http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrdarkroom/4265886842/

Frank, my boss, likes to talk about three types of space in school – physical space, virtual space and teacher headspace. The first two only get used well when the third is open to good practice, seeing things differently and willing to re-imagine what could be.

I’ve been in leadership since 2003 but it has mainly been on what I think is the first rung – as a coordinator who had release time from my own classroom responsibilities to lead out in the area of learning technologies. Since July last year, I’ve been on the next rung as an Assistant Principal, and it is only now as I’m starting a new school year with this school and this group of colleagues that I’m really realising the difference it makes when you have different broader responsibilities without the responsibility of one specific group of students.

As a coordinator, it was easy to lead by example. “I’ve set this up in my classroom and it works this way.” I had classroom credibility but was always short on time to do as much as is needed for the whole school big picture. Now I have the time and scope in my new experience but I have no classroom presence to draw on and to demonstrate with.

A quick example from Wednesday. I led a presentation on Inquiry Learning, knowing that at a large school just over a year old, there would be colleagues with a wide variety of experiences and perspectives on the topic. At Lockleys North, we had a huge focus on inquiry learning and I have a reasonable amount of experience with the process, planning and implementation of learning in this vein. I’ve had the privilege of high level training and PD – three sessions with Kath Murdoch, two times listening to both Mark Treadwell and John Hattie and been to Melbourne to spend three days with Jay McTighe. I’ve designed units of work with my former Upper Primary colleagues over the past four years and sat in on the planning of many others in that time. I have a sizeable digital resource library of articles, videos, powerpoints and templates. I’ve even been on the journey from back when I was teaching at Flagstaff Hill Primary in the nineties and getting into Resource Based Learning in a major way just as the internet was becoming a viable thing in South Australian schools. I dabbled and wrote webquests, then moved onto Problem Based Learning in my new role as a coordinator at Lockleys North when I started in 2003. So I’ve done heaps.

But now it is all in my head. I mean it was in my head before too but I could show Inquiry Learning as an extension of my own practice. As an AP, I’m the person spouting what the classroom teachers should be doing, becoming a quasi-consultant – talking the talk but the walk is back in the immediate past. I worry that I may become one of those people from the department who lose touch with what really happens in the classroom and a result command very little respect without ever really realising that their words are ignored at best.

I’m sure that if you are a school leader, you know what I’m talking about. So, I’m keen for any feedback here.

How did you make that transition from leading classroom practitioner to leadership?

How did you hang on that credibility that is vital for effective leadership?

I read this post from Chris Betcher back in May, and it stuck in my brain like a prickle in my sock. I’d heard the following sentiments quite a few times before in various blogs all over the web.

I’m so tired of having the integration of technology into learning overlooked because it’s “too hard”. As educators – actual professional educators, who actually go into classrooms every day and teach for a living – we do NOT have the luxury of choosing whether we should be integrating technology, or whether we want to learn more about it, or whether we think it’s relevant to the learning process.  It is, it’s part of the job and if people don’t think so, then they ought to be getting a copy of the Saturday paper and looking for a something else to do where they CAN be selective about what part of the job they are willing to take seriously without it impacting on our future generations.

There was a lot of “Here, here, well said” comments and it didn’t sit well with me. So I added my own counter-rant in the comments section where I felt I was defending my much maligned less tech-savvy colleagues. I ended my rebuttal with the following:

Education is always in constant flux and teachers spend their whole careers in a state of unlearning and re-learning. I know that for every thing I can do well in terms of tech integration with students, there are other teachers with other skills in other areas outdoing me and no one really has the moral high ground.

