Category Archives: I dream a school

Market research for schools – studying how people learn for final 3/4 of life

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It’s been a long time since I earned an undergraduate degree in economics and a concentration in marketing and management studies. To be honest, off the top of my head, I don’t remember a ton from my lessons on market research…but I remember that it’s important to do some. Of course, I am more than willing to refresh and extend my knowledge and understanding in market research, especially because I think it might be very important for schools.

I’m curious how schools might engage in some important market research – or something closely akin to market research.

How do people learn during the final three-quarters of their lives? Doesn’t that make for a strong research question for schools?

I’m taking some liberties here and oversimplifying a lot of data. Let’s assume that an average lifespan in the U.S. is about 80 years. Let’s approximate that formal education represents close to one quarter of our learning life. [I know formal education could be more or less than 20 years.] Using this admittedly oversimplified data, we can assume that about three quarters (3/4, or 75%) of a person’s learning happens “outside” of formal education.

Wouldn’t it be great market research for schools to study how the learning occurs in this 75% of our lives?

Consider that most schools state as a mission that we are trying to prepare students for something called “real life.” In order to enhance our ability and capacity to prepare students for “real life,” shouldn’t more of school actually look like “real life,” smell like “real life,” sound like “real life,”…?

For nearly a decade, I have been immersed in a research question of my own: If schools are supposed to prepare students for “real life,” then how come more of school doesn’t look more like “real life?” I’m a bit embarrassed that I never thought of the other market-research question until now.

Why aren’t we studying more about how people learn in the other 75% of their lives? How might school be adjusted and adapted to look more like this other 75%? Isn’t that an obligation we face, if we are serious about preparing students for “real life?” Just imagine how much more relevant and engaging and even preparatory school could be with such market research. We could even pool our efforts and contribute our market research to a common repository of findings. Then, we could all get better.

[Note: I keep putting “real life” in quotations because I think school IS real life for the students. In other words, school is not just preparation for “real life,” but school IS real life. It should reflect that fact to a great degree.]

PROCESS POST: Organizing and Annotating – #MustRead from Tony Wagner: “Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready” #EdWeek

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[Disclaimer: No one but I may want to read this post. Essentially, I am using this space to organize some past posts that I have written – to organize them in relation to Tony Wagner’s recent article about graduating innovation-ready students. The following is like a form of sticky-noting on my blog. But, as I have come to believe, why do this only for myself in a physical notebook…when I could share and possibly help another educational thinker/doer.]

Earlier today, I read a very powerful article about education and innovation – Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready, By Tony Wagner, September 12, 2012 Education Week. The article resonated with me in a way that only a few articles do. Even though I read voraciously, and even though I mark several articles a week “#MustRead,” I only occasionally discover and read one of those top 0.001% pieces of wonder.

In part, I think Wagner’s piece resonated so profoundly with me because I am doing some ongoing work that is providing mental velcro for such a piece of thinking-stimulant. Wagner’s four main implementation recommendations rung in my ears and everywhere else. I myself believe in:

  1. digital portfolio and authentic assessment over traditional, siloed marking and grading;
  2. teacher assessment based on professional learning and growth and evidence of student learning beyond mere “test scores.” Also, I believe admin should do what we expect of teachers and students! [related – Folio]
  3. schools collaborating together, and with business and non-profits, to create R&D for education…and to impact the world more positively now;
  4. learning built on play, passion, and purpose…learning infused with choice and global relevance…learning contextualized with real life. [related – #PBL, #FSBL]

This blog is one of my own R&D spaces…one of my own digital portfolios…one of my own passion and purpose-based play spaces. I have been writing for months on the four topics above. In particular, I engaged in a 60-day experiment about how we might transform school and education (CHANGEd: What if…60-60-60). Tony Wagner’s piece made me recall much of that thinking.

Tony Wagner’s article also further contextualized the exact reason that I left Westminster to join Unboundary as Director of Educational Innovation.

So I am organizing, and I am making some annotations…

Our students want to become innovators. Our economy needs them to become innovators. The question is: As educators, do we have the courage to disrupt conventional wisdom and pursue the innovations that matter most?
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1. Digital Portfolios and Better Assessment:

“First, I believe the U.S. Department of Education and state education departments need to develop ways to assess essential skills with digital portfolios that follow students through school, and encourage the use of better tests like the College and Work Readiness Assessment.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]
2. Teacher Effectiveness and Professional Learning:
“Second, we need to learn how to assess teachers’ effectiveness by analysis of their students’ work, rather than on the basis of a test score. Teachers and administrators should also build digital portfolios, which their principals and superintendents should assess periodically.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]
3. Research and Development Labs:
“Third, to push educational innovation, districts need to partner with one another, businesses, and nonprofits to establish true R&D labs—schools of choice that are developing 21st-century approaches to learning.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]

4. Play, Passion, and Purpose:

“Finally, we need to incorporate a better understanding of how students are motivated to do their best work into our course and school designs. Google has a 20 percent rule, whereby all employees have the equivalent of one day a week to work on any project they choose. These projects have produced many of Google’s most important innovations. I would like to see this same rule applied to every classroom in America, as a way to create time for students to pursue their own interests and continue to develop their sense of play, passion, and purpose.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]

