{"id":2147,"date":"2013-02-06T13:36:12","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T17:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2013-09-11T09:46:32","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T14:46:32","slug":"its-the-student-that-creates-the-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/its-the-student-that-creates-the-education\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s the student that creates the education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posts to the UN NGO Thematic Consultation on Education<\/a> <\/em>on how to measure and improve education for the Post2015 UN development goals. \u00a0 My series of three comments focus on the tools a student needs to create their own educations… NOT on measuring the productive value of their educations for business. \u00a0We did that already, and overdid it. \u00a0\u00a0It would do both students and society a great deal more good to look at the basic competencies offered, to see if students are getting the tools they need for exploring the world, like having competence in math, reading, and understanding ‘relationships’.<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n

Productivity is often the assumed purpose of education, but has produced an unsustainable spoiling and depletion of the earth’s resources, now straining all its human and natural ecological systems. \u00a0 So it’s our students who need the tools for guiding their own educations, to take us out of that dilemma created by the poor learning of their parents. <\/em><\/p>\n

Schools and teachers should mainly be judged by their own peer and served communities, only measuring achievement in core competencies, and create a new core competency in “relationships<\/strong>“. <\/em>Understanding relationships is a new essential competency for living in a world thrown into disarray by rapidly changing relationships of all kinds, caused by our prior vast misunderstanding the relationships between ourselves and the earth. <\/em><\/p>\n

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What he needs is the tools not the answers...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

World We Want 2015 –\u00a0Thematic Consultation\u00a0– Education<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Quality of Learning<\/a> – Week 2 Questions<\/em><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1. How should learning outcomes be measured<\/strong> and how can measurement of learning improve <\/strong>education quality?<\/p>\n

2. What would be your\u00a0recommendations <\/strong>to address and improve the quality of education in the post MDG framework?<\/p>\n

________<\/em><\/p>\n

I.\u00a0E-Discussion TWO: Week 2 – Quality of Learning<\/a>
\nJLH Tue, January 15, 2013 at 06:11 pm<\/p>\n

1. Based on my understanding of quality of learning,\u00a0the indicators used to measure learning outcomes <\/strong>should be:<\/p>\n

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  1. … kept simple. \u00a0We should only use unambiguous\u00a0measures giving confidence in what is being measured, like “numeracy”, “literacy”, \u00a0“understanding relationships”, “understanding design”, i.e. rudimentary life skills. <\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The reason for the “measurement craze” is a demand for cost performance data for allocating limited funds. <\/span><\/li>\n
  3. The demand comes from people who don’t understand education as an individual experience, and imagine “measures” as a way to define a “bottom line” for schools, like sales figures for a shoe factory. \u00a0That approach, though, both doesn’t make better students, or even better shoes. <\/span><\/li>\n
  4. They don’t realize the side effects easily waste the resources intended to be conserved. <\/span><\/li>\n
  5. The right approach is to find measures that do not interfere with education, like basic life skills of traditional and new kinds, putting the resources saved into nurturing teacher community development so teachers can teach each other.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    2.\u00a0\u00a0My key recommendation(s)<\/strong> for improving quality of learning in the post-2015 framework are\u2026<\/p>\n

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    1. Develop new core “life learning” curricula and measures such as for “relationship literacy” as a study of “how life works”, to include both how to recognize human\u00a0relationships\u00a0and behaviors of all kinds, as well as the behaviors of the larger environmental and cultural systems we are part of.<\/span><\/li>\n
    2. Use “relationship literacy” to avoid distracting schools, students and teachers with required teaching to meaningless tests, and instead use the resources to help build teacher community relationships. \u00a0When I was a teacher I found teachers so stressed that they never talked to each other, so much of the knowledge base of the teacher community was never shared.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Reply Comment by <\/span>Emma Kiselyova<\/a> <\/a>–\u00a01\/16\/13 1:28P
      \nre: <\/span>      Jessie Lydia Henshaw<\/a>M<\/p>\n

      Well said, I sign it up!<\/p>\n

      Also admiring the skill to adjust your chain of non-trivial ideas to the rigid structure offered for this forum.<\/p>\n

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      II. <\/a>E-Discussion TWO: Week 2 – Quality of Learning<\/a>
      \nBy: JLH Tue, January 22, 2013 at 04.01 pm<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
      \n

      I think what people are trying to bring up in raising the issue of \u201ceducation quality\u201d, is the difference between education as quantified by measures of performance, and education as a uniquely individual experience, for each person, and in every classroom, and in every school and community and culture.<\/h3>\n

      That all-important individuality of all educations is not only “immeasurable”, but as an individual creative process can\u2019t be \u201cstandardized\u201d without spoiling it either. \u00a0 \u00a0So, my view is that we should use measures just for the things that ARE measurable, and recognize the difference between measures and education, as nourishing an individual.\u00a0 That\u2019s the end purpose of education we really care about in the end, and it\u2019s simply wrong to try to define and standardize it.<\/p>\n

      That doesn’t mean you can’t have performance\u00a0measures that help you tell if a school provides a quality environment for the education experience to take place.\u00a0\u00a0 Measures of core competencies are very useful for that, but if that is all a school is paid to deliver you\u2019d get only rather barren educational environments.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0What tests of core competencies measure is the quality of the educational environment.\u00a0\u00a0 Low scoring schools or teachers need more support in building their learning culture.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I think the teachers who deserve bonuses are not the ones with students getting high marks, but the ones their fellow teachers say they have learned the most from, about how to improve their own teaching.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t that settle most of the arguments?<\/p>\n