I got a bit of pushback from a fellow commenter and sought to clarify my thoughts further:

I suppose what provoked my response is that I’ve read posts like Chris’s all over the web, lamenting those incompetents who don’t “get it” and I don’t think it achieves much more than getting a round of “hear, hears” and a tone of self-righteousness in the comments. Teaching is complex and becoming increasingly more so, and every facet deserves as much focus for our students’ futures as technology use for learning. Is everyone here on top of every aspect of their teaching practice? Or will some at least admit that, like myself, there are aspects of our job we are not top of totally, components that are works in progress and parts that we find harder to engage with. Think of those aspects and at least recognise the fact that technology use for learning does not come easily for everyone – and that does immediately label them as being less than worthy educators.

Then Chris replied in a manner that finally turned the switch on in my brain, and I could finally see his post in a different, less oppositional light.

I think you sum it up in your last paragraph when you say “Education is always in constant flux and teachers spend their whole careers in a state of unlearning and re-learning.”  For those teachers who accept this state of flux, who willingly learn and unlearn and relearn, I don’t think anyone would criticise those efforts. You’re absolutely correct in saying that there are MANY aspects of the classroom competing for our attention: staying up to date with current developments in literacy and numeracy, brain theory, learning theory, etc, not to mention staying abreast of information about allergies, child safety legislation, OH&S, etc, etc… teaching is a busy job, there’s no argument about that.

My beef is with those that have simply given up, or refuse to do the learning, unlearning and relearning.  It’s not really about technology per se, although I think that the requirement to integrate technology is a trigger that brings these attitudes to the surface.  The real issue is that some teachers – who are supposed to be learning professionals – have forgotten what it means to learn, unlearn and relearn.

Chris is dead right of course. Take the technology focus out of the discussion and what is clear that educators need to have a different mindset to be successful and relevant to their students. They must be in a constant state of unlearning and relearning, ready to challenge their established practice, looking for where to go to next, and adopting the very habits we want in our students.

I then read a powerful post from Dean Groom. As can happen on occasion, he was not totally happy with what he had written and he pulled the post from his blog. But it still came through my RSS reader and when I asked him about it, he replied that I was free to remix it as I saw fit. I’ll share a few key parts that helped me to understand the unlearning and relearning process that I do see many teachers still struggling with. And it does prove Chris’s point because technology tends to show up teachers’ learning dispositions clearly. Dean’s post was about teachers’ learning habits.

I said teachers are engineers and inventors – these are two critical skills of this decade, as trying to design learning episodes that create innovative pedagogy is a little like flying the Millennium Falcon. Nothing quite works all the time and there’s a total sense of urgency about the whole affair with a high possibility of disaster.

The manual is scattered all over the internet in videos, blogs, wikis and people. Most people lack the social keys to decode this, the literacies needed to find it and won’t use their downtime for what they see as work-related actions.

The time allocated to formal workplace development is massively insufficient, and usually lacks any innovation, invention or re-engineering of the experience.

I’ve  seen this when I conduct PD for teachers. Some only need a point in the general direction and others want you to sit side by side with them as they work out how to sign up to a new online account. It is ironic that I get requests for PD on tools that I’ve worked out for myself or by using the “scattered manual” that Dean refers to. That’s the unlearning and relearning at work there. Teachers who teach their students lock step or via spoonfeeding expect that is how their own learning should work too. I do like the idea of doing the PD as a group where I’ll start things off but the idea is to work things out by spinning things off with your neighbours and having an exploratory and playful disposition. I did that last week when I introduced delicious to my new staff (and yes, there are probably hundreds of teachers out there who have never heard of social bookmarking or how it is one tech tool that empowers teachers to learn on their own with others.

Dean also says:

There is a cultural expectation that has been created by 1990s idea of the computer as a ‘tutor’. This gives rise to the idea novices are there to learn ‘how to use’ from an expert. There is an assumptions there will be step by step instructions, that someone will read them to you, that you will attempt to follow and if you don’t succeed, someone will swoop down and move you along. At some point, you will get to decide if you want to use the tool and information in the future. We can’t really call this competency based training, as there is no assessment and therefore no external reward for effort. At best we call it professional development hours, another symptom that teachers are not intrinsically life-long learners, but need a push factor.

