One Good Question

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9/20/16 9/20/16

One Good Question with Peter Howe: Are We Incentivizing the Right Behaviors for Teachers and Students?

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

I trained as an economist (then an art historian, then an educator), so I’m fascinated by this question. In Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, he gives us the bad news first: economics is built upon the entirely false premise that people are rationale. The good news is that people are irrational in a predictable way. His experiments demonstrate how financial incentives to “do good” actually backfire. The implication is that, as soon as you provide monetary reward for “doing good,” the action becomes transactional. People’s sense of being valued is entirely different. When we think that we’re acting on behalf of shared humanity, we do more. When we anticipate compensation for the same behavior, we calculate our value and actually refuse to perform for lower compensation.

Earlier this fall, Paul Tough’s article in The Atlantic pointed out the distinction between teachers who raise test results and those who raise character attributes. The teachers didn’t overlap much across groups, they were either in one camp or the other. What he found was that the teachers who raised test scores were the ones being rewarded by their schools, but that the skills students really need for college readiness are the social emotional ones. That’s a great example of how our investments obscure what we project as the best outcome, in this case college persistence.When we apply Ariely’s premise to schools, the incentive should be placed on building community. If we build the real community expectation, all of our members are more likely to contribute to each other’s success. When we apply financial incentives for some members, for example compensating teachers for student test results, the teachers narrow their focus and supports, and as a result fewer students achieve at high levels. It’s literally a waste of money and creates the wrong incentives at the classroom level.

My favorite professor used Hegelian dialectics to teach a course in behavioral accounting. He would post on the door how well we were doing in recounting, connecting, synthesizing, and using connections to build something new—at which point you were at the pinnacle of learning. Even though our content was economics, he rewarded our thought process over discrete test scores. To go back to our example, make sure that the finances are rewarding the behavior that you want. Then you don’t waste money with incentive programs that go fundamentally against people’s needs. People want to feel valued and our investments should reflect that.

“If schools could only accomplish one outcome for all students, and could guarantee that outcome for all students, what would it be?”

Every kid has to have that sense of safety and security – however we define that. Research shows that the traumatized or stressed brain is not a thinking brain. Kids in poverty have higher indicators on the ACE scale of trauma and also higher suspension rates. Being a part of a community is the most important contribution to safety and security. Creating a sense of security isn’t only about environmental stress, but engendering intellectual safety as well. The classroom is not about individual student success, it’s about collective success. No student pisses me off more than the top student who stops coming to class close to the exam because they would rather study on their own. At that point, they’re no longer modeling engagement, and their peers don’t benefit from the tough or complex questions that would have been asked. How do we address needs on both ends of the spectrum? We should focus the first two months of the year on community building and not curriculum. Once you have the community established and students are in inquiry-based learning, the curricular work will move more quickly. All of the students will have that sense of safety, trust and willingness to admit that they don’t know something. That’s when learning can really occur!

Peter’s One Good Question: Why are you here ? I ask this to every student who comes to my office, which is usually in a disciplinary context. I think that you can extend the question to education institutions too – Why are you doing X? Why are you doing it in that way?

Peter Howe is currently Head of College at United World College’s Maastricht (NL) campus. He recently was appointed to the role of Principal of UWC Atlantic College in Great Britain, effective 1 March 2017. Peter joined UWC Maastricht after spending seven years at UWC Adriatic in Italy, four of which as the Head of the college. In the course of five years at UWC Maastricht, Peter has managed a student body of approximately 850 students, in a school that has grown by more than 40% since 2012. Peter brings an eclectic background to his position. Following an undergraduate degree in Finance and Economics and 2 years working at Procter and Gamble in his native Canada, he returned to study graduate Art and Architectural History for 7 years before embarking on his teaching career.

3/22/16 3/22/16

One Good Question with John Wood: Teaching the world to read

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question (outlined in About) and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Room to Read was founded 15 years ago as a little unknown startup. We boil our belief down to six simple words : World change starts with educated children. We truly believe that if you want to change the future, the biggest no brainer in the world, you start with educating your children. Traditionally, for parents, that means your own children. Those who have been given the gift of education then have an obligation to give back to kids in low-income countries. We have a duty to give back and an opportunity to change things forever. We all have an ancestor who was the one to break the cycle of poverty for our family. Once that cycle is broken, the benefit pays forward for generations. To me, you look at the world today with over 100,000,000 children not in schools, and 2/3 are girls and women. If you want to change the world, then education is the smartest place to start.

