One Good Question with Aylon Samouha: Is There a Silver Bullet for the Future of "School"?

Aylon Samouha

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?”

Thankfully, there is a lot of investment in education, both public and philanthropic dollars.  The sheer quantity of investment is a clear signal – we believe that our generation plays a critical role in the future world and deserves deep investment.  That siad, where does it go? There are lots of human capital investments that funders are making in all sorts of ways to attract, evaluate, and train educators.  These investments are animated by a critical need in creating great learning environments ; namely,  kids need caring adults around them who are effective at teaching, coaching, motivating, etc.On the other hand, human capital  funding by itself may unintentionally reinforce the idea that the only  or best way for kids to learn is through teacher-centric models where students have little agency over their own learning.  With School in the Cloud, Sugata Mitra challenges the role of educators in the learning process.   Basically, he was a web developer who said « What would happen if I just put a computer in the wall here? In a low-income neighborhood in India.  Kids started using it and they had never touched a computer before.  They looked up stuff and started learning things.  Then he said, let me do it somewhere where there aren’t a bunch of techies around.  And this time he gave the users a question to figure out.  When he asked for their feedback, they said We have to learn English in order to use it. And they actually did learn English to figure out how to keep accessing the tool! 

This is an extreme but very instructive example that, with the right tools and motivations, students will self-direct their own learning.  So we have to ask ourselves, is it enough to invest in human capital when the underlying traditional model, by its design, under-leverages the innate motivation of students to self-direct their learning ? And what might that say about how we conceive of their place in the world ?Another important and laudable category of investments go towards scaling good schools. This comes from a very good place and should continue – if we’re seeing a good learning environment in one place we should try to replicate that in more communities especially where educational opportunities are poor.  That said, an unintended consequences of scale investments is that half-baked things grow before they’re really proven and successful operators sometimes  grow faster than the quality can keep up.

Scaling education models is an efficiency play and lots of students and families have had significantly better education choices and experiences as a result of these investments. Counting and expanding quality seats is critical work. That said, what unintended narratives might animate these investments? To what extent are we saying that we need quality seats so that our students can be competitive in the global marketplace? Instead, how might we expand quality seats while reinforcing a narrative that an American student from New Orleans should be working with her brothers and sisters in China to make the world a better place and not merely trying to outcompete them?  And when we scale into new communities quickly, to what extent are we going fast alone vs. going further together?  This is all a tricky balancing act and I’m heartened to see so many in this work asking these questions more often and more publicly.

“Education leaders around the world are asking themselves « What’s next ? »  Our industrial model of education is no longer preparing youth for today’s careers or knowledge economy.  Is there a single answer, silver bullet that will emerge in the next iteration of school?”

I definitely don’t think there is a silver bullet in terms of one type of school or kind of pedagogy. But there are some very provocative ideas and shifts that I think will help us massively improve learning across the world. Right now, I’m enthralled by Todd Rose’s work and The End of Average. I won’t do his work justice but a core premise is that « any system that is trying to fit the individual is actually doomed to fail. Waking up from what he calls the « myth of average » seems critical to redesigning the traditional model which essentially holds the average student as a foundational principle.  And just like there is no average student there are likewise no average communities. Taken together, we need to build models that respect and leverage the uniqueness of each student ; and, we need to scale those models and ideas in ways that communities can adopt and adapt into to fit their unique values, assets, etc.   Generic, cookie-cutter replication may work for enterprises where people have very basic expectations and where the stakes are low (i.e., Starbucks, Target). We don’t want schools or learning experiences to be like that.   Communities creating and adapting school models for their context – school models that provide students to adapt and create learning for themselves…maybe that’s a silver bullet?

Relatedly, I’m getting more and more excited about  the potential of truly  leveraging learning science to advance the way that we construct learning experiences.  Research on learning and motivation point to new insights every year -- and we need to systematically use these insights in real daily learning environments!  To do this right now, educators – who are already stretched in terms of capacity – would need to wade through endless research papers, discern the usable knowledge and then figure out how to apply that knowledge with students. What would it mean for us to systematically create the bridge between research and application?  What if people designing learning experiences could benefit from and contribute to an ever-growing learning agenda for the field ? What if more learning engineers were building and iterating  school model components based in the science that educators could readily adapt into their communities? Ok, maybe that’s another silver bullet after-all!

Aylon’s One Good Question: How can we ensure that schools are wildly motivating for all students?

Aylon Samouha is Co-Founder of Transcend Education, a national non-profit committed to building the future’s schools today.  Transcend works with school operators across the district, charter, and independent school sectors. They provide and develop world-class R&D capacity that supports visionary education leaders to build and replicate breakthrough learning environments. The co-founders and founding board members published Dissatisfied, Yet Optimistic to put forward their theory of change.Prior to co-founding Transcend, Aylon was an independent designer providing strategy and design services to education organizations, schools, and foundations. Most recently, Aylon has been leading the “Greenfield” school model design for the Achievement First Network, which is being piloted in the 2015-16 school year.  He also led the field research for Charter School Growth Fund and the Clay Christensen Institute for the 2014 publication, "Schools and Software: What's Now, What's Next".  In 2013, Aylon pioneered the Chicago Breakthrough Schools Fellowship in conjunction with New Schools for Chicago, NGLC, and the Broad Foundation.

