Fighting Bullying With Babies NYT 2010/11/08

Hello, back again, this time with an interesting article from the NY Times about a strategy for addressing bullying in schools - by taking babies into classrooms. It began as a parenting education program, but it turned out that by playing with a baby once a week, watching it grow and develop, the children's negative aggression decreased and their kindness and acceptance of others increased. I was reminded of the 'shoes off' schools that Stephen Heppell talks about... it just seems to work.

Kohn, A. (2005) Getting Hit on the Head

Kohn, A. (2005) Getting Hit on the Head Lessons: Justifying Bad Educational Practices as Preparation for More of the Same. Education Week, September 7, 2005.

Don't justify pedagogy (eg standardised tests, setting homework) by saying it's something the kids just need to get used to because they'll be doing it when they are older. Fair enough. 

Freund, Margaret, How Primary Teachers Feel About What They Do

http://tiny.cc/k8qj7

Freund acknowledges that students are social agents too, but seems to both overemphasise and underemphasise the students' conscious ability and will to perform the emotional work of contributing to the classroom environment. In the first case, Freund argues that,

children learn that they should not be too assertive or aggressive, like Susan, a child in Mrs. D's class they will be described as a ‘little madam’, for once a child has been typified as disliked, it is almost impossible to change the typification (King 1984).

However true it may unfortunately be, the fact that labels tend to stick is an unlikely reason for Susan to avoid aggression.  On the other hand, Freund notes an instance in which she argues that students are 'social actors who have a part to play in the way that the social order of the classroom is constructed', and suggests 'being cute' is one of these 'strategies':

Being ‘cute’, is a guaranteed way of getting a response from a teacher and a special response when children use a stereotype of innocence and ‘babyish’ behaviour by acting in ways that appear submissive. Aaron was younger than the rest of his kindergarten class, physically smaller with pudgy, soft baby features, and when he was trying to avoid trouble he would sit passively with his head on the side like a puppy, a picture of innocence and soft baby features .

Aaron's physical appearance here is something he has no control over, and sitting quietly to avoid trouble is more a tautology than a deliberate attempt to get a response from a teacher.

Teaching the Facebook Generation, SMH 27/02/11

An article in the Herald about "Teaching the Facebook Generation" suggests schools are wary about allowing social media to be used during class time. So how are kids supposed to learn about it - and learn with it? Tim Hawkes is still on the Herald's speed dial, and seems to be taking a sensible approach - ''Ineffective policy is to ban use; prohibition has never worked... We want to ensure that each student's electronic footprint is one they are proud of."

Roschelle, J., Pea, R., Hoadley, C., Gordin, D., & Means, B. (2000). Changing how and what children learn in schools with computer-based technologies. Children and computer technology, 10(2), 76-101.

So - the first article I have to read about IT in education is eleven years old. (Perhaps a gentle introduction to the kind of IT I will actually find in education…). It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The study is well aware of its limitations, and is grounded in pedagogical ideals that seem pretty solid in terms of supporting children’s learning, viz
(1) active engagement,
(2) participation in groups,
(3) frequent interaction and feedback, and
(4) connections to real-world contexts
The study then gives examples of how Y2K technology can be used to put these principles into practice. Marco Torres it ain’t. The strength of the article is in identifying the main areas in which IT can be used to support learning, but, with so little idea of what connected technologies will make possible, its suggestions of how to do this are predictably limited.

1. Learning Through Active Engagement
“Students learn best by actively "constructing" knowledge from a combination of experience, interpretation, and structured interactions with peers and teachers”
– for this the study refers to Bransford. Using the “Microcomputer-Based Laboratory,” students can immediately plot graphs from their data. their mate’s graph on the bus the next morning, which jogs a vague memory of that thing they did in Bio the day before. All well and good – in fact, a bit of a jolt to remember a time before Excel – and it increases their learning gain around using graphs by 81%.

2. Learning Through Participation in Groups
Some good justification for this, too -
Social contexts give students the opportunity to successfully carry out more complex skills than they could execute alone. Performing a task with others provides an opportunity not only to imitate what others are doing, but also to discuss the task and make thinking visible. Much learning is about the meaning and correct use of ideas, symbols, and representations. Through informal social conversation and gestures, students and teachers can provide explicit advice, resolve misunderstandings, and ensure mistakes are corrected. In addition, social needs often drive a child's reason for learning. Because a child's social identity is enhanced by participating in a community or by becoming a member of a group, involving students in a social intellectual activity can be a powerful motivator and can lead to better learning than relying on individual desk work.
This seems exactly the kind of thing that web-based learning groups were made for. The study gives the example of Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment, which apparently encourages metacognition, too. It supports ‘structured collaborative knowledge building by having students communicate their ideas and criticisms--in the form of questions, statements, and diagrams-to a shared database classified by different types of thinking. By classifying the discussion in this way, students become more aware of how to organize their growing knowledge.’

3. Learning Through Frequent Interaction and Feedback
Yup, this sounds familiar too – and predates Visible Learning by almost a decade. The graphs example above comes in again here – timely, specific feedback about what students are learning. The article suggests that boilerplate feedback responses sent via email constitute a good example, too. Pass me a bucket.

4. Learning Through Connections to Real-World Contexts
Bransford, again, on transfer. I think the main difficulty here is going to be how to identify projects that primary school children could hook up with – hopefully we’ll get some pointers there.