I’ve heard that one too. “Are you doing some ICT PD, Graham, because I need to get some more hours?” Not the best indication of an intrinsic life-long learner but the phrase “life long learning” appears in nearly every school vision statement. And it’s an important thing to have there too. Because students will need those skills – but will they get them from a classroom where the person in charge can only talk the talk?

Dean summarises perfectly (to my mind):

A key idea in downtimer learning theory is that the rewards are almost always intrinsic, fuelled by some external motivation. The product of this is the network effect, where social-encoding of knowledge, essential resources and processes become unintelligible to anyone without sufficient keys to access it externally.

So, technology is important because in today’s world it is the enabler of learning unfettered by control. When the learner has that freedom, they work things out on their own or with others but they are not dependent on others to provide them with the resolution. With that technology in most people’s pocket or purse, there is no reason other than ignorance (unintended or willful) for anyone in the learning game to not be actively in charge of their own learning. And then starting to work out how they ensure that their students have the same options for their own learning within their classrooms.

Post update:

I thought that Dean had written another post illustrating the point I’m trying to make here, but I was wrong. He had referenced another post written by Sarah Thorneycroft and he graciously pointed me back there. Read that for a clarifying example.

The summary for the day went as follows:

This workshop will focus on the number strand, providing a conceptual overview to the processes and knowledge that constitute numeration and in turn underpin computation. Practical activities will focus on the development of concepts and processes and the sequences of development that best produce understanding and proficiency. As well as being important in themselves, these ideas are crucial to building number sense and an ability to solve problems and communicate with and abut mathematics.

George pointed out that his work has been influenced by the work of Jeremy Kilpatrick, referring to his book “Adding It Up“.

He firstly posed to us the question, “What is subtraction?” We discussed this in our groups coming up with phrases like “taking away”, the “difference”, and even “minus”. George pointed out that we don’t tell enough stories about Mathematics. All through his morning session he kept making reference to historical events and famous mathematicians, pointing out that it all adds context to what the students are learning. My colleagues and I kept smiling at all the common mentions that connected to the documentary “The Story Of One” we had been watching with our classes over the past week or two. He also pointed that the language we use with the Mathematics classroom matters as well. If we use the terms “plus” and “minus” then we are leading kids away from mathematical concepts. This also means no more references to the traditional four operations – the Aust’n Curriculum now talks about additive thinking and multiplicative thinking and that we need more people to get to the higher level of mathematics. George also pointed out that division is the easiest operation of all but possibly the worst taught…

He took us through all of the concepts he believed should be taught from the Foundation stage (known as Reception in South Australia, but Prep in other states) through the junior primary years. Number and Algebra should take up 60% of what is taught during Mathematics lessons as a solid base in number is key to success in other areas like Geometry, Probability and Statistics. Numeration is understanding the numbers we work with and their properties. George also pointed how to prepare effectively for NAPLAN tests. He didn’t advocate “teaching to the test” but emphasised that our students need to know the concepts that are being tested. Firstly, take the bubbles off the questions and get students to work only on the problem. Don’t just get last year’s question and give that to your class but ensure that you also provide more than the one example. He wisely pointed that only a very few students can get a concept from one example. Finally, put up six bubbles including one for “I don’t know” and “I got a different answer” as well as the 4 regular options. The point is not to get the right answer but to find out what the student is thinking.