“Literacy and primary education have dramatic positive impact on life expectancy, overall health, and ending cycle of extreme poverty in developing nations. Beyond making books and reading accessible, the Room to Read model has created complex local education ecosystems that are highly responsive to local needs. What else does the ecosystem need to be sustainable for all children?”

One of the most important things is that the communities we work with are fully invested in each and every project that we do. It’s not plunking something down for them to use, but co-building something the community is co-invested in. We also need the government to be co-invested in the projects and have some skin in the game as well. Our model is one of local employees, it’s not Americans flying over to do durable projects and telling local people what to do. It’s local community buy-in as employees, volunteers, parents in the planning committee, and then the government providing the teachers and the librarians and paying their salaries. As a result of that ecosystem, and we have the data to prove it, the model is more sustainable over time.

“How are you getting government engagement ? What strategies could other international education NGOs adopt?”

For us, we had to prove that we had a scalable model. Government doesn’t want to work with an NGO unless they have a big vision, a scalable model, resources, and can impact serious scale. That’s what we’ve been able to deliver with the governments. Too many folks want to do one-off projects. What we’re saying is that we can invest impact change at the town, region, even national level.

John's One Good Question: My question is simple. If we know that education is the best way to change the future, and to impact subsequent generations, then why is the world not doing more about the fact that over 750 million people lack basic literacy?

John Wood is the founder of Room to Read. He started Room to Read after a fast-paced and distinguished career with Microsoft from 1991 to 1999. He was in charge of marketing and business development teams throughout Asia, including serving as director of business development for the Greater China region and as director of marketing for the Asia-Pacific region. John continues to bring Room to Read a vision for a scalable solution to developing global educational problems with an intense focus on results and an ability to attract a world-class group of employees, volunteers, and funders. Today, John focuses full-time on long-term strategy, capital acquisition, public speaking, and media opportunities for the organization. John also teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and New York University’s Stern School of Business and serves on the Advisory Board of the Clinton Global Initiative. John holds a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Colorado and a master’s degree from the Kellogg School of Northwestern University. Follow John on Twitter @JohnWoodRtR.

3/8/16 3/8/16

When Women Succeed, the World Succeeds. #IWD2016

In honor of International Women's Day/ Journée des Droits des Femmes, a look back at Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka's talk "When women succeed, the world succeeds."

We need to get decision makers to stop seeing women as the problem or charity case. We will not overcome inequality or poverty or sustainable peace if we do not improve the lives of women. There are only 20 women heads of state in the world. if we had more female leaders we would not be in this state. Women are part of creating the world we all want. We have to invest in women. When you leave women out, you compromise the rest of the nation.

What it will take for more governments, institutions, schools, etc. to understand that improving the lives of girls and women will increase opportunities for the entire society?

12/22/15 12/22/15

One Good Question with Zaki Hasan: Move Bangladesh from Fashion Economy to Thought Economy.

Zaki Hasan, (photo credit: Mr. Saikat Majumder)

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

If you talk about the philosophy of education, in Bangladesh, we’re still like 17th century Europe – an industrial country focused on economic equities : jobs, food, survival. We’re not talking about which common social values the world should have. After I earn the money in my skilled job, do I understand the value of human life in this world ? Unfortunately, what happens when there is not enough employment or job security, people turn to unethical means to survive. There must be some global values system that we start talking about in education. Will that not be the number one problem when we’re trying to kill each other not from lack of money but due to lack of accepting diversity ? Who will solve this ? The medical system will not. The political system will not. Only education can do this.Bangladesh is a young country. Since the independence, I broadly categorize the generations into three: the first generation questioned the injustice and owned the country’s independence, the second generation questioned autocracy and has started the journey of democracy 24 years back , and now the third generation is questioning our journey without a vision and we are heading to a bright and shiny future. This journey would only be successful when our children are equally ready through education to make the journey. This generation and generations after this need to understand the values that the previous generations had started building this country on i.e. justice and democracy, which must continue to improve in creating a society based on equity.We need a different education investment framework and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals give us a reasonable starting point. There are some missing focuses though. For example, in the next 15 years, when we talk about basic literacy, it has to take into account how differently we have started communicating by using technology than what it had been so far in the form of in person communication and written scripts. The long discussed issue of digital divide is becoming a much more complex issue in the coming days. For example, a person with post-graduation education from Bangladesh today might have less exposure to new technologies than a typical elementary school child in the US. There has to be more investment in education, especially in the methods of communication, to decrease such the global achievement gap. The developed countries still have a lot to improve, but they are still focused on their immediate crisis of economic survival than equally having social value creation and even equally important aspect of transforming our children into thought leaders. Least developed countries need a radical restructuring of education. We’ll stay stuck in factories and providing good clothes to wear, but developing countries will continue to rise in thought economy. We have to change the education system to allow people to think freely and creatively.