#MustRead from Tony Wagner: “Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready” #EdWeek

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Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready

By Tony Wagner,

September 12, 2012

Education Week

Our students want to become innovators. Our economy needs them to become innovators. The question is: As educators, do we have the courage to disrupt conventional wisdom and pursue the innovations that matter most?
.
  1. “First, I believe the U.S. Department of Education and state education departments need to develop ways to assess essential skills with digital portfolios that follow students through school, and encourage the use of better tests like the College and Work Readiness Assessment.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]
  2. “Second, we need to learn how to assess teachers’ effectiveness by analysis of their students’ work, rather than on the basis of a test score. Teachers and administrators should also build digital portfolios, which their principals and superintendents should assess periodically.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]
  3. “Third, to push educational innovation, districts need to partner with one another, businesses, and nonprofits to establish true R&D labs—schools of choice that are developing 21st-century approaches to learning.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]
  4. “Finally, we need to incorporate a better understanding of how students are motivated to do their best work into our course and school designs. Google has a 20 percent rule, whereby all employees have the equivalent of one day a week to work on any project they choose. These projects have produced many of Google’s most important innovations. I would like to see this same rule applied to every classroom in America, as a way to create time for students to pursue their own interests and continue to develop their sense of play, passion, and purpose.” [emphasis from my highlighting in Diigo]

Inspired by possibilities of #PBL – how are we engaging our students with problem finding and solving?

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Two emails and a nearby creek have me giddy about #PBL possibilities. Yep, that’s right – I said giddy. I admit that I have an issue – whatever it is I think I see… becomes a PBL to me.

Giddy-up #1: Soccket! Yesterday, my long-time co-teacher and learning partner @jgough sent me a link to this amazing invention – a soccer ball that functions as a generator. Incredible – Uncharted Play: Innovate. Play. Empower. Watch the video, at least!

Giddy-up #2: Hopscotch Detroit! Thanks to a subscription to The Daily Good, I was invited into a story about a community building the largest hopscotch court in history. The goal – to encourage a city to find communion in playing with each other.

Giddy-up #3: Seeing students in Peachtree Creek. I wish I could give you a link to this one. As I was driving to work this morning, I noticed a school activity vehicle (a.k.a. “bus”) stopped near Memorial Park. It appeared that high school students were collecting water samples in Peachtree Creek. Yes! I have dreamed for a few years that more schools would engage our city creeks in such a way. I only with I knew who it was; I’d love to talk with them about what they’re trying to accomplish.

So, when I read and see these examples, I imagine a cohort of students posing questions and curiosities to a facilitator (known as a teacher in the olden days). Through expert contextual guiding, the facilitator enables the students to pursue their own passions. One group is interested in energy, and one of the team members had recently read about using a piece of playground equipment to pump water in an African village. Another team member wondered what other play things could be turned into energy generators. The soccket – or something like it – is born. In another group, the student-learners are crazed at thinking that they can turn the city streets into something like an adult playground. Perhaps they’ve watched Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk about teaching kids to take charge, or maybe they’ve seen the video about turning steps into piano keys. They are inspired by the Indian children’s zebra-stripping and the feet symphonies of subway exiters, and they want to go large scale to with a Hopscotch Detroit idea. And a third group feels passionate about improving the water quality of the creek that runs in front of their Atlanta homes. They decide to do something about it, and their facilitator organizes an activity vehicle to cart them to the shores of the waste-ladden waters.

Oh, the possibilities! There’s science, math, English and language arts, history, sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, design and city planning, architecture, prototyping, community interviewing and communication, making a difference with things that matter and affecting real audiences.

It’s not 50 minutes of math, 50 minutes of science, 50 minutes of English, and homework to check and grade the next day. It’s as much transformational as informational. It’s not unstructured and loose; it’s hyper-structured and necessarily tight. It requires more of technology as field equipment than just a digital replacement for a notebook. It’s engaging and inspirational. And it’s highly and gloriously doable.

But more schools could be doing it.

Just imagine…

No, don’t stop there. Get started…

What’s your school’s pedagogical master plan? Will your students systemically have such experiences?

They could be.

Cut it to your core and concentrate on clarity

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Rob Evans spoke of taking things off of our plates before adding more on. Gary Hamel introduced the notion of core competencies. And Greg McKeown gave us the clarity paradox.

“the clarity paradox,” … can be summed up in four predictable phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success. 
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities. 
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts. 
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure.

– from “The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” Harvard Business Review, August 8, 2012.

It’s a fundamental principal of design, too. Take away all that is non-essential. Reduce until you cannot reduce any more. Then, the best will remain. When I think of this principal, I think of a sculptor reducing a block of marble to the essential remains – I see something like Michelangelo’s David. In fact, now that I think of it, the content of the statue points strongly to the lesson, as well – a small boy with only a sling defeating an enormous giant.

One way in which a school can achieve systemic unity and cohesive pedagogical architecture – don’t add so much to your plate…know your core competency…maintain your clarity of purpose…strip away the stone to reveal the statue…master the sling and know your creator instead of carrying too many weapons and weighing yourself down with too much proudly worn armor.