Sunday 25 November 2007

Learning, Teaching, Leading:Best Evidence Synthesis for School-wide Improvement.

We were privileged to attend a preview of the BES for School-wide Improvement last Friday at the Faculty of Education. Thanks to the work of authors Professor Viviane Robinson, Dr Margie Hohepa & Claire Lloyd, Professor Helen Timperley, Aaron Wilson and Heather Barrar, Dr Graeme Aitken and Dr Claire Sinnema.


As introduced by Viviane Robinson, simply put the challenge is... "How to teach diverse students in the same class?" The variance in achievement scores for New Zealand as reported OECD (2001) Knowledge and skills for life reflects the challenge for New Zealand education in terms of providing high quality and high equity outcomes for diverse learners.

Some key messages from the BES preview included...
The synthesis is not a collation of evidence but rather it explores a range of evidence and explains why some strategies seem to work better than others. It is also focussed on both cultural and social outcomes and explains the evidence about what works for diverse learners, through a range of outcomes. As knowledge building is iterative so too is the synthesis, which will be redone. The IBES is not directly to do with best practice but rather a resource for best practice. As such it is recommended that it is referenced and contextualized within individual schools. Professional judgment is still needed along with professional inquiry - asking questions about the relationship between teaching and student outcomes. As such the quality should not be judged by competing claims but rather the validity of the claim (Viviane Robinson).

Key findings from Dr Graeme Aitken and Dr Claire Sinnema in Social Sciences explored what we need to know about promoting student learning and highlighted what they had learnt about what it means to be evidence informed as teachers. Attitudes towards evidence should include an inquiry stance, an openness to ideas from all sources rather than being bound by context ( because a strategy might be successful in one context doesn't mean it will be in another). They also identified four 'causal mechanisms' that teachers can use to inform their inquiry into the relationships between teaching and learning;
  • Making connections to students' lives
  • Aligning experience to important outcomes
  • Developing and sustaining a learning community
  • Designing learning expeiences that interest learners
Also the work by Helen Timperley, Aaron Wilson & Heather Barrar on "What We Need to Know About Promoting Teacher Learning" was very relevant in terms of my work and the outcomes for the ICT PD cluster programme of professional learning for teachers. As well as sharing their "teacher inquiry and knowlege -building cycle to promote valued student outcomes" (will be included in the BES ) they also highlighted the following as effective contexts for promoting teacher learning.
  • Time and frequency
  • External expertise
  • Prevailing discourses are challenged
  • Not necessarily school based
  • Participation in community of practice
  • Active School Leadership
Thanks again to the team for sharing so much of their work with us. Not sure when the exact publication date is however the BES publications can be downloaded from here

Publications Download Link for BES (Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis)

Wednesday 14 November 2007

Te Ara Auckland Region Goes Live!







TeAra.govt.nz is New Zealand’s award-winning online encyclopedia. A work in progress, it is packed with stories, sights and sounds. So far there are almost 350 entries with over 12,000 resources - photos, cartoons, film clips, graphs and interactive devices.

Te Ara will ultimately be a complete encyclopedia of New Zealand. Three themes have been finished - ‘The New Zealanders’, ‘Earth, Sea and Sky’, and ‘The Bush’.

Nine of an eventual 22 regional entries for the highly successful ‘Places’ theme have been completed. The latest focuses on Auckland and explores the history, land forms, people and events that have shaped our largest city.

‘Auckland’ goes live on Thursday 6 December. Teachers are invited to attend the following presentation.

Where: Auditorium, Auckland War Memorial Museum
When: 4.00pm – 4.45pm, Thursday 6 December

The presentation will highlight the many classroom uses for Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Steve Watters, an historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, will also guide teachers through NZHistory.net.nz, the online resource that instantly brings New Zealand history to life. Rich and vibrant, NZHistory.net.nz is New Zealand’s foremost site for accessing online information about New Zealand history.

Updated daily via ‘Today in History’ this living resource showcases themes in New Zealand history based on three broad categories:
• Culture and society
• Politics and government
• War and society

Steve will talk you through the many features of NZHistory.net.nz highlighting the ‘Classroom’ and ‘Hands on History’ sections which provide practical resource material, classroom ideas, and activities for teachers and historians alike.

Seats are limited.
Please RSVP:

Catherine Hobbs, Communications, catherine.hobbs@mch.govt.nz, 04-496-6176

Sunday 4 November 2007

uLearn Presenters Materials

I have had some requests about resources from the uLearn conference last month so have posted links here for you. If you attended and have any other recommendations please email through to me and I will post on the cluster wiki page.

Keynotes and presenters material from uLearn 07 can be downloaded here.
To access these you will need to be logged in and have registered to attend the conference. If you did not attend and want to access these resources contact me or ask someone from your school who was at the conference.

Ewan McIntosh Keynote
A video of Ewan's opening Keynote from the conference, including presentation slides, is available for public viewing here.

Helen Baxter - Link to Helen's Mind Map from her Keynote

Derek Wenmoth challenged us to participate in what he called the "conference backchat"... discussions and responses to the conference themes. Here are some posts in response to the conference that have challenged my thinking.

From Tangled up in Purple -
"Thinking about the spaces we exist in"

From Educating the Dragon
- Comment and opinion in response to Ewan's Keynote
Ewan’s message rocks

Ewan’s message rocks- Are you sure about that?

From Ewan McIntosh's Blog - A link to uLearn Posts

...and some fun stuff.
Cup stacking world record (referenced in Ewan's Keynote)

Tripod on Gaming