When building the foundations, we start with materials in order to see patterns, before introduction to symbols.What turned so many people off from mathematics is being “symbol-minded” in our teaching. An essential skill for students is being able to see amounts without counting – known as subitising. What is a number? We always start with digits 0 to 9, using the ten frame pattern as a useful tool.

http://mathwire.com/strategies/matspv.html

George also emphasises thinking and representing numbers in doubles to aid in subitising. This looks like this:

Not like this:

This arrangement forces the student to count each counter individually and does not develop the ability to subitise, while the upper frame clearly shows two equal amounts of four, that can be doubled to eight. Even if it were seven, it could be seen as two amounts of three then add the one remaining which is still embedding a greater sense of number in the student. We also spent quite a lot of time on place value, using popstick bundles and popsticks that students could easily manipulate and “rename” from tens to ones, and back again. He talked us through the correct processes for addition, subtraction and pointed out the phrase “borrowing” or “converting” was just fuel for confusing students – keep it simple and “re-name”.

All through the day, he kept referring to the four strands coming from the Jeremy Kilpatrick text. Mathematics has four stage for students to develop in order – (i) conceptual understanding, (ii) fluency, (iii) problem solving and (iv) reasoning. Now, I’ve only scratched the surface of the day but I’m sure as I delve into his book “Teaching Primary Mathematics“, more of what was covered will come to light. In the afternoon, he covered place value for large numbers and linking numeration to computation. A couple of the remnants that surface from my brain include:

Don’t teach rounding off until students can handle 4 digit numbers.
Short division = shortcut to disaster division!

George Booker recommends playing lots of number games to develop fluency, many of them with dice and simple charts.He also showed us through his own CD-ROM games which were developed over five years ago. Now I can never be sure what kids will find engaging, especially as my own sons find some very bizarre and seemingly simplistic games on the web that they find enthralling but gaming graphics and game design moves pretty fast. Some of the games reminded me of animated clip art, and I found myself wondering if George wouldn’t benefit from a conversation or ten with Dean Groom to marry the essential maths content to something kids would recognise in 2011 as being game-like. Now that would be something to use in your 1 to 1 classroom!

As we move from our SACSA Maths curriculum (which he posited could not have been written by mathematicians) George mentioned that he was very pleased with Australian Curriculum and things that have been included for the first time explicitly like rounding off decimal numbers. With that recommendation, our staff have the blueprint now to see how mathematical concepts should develop throughout the primary years, a sound “bible” to refer to and a common pathway to reform our own practice effectively.

I chose to show the first seven minutes of Dean Shareski’s opening keynote video for the K12 Online Conference, which has stoked the fires of inquiring debate in a number of places across the web. I will chat to a few colleagues tomorrow and see what they got out of it. My worry is that not that they won’t see value in this form of sharing, but that they will see it as something beyond them, beyond what time will allow for them, beyond what their capabilities are as an online navigator.

What I struggle with as well is this notion of self-directed learning as a professional. I believe that participation in networked learning is ideally suited for this – tools like Twitter are subverted for educational sharing. But Twitter is mainly about sharing stuff that other people have created or found, and Delicious is the same. Neither ask the participant to put themselves “out there” like writing a blog post or adding content to a wiki or even posting a reply to a forum. So, why is that so many teachers find the use of social media for sharing to be such a step that they are unwilling to take? I find it hard to imagine their reluctance and need to be shown because I (like the majority of edubloggers I assume) have learnt how to use and manipulate social media through active participation. Workshops and PD sessions on how to use Google Reader and Delicious seem to run counter to the whole point of self directed learning through technology.

Also I feel that for a practice to stick, to become habitual, the desire to explore further must come from within. Maybe some teachers will never grasp the concept of online networked learning for their own professional improvement … but I have at least raised their awareness of what it is out there if they choose to look beyond their own self imposed boundaries.

There is less tolerance for educators who do not believe it is their responsibility to move their teaching out of the past. Those stuck in the past… those who are not developing their own personal learning networks… those not taking ownership for their learning… are doing a great disservice to our students and themselves. In the words of leadership expert Jim Collins, these are the people that those who care about student success may want to advise to just get off the bus.

Not that I disagree with the sentiments but its tone is hardly encouraging to educators who are still tentative in their overall use of technology. What was that old saying about honey and vinegar?