“In Bangladesh, you've been instrumental in growing global education programming. How effective are western innovations/models in improving education gains in Bangladesh? Are there other US education initiatives that would advance education access?”

My visits to public, community schools in US were bittersweet. Children there have an assurance that they can go to school in their area. Common Core State Standards had just been rolled out and it was wonderful to see that federal and state system have agreed to core common standards and still had the freedom to apply them in their own way. The most beautiful moments I had were observing student-teacher interactions. I visited Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy and, at first, I couldn’t understand the role of the teacher and the student. Sometimes the student was leading the class and the teacher was in the back of the room. The roles seemed interchangeable and that made me happy.Here, going to school is like winning a lottery ticket. Even if you get access to a school, you cannot assure that the quality is maintained. In the classroom, many teachers are not trying to make learning interesting, they are trying to ‘teach’ children instead of making children interested to ‘learn’. Education can be important to empower students to take control of the class. The classroom environment that I saw in the US is something that would be beautiful. No one wants to feel inferieor, not even your 3 year old child. I don’t know how it happened in the US and how it could happen in Bangladesh. If the US reached consensus on CCSS in 2012, maybe we can do it here by 2022. If we can shift to more inclusive pedagogy, especially children-focused learning, the next generation will believe that more is possible in all schools.

Zaki’s One Good Question : Bangladesh has made lots of progress to educate more people in our society, but we see that the system is not yet producing a respectful society. Education is about creating global peace. Are we matching what we really want to accomplish through education ? Are we missing the way that education should be defined?

Zaki Hasan is currently serving as the Executive Director (ED) of Underprivileged Children’s Educational Programs Bangladesh (UCEP).He has worked in various sub-sectors of education including Technical Education, Early Childhood Development, Primary Education, Secondary Education, Adult Education, Girls Education and ICT-aided Education. He has been member in various boards and committees on issues/organizations involved in education. He has numerous publications including editor of more than 20 children books. He was also the founding Country Director of Room to Read Bangladesh. He has worked for several other non-profit international organizations such as Save The Children, ActionAid, and Helen Keller Intl. Zaki Hasan is an Eisenhower Fellow.

12/1/15 12/1/15

One Good Question with Noelle Lim: What STEAM Could Mean for Malaysia.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

In Malaysia, education takes the lion share in the government budget, so it's clear the government is fairly serious about it. One reason is cultural, our society prizes good education, and another is that Malaysia relies on foreign investments, so it's an open economy that needs to have a globally competent workforce.Parents are serious about education too. For example, in Malaysia and developed countries of Asia, it's a norm for parents with the means to pay for their child to attend supplementary classes conducted by private tutors. However, I think parents pay for these classes, not in hope their child will become the next Nobel Prize winners, but to pass the national exams with straight As. It's assumed that if you do this, you can perhaps win a scholarship or get a place in a good university, and you'll be set for life.

“During your Eisenhower Fellowship, you came to the States to learn more about education entrepreneurship. How will your school design reflect learning and innovation from both countries?”