Do Struggling Learners Belong in Language Immersion Programs?

Yes.  But what about the students who have weak L1 skills?  Them too.  Our students in poverty don’t have the home supports to be successful in language immersion.  Isn’t this a hardship for them? Nope.  These students need longer time to get academic concepts, won’t language immersion delay them in comparison to their peers?  Uh, still no.Academic conferences are typically places to validate our perspectives, and, when we least expect it, really challenge our beliefs as well.  Genesee’s opening keynote for the Brazilian Immersion Conference (BIC) was about the striving (struggling) learner in immersion settings.  In North America, this work urges us to being more inclusive of ethnic minorities, children in lower socio-economic environments, students with special education services.  I appreciate Genesee’s keynote even more in the Brazilian context, where virtually all language immersion programs are in independent schools that serve affluent majority culture kids.  All educators needs reminders and inspiration that increase their expectations for all students.Genesee’s research addresses the dissonance between popular thought and research implications for language immersion.  Common sense argues that language immersion is not successful for students with perceived hardship: academic delays, low socio-economic status, new or poor speakers of the majority language.  Why add to their struggle?  Genesee compares language immersion students with similar demographics of non-immersion students and native speakers of the immersion language.  His results consistently demonstrate that L1 performance, when compared with peers in the control group, are not diminished for “struggling” students (Genesee, 1992; 2007a; Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004).

“It’s important to believe that what we’re doing is right.  If deep down teachers worry about [whether these kids should be in language immersion], it compromises their students’ performance.”

The primary message of Genesee’s talk was that building strong literacy skills in L2 not only supports literacy development in L1, but, more importantly, it increases student access to and success in the academic curriculum.  Students in language immersion are expected to study complex academic topics in the immersion language by the end of elementary schools.  The primary academic reason that students leave language immersion programs in public schools in Canada, is due to reading difficulty and related frustration in the academic curriculum. Committing to and developing literacy skills in L2 unlocks deeper learning for students over time.Genesee addressed the four most common questions raised by language immersion educators:

1. What levels of proficiency in L1 and L2 can we expect?

2. Is it preferable to teach reading in L2 first or L1 first, or both from the beginning?

3. Should we keep the L1 and L2 separate when teaching?

4. What is the importance of oral language for L2 reading competence?

Based on the research demonstrating that language immersion education (L2 literacy) doesn’t diminish the learner’s literacy skills in L1, Genesee advocates for greater, concentrated exposure to the L2 as early in the program as possible. Literacy skills transfer from one language to the next, particularly in languages with similar alphabet characters.  Once a reader learns reading fluency skills in one language that they speak, they apply that literacy understanding to another related language. If your English teacher teaches you to that you can blend letter sounds, your Portugese teacher doesn’t need to reteach that same skill.  That said, he would encourage teaching reading in L2 first, and keeping L1 and L2 separate when teaching.  Genesee cautions that elevating the status of teaching reading in L1 risks reducing L2 reading competency and related academic access in higher grades.Proficiency levels in L1 and L2 vary depending on the structure of the immersion program.  Language immersion educators often fall prey to the myth of the “perfect bilingual.”  Even with high functionality, immersion students still make grammar mistakes in both languages, and have less idiomatic language than same-age native speaker peers. Within environments where L1 and L2 language instruction are highly distinctive (two different teachers in two different spaces), constructivist instruction and cross-linguistic connections support learners in scaffolding specific concepts and vocabulary development.According to Genesee’s work, language immersion students struggle more with reading comprehension than with decoding skills.  It is much more complex to diagnose reading comprehension difficulties if students have inadequate vocabulary and incomplete complex grammar.  These two deficits become the biggest barriers for students to access academic language by grade 5.  Genesee advises that teachers explicitly teach academic language starting in kindergarten and across all disciplines.  This includes complex grammar as well as discipline-specific vocabulary.  Language immersion teachers need to know, understand, and teach academic language from the early grades to give students the tools to thrive in reading comprehension, not just reading fluency.  Early grade teachers in particular should constantly teach phonological awareness, word knowledge, content, and complex grammar to give students the specific tools they will need for reading comprehension.Fred Genesee is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at McGill University.  Prof. Genesee's primary research interests focus on bilingualism and bilingual first language acquisition in normal and impaired populations. In particular, his research examines the early stages of the acquisition of two languages with the view to (a) better understanding this form of language acquisition and (b) ascertaining the neuro-cognitive limits of the child's innate ability to acquire language. He is also interested in second language acquisition in school and the modalities for effective acquisition in school contexts.

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

Memory in silent neurons

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