Especially when teaching has become an increasingly complex job. I like to use the metaphor of a juggler with my colleagues, recognising that they already have a number of important balls in the air that they need to keep in motion. To take on a new ball, something needs to be done about the ones already airborne – either by taking one out of action or lessening the impact if it gets dropped.

Adapted from this image - http://www.flickr.com/photos/shawnzlea/137209564/

Telling my colleagues they shouldn’t be in the job just because their technology ball isn’t whizzing around at the same intensity as the others is not fair and is as tunnel visioned as those who would judge teacher’s prowess on their students’ test scores.

Dear colleagues,

School Closure Day requirements:
Just to clarify from last night, you will receive your A2 sheet and marker  in your pigeonhole this afternoon. Your task is to reflect on and write in dot points about an aspect of your classroom practice that reflects
contemporary learning. Use the ISTE Standards to help hone your thoughts:
-
1.         Creativity and Innovation
2.         Communication and Collaboration
3.         Research and Information Fluency
4.         Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5.         Digital Citizenship
6.         Technology Operations and Concepts
Think of something you have worked on that would fit into these categories, write it up on the A2 sheet with the view that you will present it to a group of colleagues speaking for no more than 5 minutes.
You will present it once more to more colleagues from other groups as well.
I know that this can be nerve-wracking for many of us but consider the following: Research shows that some of the most powerful learning occurs when colleagues share what they do (hence the emphasis on Professional Learning Communities). We also have a duty to our students and colleagues to de-privatise our practice – as we all build on each other’s work as students move through the school.
This is not an exercise in big-noting or critiquing.

Well, the resulting sessions were excellent. Ann had shuffled the staff into groups of 5 with a 5 minute allocation for each person to speak to their poster. Once that had happened, each group broke apart to re-present their poster, this time for 10 minutes to interested staff members from the other groups. So, in the space of an hour, I personally heard how a Year 3 teacher was using interactive material on netbooks with her class, how a Year 5/6 teacher was fostering a learning community within her classroom, a Year 5 teacher who used a key YouTube video to cement a key inquiry concept, an inspiring story of a Year 3 teacher new to our school this year who had gone in his words from “Lost In Space” to “Star Trek” in his evolving use of the same netbooks, a junior primary teacher who was seeking to improve her IWB skills, our Assistant Principal who was using a literacy website with her Reception students as well as presenting my own on the use of delicious tagged bundles of sites for our Inquiry unit as well as the use of YouTube videos to show varying viewpoints on the topic of the Murray River / Lower Lakes. I’ve blogged about this before – but as is often the case, most of my colleagues don’t read this blog so this was the first they knew about my strategies.

It was an awesome array of contemporary practice at our school and showed that although the progress is all at differing stages and speeds, everyone is moving forward and committed to ensuring that our practice provides the best learning for our students. My next job is inform the parents booked in for my ICT Focus evening tomorrow night.

Terminology:
Summative = assessment of learning
Formative = assessment for learning (can be broken into for = teacher via learning intentions, and as= student, self assessment) Toni sees this as an artificial division, as teachers and students are a symbiotic relationship.

“Assessment for learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.”
(Assessment Reform Group 2002)

Why AfL?
Use of AfL strategies leads to:

• improved student achievement
• greater engagement and motivation and responsibility for their own learning on the part of students

http://assessmentforlearning.edu.au

Learning intentions are an obvious sharing with the students of what they will be learning. This is followed by the success criteria which tells the students whether they have learned.

What happens to your learning if you don’t know what you’re expected to learn OR whether you’ve learnt it?

Sharing learning intentions with your students:

• expressed in terms of skills, knowledge and understanding
• learn, not do
• separate the learning from the context
• linked to the “big picture”

In practice, when do you share your learning intentions?