The PISA rankings show that Malaysia's education system is in the bottom one third (yet neighbor Singapore is number one), and TIMSS show that Malaysia is below average international standards (it was above average in the 1990s). It appears to be an uphill task for Malaysia to catch up. I don't think we need to aspire to be number one, but aim to be in the top quartile. And I think we're capable of doing that because our society values education.Malaysian schools needs to upgrade the content of what they are teaching. For instance, an online, centralized database of teaching notes with suggested pedagogy and updates could help the schools.Secondly, the current method of teaching in Malaysia, and indeed still in many countries, is done in silo. We don't help students connect dots, and there's a push for STEM in Malaysia. I believe the focus has to shift to STEAM instead and subjects to be taught in an interdisciplinary way. Finding solutions to complex problems in the world requires a more comprehensive way of thinking, and a combination of science and arts/humanities. Innovations too, for example the iPad is a marriage of tech prowess and design.In the States, I visited two schools that are shifting from STEM to STEAM and incorporating more holistic offerings such as entrepreneurship and liberal arts : North Carolina Math & Science and Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy. I chose those schools because the Ministry of Education from Singapore and Chinese frequently visit them. These public schools have strong academic performance, particularly in STEM, and selective admissions. At the North Carolina campus, the chancellor Todd Roberts, has a degree in English and believes in a well-rounded education. Illinois Math & Science is developing an entrepreneurship thread. They are mobilizing their alumni base and drawing them in to mentor students and provide internships in start-ups in Chicago. These are gradual processes, to move towards STEAM instructional expectations.Two questions that I asked almost all schools I visited were « What is the purpose of a school? What is the purpose of education? » Apart from ensuring children are literate and know their sums, I believe it's about helping the student discover a range of possible interests and to help the child choose which path to pursue and to arm him with the relevant information. This means schools have to give the child opportunities to work on projects of personal interests like capstone projects. Once the child finds his interest, there is no looking back. Many successful people I've interviewed, say that what they do is their passion and luck of course helps. Either they found their passion by accident or were drawn to it by a mentor. I think schools can play a bigger role in helping children find their passion.I also believe schools should produce people who will develop the agency, aptitude and desire to want to solve complex problems. It's not just to pass exams, but to create the next generation of scientists, artists, makers, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

Noëlle’s One Good Question : How well does our education system engage students? Ideally, I would specify "boys" rather than just "students" because boys are falling behind in Malaysia. Girls outperform boys in Maths and Science unlike international norms. And in public universities, girls account for 70% of the intake. Our education blueprint has highlighted the risk of "lost boys". It appears our education system isn't really working out for boys. Given the patriarchal expectations within conservative communities, I wonder what impact this achievement gap will have on the next generation.

Noelle Lim is a presenter and producer with BFM 89.9, Malaysia’s only business radio station, and heads its education division, BFM Business School. She is interested in the intersection of media, education, and technology. During her Eisenhower Fellowship, she investigated innovations in high school curriculum and pedagogy to inform her plan to start a school and to launch a project that prepares and connects low-income students in Malaysia and Southeast Asia to the best schools in the US, UK and Australia.

11/19/15 11/19/15

Tensions in Formal vs. Informal Education Solutions.

During the break-out sessions at the GNF Women’s Forum, I participated in “Leaders as entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs as leaders” and “Innovations & challenges in education” and was pleasantly surprised to hear how the conversations blended so seamlessly. Entrepreneurs from around the globe raised questions about the role of formal education in preparing youth to lead. “How can we teach our students differently? How can they learn to harness the opportunities in their environment? How can they learn to be entrepreneurs? In Africa, we can’t create jobs for all of our people. I wish that there was a way for the schools to give them the skills to create jobs for themselves. How can we give skills to students to make them more self-sufficient?”One of our facilitators, Irina Anghel-Enescu (EF, Romania), is on the jury for Global Teacher Prize and asked us directly if we thought the entrepreneurial ecosystem would be improved if educators taught these skills explicitly. All of the finalists for last year’s prize shared an entrepreneurial spirit—they created new models, founded schools, and expanded education access. While they are all highly impactful teachers in their parts of the world, what set them apart was their entrepreneurial mindset and how they took the initiative to change outcomes for all of their students.

There is a growing debate about the role of formal education vs. informal education to prepare this generation for the future. When our conversation took an overly critical turn of formal education, Pilvi Torsti (EF, Finland) of Helsinki International Schools reminded us that these are not competitions. Me & My City is a Finnish example of how formal and informal education partner in the best interest of learning. We have to invest in both levels for deep national or systemic change. She shared that Finland’s decision to invest in education was made when it was a poor agrarian country. Pilvi encouraged us to invest in our human capital now. All sectors need to make conscious decisions to value formal education and integrate role models from other sectors into the sphere.Our panel during the “Innovation in education” session continued to explore this tension. Bernardine Vester (EF, New Zealand) gave an overview of how the marketization and commodification of education has impacted New Zealand and asked what the growing privatization of education means for equity and inclusion. Amr AlMadani (EF, Saudi Arabia) shared his start-up success for how deep, intentional partnership of informal education (robotics and STEM competitions) and formal education is reinvigorating student interest and parent support in his country. Maria Guajardo (Kellogg Fellow, Japan) brought in cross-cultural perspectives on leadership and women’s empowerment. Common threads across their diverse experiences: formal education alone does not change social practices, expectations, or real-world outcomes.

