Today my guest is Nick Johnstone, science teacher and education innovator.
Nick and I go WAY WAY BACK. This photo is from our last day of high school in 1987.
Anyway, these days Nick is Head of Science at St Lukes School in Bundaberg and he’s talking to me tonight about one of his favourite subjects: Information, Communication and Learning Technologies in Science Education. Nick is using Smartboards, mobile phones, wikis, podcasts and blogs in this classes and explains the educational benefits of using the latest technology in the classroom.
If you’re interested in learning more about the use of ICT in education, check out Nick’s site and TPN’s Education Transformation podcast.
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Well I posted a long and pithy comment, but the frigging security code buggered up and now I can’t be bothered to rewrite it! Bloody thing!
Ok, I work in the educational publishing industry, so I see a lot of educational material. The biggest problem with the North American education is the government standards imposed on the system. It’s even worse in the US where they have a “no child left behind” policy, so the teachers are forced to bring the whole class down to the learning rate of the slowest kid in the class. What usually happens is the “gifted” students are bored out of their skulls, the “normal” students don’t bother trying because the material is boring, and the “slow” students don’t get enough one-on-one teacher time.
The government also has specific curriculum goals for each grade, which is good, but they also regulate the method in which the material is presented to the kids. Every teacher much teach the same material in the same way, there isn’t a lot of room in the system for “creative” teaching. If the curriculum states that students must learn facts A, B, and C, the teacher is not allowed to teach fact B before teaching fact A, or fact C before teaching fact B. This is also good in some cases, but not every student in the class can absorb the material in the same way or at the same rates and the teachers are not given a lot of leeway in their teaching methods. The teaching methods are also regulated such that if you go from the east coast to the west coast, you will find that the schools are teaching the exact same things at the exact same times. So if a student happens to move from one state to another state, they can easy pick up where they left off. The government not only regulates how curriculum is presented, but they also regulate the answers the teachers must provide to the students. These answers are helpfully provided in the Teacher’s manuals, right down to the level of “2 + 2 = 4” in case the teacher isn’t sure 2+2 is. Sometimes these answers are even wrong, I’ve seen it.
In order to make sure the teachers are teaching the curriculum in correct manner, the government provides standardized tests that all students must take, and every school must meet the state (or provincial) standards. If the school doesn’t meet the educational “standards” set by the government, it affects the school’s funding and everything else. If the students don’t pass the tests, the teachers are blamed, nevermind the fact that some students can’t absorb the material in the way the teachers are forced to present it, if the student doesn’t pass the teacher is blamed. How are teachers supposed to FORCE students to learn? What usually ends up happening is that the teachers no longer try and teach students how to learn, they simply teach the students the material that’s on the tests and only that material. So students are prepared for these government mandated tests, but they have no knowledge of anything outside that narrow band of learning, they are not longer taught how to learn, they’re taught to absorb and repeat.
So why would anyone want to begin a profession as a teacher? Most of a teacher’s job these days breaks down to reading material out of a Teacher’s manual using a preset curriculum with preset answers, and babysitting. You don’t need a lot of extra education to read out of a book to a bunch of kids… assuming you can read, which is still a huge problem for the southern states in the US.
Another thing, not only are kids not being taught how to learn, but they’re also missing out on things like music, art, and physical education. The curriculum is being parred down to maths, language, and science, nothing else matters. How do you expect kids to learn anything if their brains don’t get exercised?
I said it better the first time I posted. And it’s annoying not to be able to edit my comments after I post them. This and many more whines to follow…