Sharing success criteria:

• makes student assessment explicit
• different forms, including rubrics
• students become aware of work quality and the quality to which they aspire

The learning intention is separate from the task, but defines the purpose of the task. It is important not to have too many success criteria. Hattie points out that feedback is one of the most important aspect for student improvement – so use the success criteria to target that feedback. (Research says that oral feedback is more powerful and immediate than written.) Articulate everything and the reasons why you are doing things – the students are the conduit to their parents and informing them of why they are doing the work they are doing.

Keep collecting samples of work – at various levels – so that you have examples to draw on to outline your expectations. What makes this a good narrative? What needs to be improved for this to become a good narrative?
This becomes designing the success criteria with your students.
Don’t design rubrics on your own – the best ones are always designed collaboratively.

• clearly expressed and relevant skills, knowledge and understanding
• an appropriate number of criteria for your year level
• mainly qualitative differences are identified in the descriptors (rather than quantitative)
• clear descriptions of all levels for student self assessment – accessible for all, needs to be unpacked in class (without this accessibility, it loses its ability to be a formative tool)
• for summative assessment, weighting of criteria needs to be included to reflect importance
• where possible, rubric is accompanied by models and work samples
• when used for formative, not used for “grades” and “levels”

Effective Teacher Feedback
Key ideas are that it must relate directly to the success criteria, identifies what has been done and and where improvement can be made, offers advice on how to improve that achievement, and can occur both during and after an assessment, can be oral or written  and allows time for students to act on the feedback.
How do you differentiate the success criteria to cater for personalisation of learning, even though the learning intention stays the same?

Plenty of food for thought here – Toni’s work helps educators to inform their practice and ensure that effective assessment is informing student learning.

Robert Branson looked at the paradigms associated with education, wrote paper called “The Upper Limit”, pointed out that testing was about recall. Books were a finite resource so libraries were used to maximise this resource.

Big difference between knowing and understanding.

Internet dramatically lowers the cost yet again of knowledge – will mature in about 14 years (2020). Books were part of a resource scarce-environment, so we moved into teaching thematically which makes the copy / paste methods of “knowing stuff” very accessible and problematic in the internet era, as information is now anything, anywhere and anytime. What do we actually need to know? Curriculum is full of “stuff to be learnt”. Internet offers new efficiencies and gains – it’s now not about our teaching, but their learning. Kids need to leave us as lifelong learners – but one mistake we make is that we presume kids know how to listen and how to think.

Massive shift from the majority service sector to the Creative sector.

Thinking ~ we don’t spend much time being logical, sensible and rational. We deal with people every day in the classroom so it is important to know that everyone has a unique world view. What concepts do we need kids to understand?  In NZ, the concept of concepts of subjects were kept (backlash from parents) and competencies were open for all NZ teachers to contribute their own ideas (ownership).

Concept > Learning Intention > Contexts > Content > Sustainability.

Personalised learning is all about who’s in front of you. How do we get the data to follow the student? NZ uses a LMS (3 vendor options for NZ schools) for 24/7 access via a login and access to updated student data, reducing the need for teacher written reports. Pointed out that with today’s swing back to high stakes testing there seems to be a belief that if something can’t be assessed, it doesn’t tend to be valued in schools. However, we need to explicitly teach CONCEPTS, not focus solely on the content.

The central vision statement in the NZ curriculum is “confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners”.

Inquiry Learning – Mark demonstrated how inquiry is broken into a developmental process appropriate to specific age levels. He gave an example of kindergartens using mobile phones to pixt images to their profile on the LMS, the parents then get a txt message to inform them that their child’s profile has been updated. Interestingly, Mark’s model does not have the students searching the internet as teachers handpick sites for student use, in order to build up critical literacy, teachers need to review pre-chosen resources.

Final points re: inquiry according to Mark:

• the process is the most important component
• keep building on throughout the years in school
• very social process, technological process
• be aware of the developmental process of the kids – if you are running around too much, then what you are doing isn’t really working.