“What’s missing is not the tools. Everybody is watching, but nothing is changing. Passion and love of the game is missing.” – Amr AlMadani

In Saudi Arabia, education has a high cultural value and high government investment (25% of budget towards formal education), yet those two high-level alignments have not inspired passion-filled teaching and learning. Instead of blaming teachers, parents, or cultural practices, Amr decided to offer a solution to the passion question and inspire learning and positive parent participation.Maria inspired our group conversation with her One Good Question : As we become more globalized, how do we lead across differences? How does leadership look the same or different? For her, the question of intersection—where leadership development intersects with culture and tradition— is essential. Education has to be the vanguard for leadership change.Like in every group of education thought leaders, our participants challenged each other to consider different lenses:

On questions of feminization and devaluation of formal education: It’s the economy, stupid. How can we look at the curve of where education attainment and economics meet (personal earnings and GDP)?
On questions of the role of women in formal leadership spaces: The perception of being a leader is different in various cultural contexts. You can be a leader outside of the home and inside of the home.
On equality/inclusion: Can we explore this more? Urbanization and growth of the middle class are all supporting the privatization of education. Does it have to be a negative view or is it an opportunity for more people to come to education? Making the whole system public doesn’t seem realistic at this moment at all.
On informal education: Are there growing demands within our countries where privates are stepping in to fill the gaps? Particularly where the state has failed minority/marginalized populations? Are we seeing this growth and is it a long-term positive trend?
In NZ we moved from social democratic state to one more focused on markets. I have not given up on public education, which is why I’m working with a nonprofit group to insure that t the best teachers end up in the schools with the highest poverty needs. The rising social inequalities arise out of the growing tendency to commodify education and marketize it. It’s no use trying to hold back the tide. How do you use the process to ensure that those who have the least get the most potential? Their potential is our future. Most of the students in Auckland are no longer white and middle class. They’re brown. WE have to do something about it.

11/10/15 11/10/15

One Good Question with Marcelo Knobel: General Studies Reform for Brazil's Universities.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Sometimes there is an investment but the priorities are completely wrong. In Brazil we have significant investments--- the government pays for K-12 and university education for all students -- , but the priorities are not leading us to strong education outcomes. Our system and needs are really complex, but there are two existing investments that could be better leveraged for change : value of the teacher as professional and scalability of non-governmental education organizations. Our teachers are underpaid and not well-prepared for the work, and society provides no incentive to be a professor, or positive value of the profession. To change that, for the next generation, it’s necessary to have a really smart and fast plan to change this situation. This is where scalability of non-governmental organizations matters. There are philanthropic and social investment efforts here, but they aren’t as well developed as in the US. It’s difficult to keep an ONG runnning. There are a few ONGs run by the civil society or wealthy families, but their impact is very small in comparison to the need. Fundaçao Lemann is making some interesting programs, but the number of people that these programs can impact is small. Brazil should have 1,000 organizations like this, but we maybe have only 10. Scaling the impact of our ONGs would reach a much broader population than we can do currently.

“In your upcoming book, you posit that Brazilian higher education would benefit from offering general Liberal Arts Colleges among existing post-secondary institutions. What void will Liberal Arts Colleges fill and how will they transform access and success for the greater population?”

