it's towards creating more choices to the learners... henceforth, a larger extent of customisation. But, it's still not customisation.
- Well, in mp3, there's an emphasis on Personalised Learning. Let's wait and hear more about it...
- Personalising learning means meeting more of the educational needs of more of the students more fully than ever before
- 9 Gateways to Personalised Learning
- These 9 gateways are re-organised into 4 groupings (4 deeps):
- 4 deeps according to the document (extracted from "Personalised Learning", published by SSAT):
Deep learning
The first ‘deep’ is deep learning. Most schools recognise that enabling students to perform well in exams is only a part of their wider educational purpose. Schools are increasingly seeking to support the development of their students as learners equipped for the 21st century world in which being a lifelong learner will be paramount. ‘Deep learning’ is best developed through the first three gateways of the personalising learning agenda: student voice, assessment for learning and learning to learn. The work of the D and R networks in these key gateways is to assess how next practice in these areas can facilitate deep learning.
Deep experience
The second ‘deep’ is deep experience. It is clear from our journey that student engagement is the key to better relationships between staff and students and is a prerequisite for the development of good learners who posses independence, responsibility, confidence and maturity. The answer to the question of how to engage students seems to lie in the gateways of curriculum and new technologies. The hub schools and their networks can sum up their work in these areas as discovering the best ways to engage students in a curriculum that is meaningful to them which makes the best possible use of the technology available.
Deep support
The next step in our journey is to create networks around the remaining areas of the personalising learning agenda. Schools feel that a new level of support is needed for students, staff and schools if personalising learning is to become a reality. The support required goes beyond that which has traditionally been provided by advice and guidance and mentoring and coaching. Both of these gateways have a role to play but ‘deep support’ goes beyond this and requires us to re-assess the way we support people in our schools. It undoubtedly will involve working in federations and will draw extensively upon the new technologies.
Deep leadership
At the start of our journey we were very clear in our belief that leadership underpinned all of the gateways. However, the journey has revealed that a new type of leadership is needed if personalising learning is to be successfully resourced and implemented in a school. To this end the fourth network will focus on deep leadership of the sort that will enable transformation of schools.
Prof Hangreaves went on to share
- the 20 re-configurations for system re-design: Institutional reconfigurations: 10; Role reconfigurations: 5; Leadership reconfigurations: 5
- how 2 schools have adapted the Deeps model in the school organisation
Part 2:
It was suggested that Everything about schooling can potentially be co-constructed. This will mean the emphasis and change... with students as...
- Lesson observers
- Researchers
- Learning investigators
- Lesson designers
- co-Innovators
- Continual Professional Development presenters
- Knowledge transfer
It has also been suggested that students attach to school to observe/learn practices and idnetify positive points that teachers can improve their learning experiences through a presentation to teachers.
Some thoughts: The new role suggested for students require a mindset change to both teachers and students, and ground rules play a very critical role here, for the change to achieve its objective.
- Well, if post this suggestion to some younger and more confident colleagues, they would probably welcome this with a "why not?" without a second thought. Yes, isn't this the right attitude to adopt, especially if we claim to be customer-orientated? Let's hear from the learners so that we could design the kind of learning experience that they learn best? So, this would be a school of thought...
- The more experience and senior colleagues would probably feel challenged! What would the young ones, without the necessary content knowledge/skill, able to tell what's good and what's no good?! Oh yes, it's like opening up a can of worms - to invite undesireable criticism and questions. The teachers' authority to be questioned? Where's the teachers' pride when he/she has to listen to what the student on how the lesson should be delivered! Ah! Here, the teacher's ego being challenged, I think still something quite unacceptable in the oriental/asian world.
- I've no doubt in the good rationale behind, to engage the learners to design something for themselves - it's going to be highly customised to the kind of learners we have, customised to the way they learn (which could be very different from us!). Nevertheless, we also need to bear in mind the learner's maturity and being able to objectively put their viewpoints or ideas across, in a tactful manner, with respect. This is, something which I felt is highly lacking among our youngsters!
For both teachers and students to benefit from such an exercise, I personally feel that it is necessary to effect and manage the change, which includes cultivating the appropriate attitude to both, and getting them to understand the rationale behind the whole exercise. Oh yes, saying is always easier than doing.
How about engaging parents? Yes, schools have started engaging parents long time ago, through the Parent Support Group, in particular. Nevertheless, most of the time, it's limited to services that schools can tap on parents - from supporting the lesson (eg. parent-aide in primary classroom), excursions (eg. chaperons to field trips), and providing expertise advise/sharing (eg. speaking at the Assembly). How many teachers have actually invited parents to sit in a class to provide feedback to the lesson? I doubt there's any! Yes, no matter what, I think it's the ground that the teacher guards very carefully - yes, no intruders, please! Well, will there be a day when parents also partake in lesson observation??? Oops! Is that a bit too much???
Part 3:
Professor Hangreaves also reminded us about the change in learners' profile - which is not new - when then the terms Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants were introduced by Marc Prenskey a few years ago. Our students are increasing IT savvy and they are experts in social networking and they are more adept at interactive adn collaborative platforms. But he further alerted us of the changing profile of the parents, and even teachers! The way our teachers and the parents were educated... the environment they immersed in. The NET Generation (i.e. Generation Y) are under 35... which indeed, more and more of the teaching force belong to this generation.
Some thoughts: It's not just the profile of the learners changes. That includes stakeholders (parents, community-at-large), teachers and administers! We are at the crossroad now. We are at the transition stage now...
- The only group that has gone through the complete change is Students!
- For parents, more and more belong to the Net Generation. They way they view learning experiences would be different - at least, the way they bring up their children would be pretty different from our generation!
- As of the teaching staff, including the school management, it's currently in the transition stage - oops! does that mean we would not be able to see eye to eye on how to get things done? Hm... Does that also mean that these 2 groups of people - the Digital natives and the "non-DN" would have different sets of values? Oops! But who's in-charge? To-date, most of the people in the management still belong to the non-DN group. Do we foresee any problem? By the time the entire teaching force has gone through a complete change - would the system be ready? Hm... it's the people to shape and fit into the mould of the system or the system to be re-shaped to suit the 'new' generation?
Click HERE to read more:
- Background to Personalised Learning (pdf)
- Personalised Learning System Redesign (pdf; presentation, 2008)
- Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott
Some popular sites of youngsters:
- Fanfiction.net: http://www.fanfiction.net/
- Dbass.org: http://dbass.org/
- Ourstage.com: http://www.ourstage.com/home
- Mash-up Dashboard: http://www.programmableweb.com/mashups
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