FOOTNOTE: After stirring the pot with a few staff members re: the limited future of the book, I then bought my own copy of “Whatever” from Mark. Yeah, yeah, call me a hypocrite. I’ve been called worse.

Anyway, we were sufficiently impressed by Mark’s work and both Ann and I agreed that his message was one that all of our teachers needed to hear. The phrase 21st Century Learning gets bandied around a lot in education circles but Mark Treadwell’s overall synthesis in both his presentation and book is the most complete and defined that I’ve come across. So, Ann asked him at the end of his session when he was next due through our neck of the woods and secured his services for a staff PD day. That happens next Monday in conjunction with three other schools. I’ve been reading a few of the chapters from his book in preparation and phrased up a number of focus questions for our staff to consider and respond to during the day.

• What are signs in our work life that the Internet Paradigm is having an effect ?
• What are some practices in our schools that are decreasing in value because of the internet?
• What challenges does all of this present to our school?
• What personal challenges does all of this present to you?

Mark Treadwell has a number of comprehensive websites with a lot of supporting materials for his book. I know he’s not the only visionary promoting and pushing for meaningful change to the education system (although he did mention that he despairs at the prospect of change at the university level where practices are even more entrenched than in primary and secondary schools) but if we are looking for relevant possible courses for action here in South Australia, then the New Zealand experience is far closer to us in school culture and values than other national change initiatives. If we are to believe those nation education ranking systems that regularly place Finland in the number one spot, then us Aussies in fifth spot are better to take our lead from the nearest competitor in fourth spot, the near neighbours in NZ rather than take advice from someone like Joel Klein from another country back in about twelfth spot.

In order to earn the privilege of an extra week off in the face of a public already convinced that teachers got too many holidays, the government invented some hoops for its teachers to jump through. This became known as the “37 and a 1/2 hours requirement” where accredited professional training and development to the minimum of 37 and a half hours had to be recorded and presented to the principal for verification before signing off early for the summer. The 37 and a 1/2 hours had to be done out of school hours in a teacher’s own time so conferences and training done within the school day could not count. Teachers who failed to meet this requirement had to report for duty in what was formerly the last week of the year, sometimes to the local district office if the principal had their hours and had commenced their break!

Principals were also expected to ensure accountability in this system and asked to see certificates of attendance so that they in turn could not be accused of not playing this new game. This varied from school to school in its stringency. At my wife’s school when this was introduced, only training aligned to the school’s identified priorities could be counted – too bad if you had an interest or membership of a professional organisation that fell outside this parameter. On the other hand, I actually read the book “Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People” and had it counted by my then principal as official PD good for about 15 hours. Oh, and he lent me the book as well!

So for many teachers, the 37 and a 1/2 hours has become a game to play – not for fun but to cynically satisfy the government’s needs. I have heard of teachers going to workshops or cheap events to “get their hours up” which is sort of self-defeating if the process of Professional Development is to have any meaning. We all know that seat time and a paper certificate does not ensure that the participant has actually learnt anything of value and become a better practitioner because of it.

By the way, I don’t have any problems getting 37 and a 1/2 hours of official PD to qualify. This year I had at least 50 hours of conferences, training events, seminars etc. and that did not include anything I did online. I’m not really sure how this scheme can recognise anything except for “traditional” modes of adult learning/training/PD. How many hours have I logged with my blog, reading the sharpest educational minds from around the world in my Reader, participating in online events (K12 Online etc.), listening to others, watching others etc..? Unless you have a principal who gets it (whatever “it” is) then all of this online interaction and networked learning is not real, not certifiable and does not qualify as proof of improvement as an educator. 

The powers that be that created and continue to perpetrate this sham have missed the point. As my principal pointed out in our leadership meeting on Tuesday, “The most powerful way for educators to learn (and grow) is from each other.” My network is the biggest collection of “each other” that I could ever hope to learn from – any system that fails to recognise this as a manifestation of the most powerful learning available to its fleet of teachers has really missed the boat.