My main concern is to advocate for the cause of General Education in university. In Brazil 43% of the population completes high school, but only 12% has a post-secondary degree[1], so we’re already dealing with an elite population. The benefits for these elite is very clear—better salaries, better jobs. In our university system, we currently have no general education or liberal arts course requirements. When a student tests to enter university, they are only applying to a specific career strand : medicine, education, chemistry, accounting, etc. It may seem like a minor detail but it’s not. Some careers are extremely difficult to access. At UNICAMP for example, less than 1% of applicants are accepted into the medical program. If you are accepted and after one month you don’t like this course of study, you have to drop-out of university and start all over for the next year. A general studies or liberal arts base would allow students to experiment and learn more about specific industries before making a commitment to one of them.In the real world when companies hire engineers, they provide a 6 months training period for the specific content in that position. The ideal candidates are excellent learners and problem-solvers first, then content experts. Ususally companies prefer to hire people who can think outside of the box and have certain soft skills that we don’t learn here in Brazil at all. General education has been in place in the US for years. In the global market, companies and countries like China, Singapore, and Hong Kong are in search of more well-rounded professionals who can deal with problems and learn how to solve them across multiple disciplines. If you’re learning only content in university, within 10 years your content may be outdated.ProFIS created at UNICAMP is a hybrid of my general education vision. This is a pilot that I would like to see the entire university adopt. We recruit the best students from the local public high school, who wouldn’t normally attend university. On average 80% of students are living in poverty and 90% are first generation in the university. We’re automatically increasing social inclusion by making a space for these students in university.Even when these students are the best in their schools, they still have strong gaps in their basic education. ProFIS anticipates and supports academic and socio-economic gaps with an army of staff and resources: the best professors in university volunteer to teach in ProFIS, Teaching Assistants provide extra tutoring, Social Workers help with problems at home—if students don’t show up for one week, we call the home to get them back, and we pay students a minimum wage to prevent them from dropping out because they need to earn money for their family. Fifty percent of our students continue on to traditional university studies.The problem is that ProFIS is only a tiny drop in the bucket. We can only admit 120 students per class (about 10% of applicants) but we have thousands who have this need. If this program could be replicated in 100 universities, it could start making a difference. We need advocacy with the university system, the legislature, and large employers. If employers are clamoring for this particular employee profile with a well-rounded education, then our country will make changes. Politicians need to advocate the change. Universities need to replicate. We also need to educate the general population to know that this can exist so that they can demand it. My upcoming book will show how this is possible and trending all over the world. Brazil is out of alignment with this trend and we should make a difference to catch up.Read more here about the ProFIS model and impact.

Marcelo's One Good Question: This is hard. My question. Of course I have children, is it possible for them to have a better future ? I am seeing here in Brazil we face immediate threats to global warming. Strong period of economic depression. Huge problem in education. Do they have a good future ? Thinking more globally, will they even have any place to go ?[1] from BRAZIL – Country Note – Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators

Marcelo Knobel is Director of the Brazilian National Nanotechnology Laboratory (LNNano), of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (University of Campinas, UNICAMP). From 2002 to 2006 he coordinated de Núcleo de Desenvolvimento da Criatividade (Creativity Development Center, NUDECRI), of UNICAMP and from 2006 to 2008 he was the Executive Director of the Science Museum, also at UNICAMP. He was the Vice-President for Undergraduate Programs from 2009 to 2013. He was a 2007 Eisenhower Fellow to the US taking a deeper look at scientific culture and the popularization of science via science museums.

9/17/15 9/17/15

Throwback Thursday: Finland Offers Lesson For Building Student, Teacher Agency.

Rhonda Broussard is the founder of St. Louis Language Immersion Schools, a charter management organization. In 2014, she traveled to and explored the education systems of Finland and New Zealand as an Eisenhower Fellow (full disclosure: I was also a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow). As I listened to her discuss her travels this past May in Philadelphia, I was struck by how relevant some of the insight she had gained in Finland were for those creating blended-learning schools that seek to personalize learning and build student agency. What follows is a brief Q&A that illustrates some of these lessons.

Michael Horn:

Your observations around student agency in Finland and how it stems from the great trust the Finnish society has in children are striking. Can you explain what you saw and learned? Do you have takeaways for what this means in the context of the United States?

Rhonda Broussard:

What amazed me most during my school visits in Finland is what I didn’t observe. Finnish schools had no recognizable systems of “accountability” for student behaviors. Finnish schools believe that children can make purposeful decisions about where to be, what to study, how to perform. Whether via No Excuses or Positive Behavior Intervention Support, American schools don’t expect youth to be responsible for themselves or their learning. When I asked Finnish educators about student agency, they responded that the child is responsible for their learning and general safety. When prodded, educators responded that the child’s teacher might send a note home to parents, speak with the child, or consult their social welfare committee about destructive or disruptive behaviors. Despite the fact that Finland is the second country in Europe for school shootings (they have had three since 1989), none of the schools that I visited had security presence or protocols for violent crises.My first trip to Finland was during the immediate aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. When I juxtaposed those events with the high trust I observed in Finnish society and schools, the reality of micro-aggressions in our schools became more apparent. In my piece “Waking up in Helsinki, Waking up to St. Louis,” I cite a few examples of what trust looks like in Finnish schools. The absence of trust in American schools requires educators to police our youth daily, and do so in the name of respect. Many U.S. peers respond to my observations with, “But our kids are different, they need structure.” Our country, society, and expectations are different, but our kids are not. American hyper-attention to accountability reinforces the belief that people, young people in particular, cannot be trusted.

