Reforming schools for the Knowledge Age

Ørestad College (Denmark)

Current public schools are based on an industrial model of schooling: Standardisation and conveyor-belt analogy.

For example:

-Students are grouped by birth-year; Bells and periods; Sitting in rows; Separate isolated subjects; Fixed time to finish a certain grade; Individual standardised testing.

We need to re-think the current schooling paradigm to create a post-industrial school model. We need schools for the Knowledge Age that focus on technology-enhanced project-based collaborative learning. We need schools that support students to learn how they learn best, monitor their own learning progress, and are driven to become life-long learners. 

For example, as an alternative to grouping students by age, they could be group by their performance level, early birds/night owls (morning school/ evening school), work individually/ in small or large groups (depends on context and personal preference).

Research found evidence that industrial-age schooling reduced creative (and divergent) thinking (as students are conditioned for "there-is-only-one-right-answer" thinking).

See this fascinating animation that illustrates the inspiring TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson:

A number of model schools world-wide lead the way towards a post-industrialist way of learning:

A few examples:

-High Tech High school in San Diego (USA)

-Northern Beaches Christian School in Sydney (Australia)

-Reggio Emilio schools (Italy)

The education group WestEd published a report "Rethinking High School: Five Profiles of Innovative Models for Student Success".

Companies like innovative schools.org offer support for reformers to model their schools after successful models.

Education research aims to gain a more complex picture of learning through the field of the "learning sciences". The learning sciences pursue an interdisciplinary approach to further scientific understanding of learning and to implement innovative learning environments. The bi-annual conference ICLS brings togethers researchers from across the world who study learning as a complex multi-layered system.


This video shows some interesting novel physical and virtual learning environments:

Words as vessels for thought

Words can be described as "vessels for thoughts". Our vocabulary affects the ways in which we are able to conceptualize the world around us. Or in other words, without a word for something we cannot think about something.


This linguistic relativity is expressed in the Sapir-Worf hypothesis that says that language influences (or determines) our thoughts.


An example can be found in the book of Genesis in the bible: In the beginning, the earth was without form and void. Only after God spoke the word, plants and animals took form.


Another example can be found in George Orwell's novel 1984: The government works on Newspeak, a language reform that removes all words related to freedom or rebellion from people's vocabulary - and therefore removing people's ability to think about concept such as freedom or rebellion.


Inventing new words allows us to think about new concepts. For example, medical researchers create new names for a set of symptoms. Giving these symptoms a name allows pharmaceutical companies to start research groups, and patients to form special interest groups.


The number of words in English has grown from 50,000 to 60,000 words in Old English to about a million today (source).


The RSAnimate video below illustrates a talk by psychologist Steven Pinker about language as a window into human nature.

Characteristics of a good teacher

Describing the characteristics of a good teacher is complex as teachers' work involves many different aspects. As many education reforms aim to link teacher payment to performance, it is urgent to get solid measurements of teacher quality. The Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley recently held a forum on how to assess teachers: Grading the teachers. The forum concluded that there is no reliable way to accurately measure teacher performance (not now and maybe never).

The Bill Gates foundation invests heavily in research on how to measure effective teaching (See: Measures of effective teaching factsheet).

Among other qualities, a teacher needs to have strong content knowledge ("what to teach") combined with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) ("how to teach).

Stephen Harris (from Sydney Innovation in Education) adds another interesting point: Teachers should be authentic and do what they are in charge of "a physics teacher should research, an arts teacher should paint and an English teacher should write novels or poems."

Short video on the impact of video games

This video shows the history, importance, and art of video games.

Microsoft Vision of the Future Video (2011 edition)

This video shows Microsoft's technocratic vision of the future: Augmented reality and technology embedded in glasses, tables, and refrigerators.

Knowledge Web and Connections

How is Mozart connected to the invention of the helicopter? Or cornflakes to communism? Such and other questions will be answered by the "Knowledge Web".


The "Knowledge Web" is a project currently under development by the James Burke Institute. So far, visitors can go on "Mystery Tours". James Burke a historian, best known for his work as the author, host, and narrator of the acclaimed television series "Connections".


See all episodes of the outstanding series "Connections" online on youtube.

Does the internet make schools obsolete?

The internet makes many kinds of information available in an instant. As as result, memorising facts and figures seems to become more and more obsolete. The internet became an integral part of our distributed cognition.

The instant availability of digital information poses fundamental questions for education: What do we still need to learn in schools?

Raymond Nickerson (1996) offers the following answer:

"One might ask at this point: if information does indeed become much more accessible in the future than it is now, will learning still be necessary? If answers to questions can be obtained much more readily through new information resources, will it be so important to have knowledge in one's head? I believe the answer is unequivocally yes. I believe this is the several reasons, but it will suffice to mention one. The asking of questions, except of the most superficial kind, is a knowledge-based activity. Only someone who knows quite a bit about biology is going to ask what is new in the sequencing of bases in the DNA molecule. And even if one were able to ask the question, say because one got it from someone else already formed, without some knowledge of the subject one would not understand the answer. In general, the more one knows, the more useful a powerful information-finding resource is likely to be." (p. 258)

Reference:

Nickerson, R. (1996). On the distribution of cognition: some reflections. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations (pp. 229-262). Cambridge University Press.