      In our complex and changing world I think there are new \u201ccore competencies\u201d needed to measure the quality of educational environment, like understanding \u201crelationships and change”. \u00a0 That\u2019s the general subject of environmental science, the developed skill of \u201clearning to read how your world works\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a practice if observing and reasoning, like “math” and “reading” are too, except that for understanding relationships and change \u201cthe book\u201d you learn to read is the world you are part of itself, for understanding the ever changing relationships that make it work, with your friends, your community, cultures, commerce, nature and the universe.<\/p>\n

      That treats “relationships” as a student’s awareness of what’s happening around them, including their ability to recognize how relationships develop to change their own environments. \u00a0 Discussing relationships in that broad sense is also our main use of language too, in that it’s kind of hard to find a sentence that isn’t “about something”.\u00a0 We just don\u2019t normally think of what we talk about as being both actual behaviors occurring in their own natural environment, as well as the cultural and personal values and stories expressed in the words we use. \u00a0 That people rarely think of how language connects with the natural world of relationships, of course, contributes to our not having less competence in dealing with the natural world than we\u2019d like too.<\/p>\n

      So, perhaps a core competence in understanding relationships and change will become seen as essential to “quality education” in every community and classroom. \u00a0 In some communities other competencies might be valued, like music, design, sports and leadership, and they might use tests of mastering the core elements in evaluating the quality of their school or classroom environments.<\/p>\n

      In that way core competencies are not seen as the “education” though, but really as the “fertilizer” for an education.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s the individual chemistry between the curious student and their rich environment that remains the real product. \u00a0 We’ll never find how to measure that.\u00a0\u00a0 As educators we should learn to recognize why that trying to measure education actually demeans education, as an effort to standardize individuality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      III.\u00a0E-Discussion TWO: Week 2 – Quality of Learning<\/a><\/p>\n

      <\/a>by JLH\u00a0January 23, 2013 at 08.58 pm<\/p>\n

      What would be your\u00a0recommendations <\/strong>to address and improve the quality of education in the post MDG framework?<\/h3>\n

      p.s. A little long, and the ecological theory of knowledge may be unfamiliar and not of interest everyone, but it’s important stuff too, not often discussed…<\/em><\/p>\n

      It would be hard to discuss how to promote quality education for such tremendous diverse kinds of education and circumstances around the globe. The \u201cold saw\u201d I recall, and actually experienced myself to my considerable surprise and excitement really, was that at the end of their education a student should be finally \u201cready to learn\u201d. That was the feeling I found unexpectedly coming over me when I finally \u201cwalked off on the vacation from school that would never end\u201d. I had heard of it before, but I really didn\u2019t see it coming as a realization, that after SO many years \u201ctaking tests\u201d I was free to see what the tools I had collected would let me learn for myself.<\/p>\n

      Education is an artificial environment, and can\u2019t teach you what you should do with your life. \u00a0 It should leave you ready to use whatever it was your educational environment had to offer. \u00a0 What a student should do with their life is always theirs to discover, using the tools they learned the rudiments of in the artificial world of the classroom. \u00a0 What a student would like when setting out on their own is the ability to recognize what is happening around them, and to also be both emotionally and intellectually ready to use the tools their education offered to begin \u201clearning the ropes\u201d of independent living.<\/p>\n

      How you\u2019d test that is rather unclear, except to use a word like \u201cthriving\u201d to describe the experience of students who find their education opened a door for them to engage in life. \u00a0 \u00a0You do certainly see concentrations of thriving graduates coming from some schools and not others, but who knows how to measure that. \u00a0 Whether schools produce thriving students is also somewhat self-selecting, making the measure of outcomes a false test of the quality of the school. \u00a0 Families that send their children to \u201cquality schools\u201d tend to be successful themselves, have an \u201ceye for value\u201d and want to immerse their children in communities of other thriving students. \u00a0 So, I think even for the best indicators of education quality everything is still relative to the circumstance.<\/p>\n

      For evaluating quality of education I keep falling back on seeing a school as a community, and the test of a school\u2019s quality it\u2019s recognition for quality within its larger community, \u00a0and directly tests of students at all. \u00a0 What I believe determines whether a school succeeds for its students or not is the *culture of the school*, a combined product of the relationships that develop within the school, and the role the school has in the community of schools it is part of. \u00a0 \u00a0In another response for this discussion topic, I suggested that teacher bonuses should be granted for recognition within the school culture, to teachers that other teachers in the school felt they learned the most from. \u00a0 \u00a0You could use the same sort of test for the quality of one school relative to others in its district, as the school that other schools most respected for doing most for their students given their resources.<\/p>\n

      A web search for “measures of education quality” does not suggest many others are thinking this way. Using a web search for such a broad topic is inherently faulty, perhaps, but does seem to mostly offer examples of how people would a) measure quality, as whether students have learned fill roles defined by society, rather than the student, and warnings against that. Presently the ideal education is represented as being for being productive employees in a difficult economy. A good example of the warnings about that is the paper by Richard G. Bagnall “Performance indicators and outcomes as measures of educational quality: a cautionary critique” http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/0260137940130103<\/a>, Introduced in the abstract with:<\/p>\n

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