How can average American public schools shift toward more student agency and decrease disruptive behaviors? Predict and provide responsive supports for academic, social-emotional, and physical interventions. Fifty percent of Finnish students receive academic interventions before 10th grade, adolescents study courses in social needs, all grades break for physical activity after 45 minutes of instruction, all school meals are free regardless of income. These shifts allow schools to meet the immediate needs of students that pre-empt distracting or destructive behaviors. Starting point? Ross Greene’s Lost at School.

Horn:

The level of personalization or customization in Finnish schools is much more extensive than I realized. Even siblings in the same school might attend school for radically different hours. Can you give some examples of what you saw? How does the system work, and how are families able to handle the different starting and ending times?

Broussard:

Children are expected to know their own schedules, and parents rarely manage drop-off and pick-up. Finland is a country of latch-key kids where:Students attend their neighborhood schools. Societal trust in education means that families do not shop neighborhoods for the so-called best schools;And students take themselves to school—they walk, bike, sled, ski, or take public transit—unless they live in an urban area and have a special need or great distance for transportation.In my “Hei from Helsinki!” blog post this fall, I noted that, “Within any individual elementary school, classes, grades or cohorts of students report for different periods of time. First graders will typically have shorter school days and may go home alone at 1pm while their older siblings are still in school. Many schools have aftercare programs for 1st and 2nd grade, but by 3rd grade everyone goes home at the end of their daily schedule. Kids call/text their parents to check in. If you have three children in the same elementary school, they will likely have different start and end times from each other and may have different start and end times for different days of the week. Students are expected to know their specific schedule and manage their time accordingly.”Below is a sample primary student schedule from a photo I took showing different start and end times by class, by day of the week:

Horn:

The agency and ownership doesn’t just extend to students it seems. Do teachers have similar expectations from society and for themselves? How does this manifest itself in the way that teachers improve their craft?

Broussard:

In Finnish Lessons, Pasi Sahlberg explains that, “Teachers at all levels of schooling expect that they are given the full range of professional autonomy to practice what they have been educated to do: to plan, teach, diagnose, execute, and evaluate.”Administrators know that teachers have the professional training to be successful in the classroom—all teachers have a research Masters degree before beginning their teaching career—and the professional curiosity to identify their own growth areas. Schools have no expectations of teacher mentors, instructional coaches, peer observations, or continuous improvement feedback. The Finnish education system distributes power and responsibility to create ownership and personalization at the school and classroom level. The Finnish National Board of Education defines the courses and standards, municipalities then write an aligned curriculum, and teachers write the lessons and assessments. Finnish teachers engage in similar professional work as Americans—curriculum committees, student support, school culture events, clubs—but they are organized more by teacher impetus and less by administrative edicts.

Originally appeared on Forbes.com Leadership

blog by Michael Horn

9/11/15 9/11/15

We Must Teach Children to Learn: Language Lessons from Neuroscience.

