My TED-style presentation for GELS 2011. Students (and Schools) Learn Best When...

2. E: cpaterso@shore.nsw.edu.au

3. T: cpaterso(Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind)

8. The Instructional Core CONTENT Task STUDENT TEACHER

9. “The majority of the 20,000 tasks that make a school career are teacher specified, cognitively simple, and done either by oneself or involve listening to the monologue of an adult.” Fisher & Hiebert

10. Schools are compliance-oriented, bureaucratic structures, based on adults’ fearsof children running out of control.

11. What is something that you understand really well?

12. How did you develop that understanding?

13. Being able to resolve new problems Working with a good mentor Lots of hands-on practice Asking questions Talking with others Making mistakes Teaching it to someone else Spending lots of time

17. “To understand is to invent” Jean Piaget

18. Social interaction and shared understanding

19. “To be confused is good. Glorify confusion.” Eleanor Duckworth

20. Trust the content and trust the minds of the learners.

21. Actively inquire into student thinking

22. The key determinant of whether a student attends to a given type of knowledge is whether the student considers the knowledge important.

23. Ask them

24. “Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it.” (SorenKierkegaard, 1854)

25. Enable students to educate themselves

26. Where teachers listen and learners explain

27. Classroom isolation leads teachers to fall back on the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ that they undertook as school students.

28. Spray and pray Schools persist in practices that do not work.

29. “Conventional forms of professional development are virtually a waste of time.” Vivian Troen & Kitty Boles

30. “Teachers continue to work alone in cell-like classrooms, separated from other teachers, in physical structures that resemble prisons and mental hospitals.” Vivian Troen & Kitty Boles

31. “Schools learn collectively in teamsand teachers get better by working in teams on teaching issues.” Professor Richard Elmore

32. “Watching most teams operate in schools is like watching Astroturf grow. “ Professor Richard Elmore

33. Risk-taking

34. Distributed leadership

35. Common purpose

36. A development culture, not a compliance-oriented culture.

37. “Leadership is about building highly functional people into highly functional teams.” Professor Richard Elmore

38. “The job of a leader is to follow the work, not to dictate the work.” Professor Richard Elmore

39. Networks rather than hierarchies

40. “Our future is not a future of fixed practices. Our future is a future of dramatic transformations. The more I know about learning, the more problematic I find this institution called school.” Professor Richard Elmore