Language educators and researchers are fascinated by neurological data. We love to cite the latest research --Have you read Bialystok's work on the bilingual brain? -- and share documentaries like The Secret Life of the Brain. Because we still subscribe to the notion that "hard science" is more respected than social science, we tout scientific research that validates our pedagogical framework. So when Dr. Elvira Souza Lima opened her keynote speech at this year’s Brazilian Immersion Conference, and declared that “Pedagogy is the most important change in education,” the room paused. Did she really mean that pedagogy is more important than neurological function for teaching and learning?For the first half of her talk, Dr. Souza Lima paid homage to 2000 Nobel Prize recipient Eric Kandel's research on memory and neurology. The auditorium full of international immersion school educators delighted to learn about synapses, Long-Term Potentiation (LTP), and plasticity. How exactly do our brains convert short-term experiences to long-term memory to knowledge? What we can do to keep our brains learning as long as possible? We watched researchers animate the precise moment of "learning" in the human brain and marveled at the density of learning in the child's brain vs. the adult's brain.Dr. Souza Lima’s talk quickly gave way to neurological implications for language learning. First, she parsed out oracy (listening and speaking) from literacy (reading and writing). Genetically, humans are programmed for oracy yet must learn literacy. Singing, melody, and repetition of natural sounds developed in Neanderthals before speech. Everyone can hum, cry, or sing (however poorly) without having explicitly learned to do so. In the first three years of life, the brain's language function is focused on listening and singing. During early childhood years, humans learn in the vocal area of our brain, which allows us to improve our brain’s plasticity. Prevalent recommendations to speak, read, and sing to your infant are not only the most important receptive functions that their brains are developing, but they expand their capacity to learn more later.From ages 3-6, the young brain develops twice as many synapses than an adult brain and this is the best time to begin forming long-term memories. Long-term memories developed during preschool years provide children with background knowledge necessary to acquire literacy skills. According to Dr. Souza Lima, the purpose of early language instruction (immersion or otherwise), in students ages 4-6, is to further oracy and build plasticity. Plasticity is highest in children through age 7 and then is extinguished by age 10. Daily exposure to music, arts, graphic arts, drawing, imaginative play all contribute to plasticity in the young brain. These assertions reinforce play-based preschool and kindergarten curricular frameworks that focus on providing rich environments and new experiences for young learners to discover more about their world.

“It is not only what the child speaks, but what the child thinks.”

Dr. Souza Lima frequently quoted Vygotsky during her talk to remind us that our work is not simply getting students to produce speech and words, but that in forming language, we are curating thoughts as well. Learning literacy, specific reading and writing skills, requires that your brain forms long-term memories. During the formative years of oracy we can train our brains to learn new information and store it for long-term access. By age 7, at the peak of plasticity, the brain is ready to start learning discrete literacy skills. Can we begin learning literacy before the age of 7 ? Absolutely, and our world is full of autodidacts who have mastered reading fluency before they begin formal education. Developmentally, however, youth who begin reading at 4 do not significantly outperform youth who begin reading at 7.Enter significant dissonance between neurological research about literacy learning and current US curriculum expectations. With little exception, American schools subscribe to earlier and more aggressive academic and literacy instruction in attempts to accelerate learning outcomes. Not only is this practice counter to neurological productivity, but time spent “teaching reading” in early elementary years actually usurps the time that the brain could be developing plasticity. Recent research demonstrates that, while they may initially outperform their peers, students who have been taught explicit literacy skills in grades K-2, tend to plateau their reading comprehension and language use after 3rd grade (Stefanou, Howlett, and Peck, 2012). Early explicit literacy instruction may actually be limiting our youth at the peak plasticity, and access to deeper learning in later years.Dr. Souza Lima's message was subtle, yet insistent that rich, daily experiences in music, creativity, arts, and imagination contribute significantly to the brain's capacity to learn over time. These activities are what teach the young brain to learn and provide ample opportunities to build capacity and plasticity. Exposing young learners to a wide variety of life experiences allow them to create scaffolds to which they can attach new information as they grow.Dr. Elvira Souza Lima is a researcher in human development, with training in neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and music. She works in applied research in education, media and culture. Follow her blog at http://elvirasouzalima.blogspot.com

9/2/15 9/2/15

One Good Question

"I want to ask one good question."That's all? I can ask one good question now. That's what I thought when I heard my colleague share her intellectual goal for the new school year. I had no idea how difficult it would be to ask my students one good question, a question that wasn't leading, that didn't tip my hand or reveal my beliefs, that didn't force students to defend a single position, nor one that allowed them to respond solely with anecdote and opinion.In the fall of 2003 I was working with new peers in the second year of Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, NY. This was the year that would challenge my teaching forever. Over ten years later, I'm still challenging myself to ask one good question. My work in international education has changed, but the need for good questions remains. In this blog I will be exploring international education and access for all students through multiple lenses, but all with the same question: In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation's role in the world?Spoiler alert: I am completely biased. My education career is built on ways that we are increasing access and opportunity for all students to connect with the world outside of their local neighborhood: multilingualism, cross-cultural and intercultural competencies, international perspectives, peace-building, youth action and agency, socio-economic diversity. I look forward to having my assumptions challenged and learning innovative ways that different countries, communities, and schools are answering this question.