RE: Focusing on the learning rather than on the teaching

[paulingram <paulingram@freeuk.com>]

Ken:

>I guess I could go on, but I think that you get my point. The
>measurement systems in education are flawed for their inability to
>measure and for how they are used to demotivate. 

The measurement systems are self-fulfilling; could operate independently 
of 'education.' On this side of the pond, too, the ideologically based 
'industrial-relations' culture is still so strong within the state 
teaching profession that measurement systems are seen primarily as a 
threat to teachers, and hence subverted at source. Broadly speaking, our 
teachers are interested in being teachers - for life- before they're 
interested in education. Good managers could change this quickly and 
spread what we'd call joy, of a sort - but there aren't any good managers 
in the field, and there is no mechanism in existence for introducing 
them. Our English examination system has just been caught yet again with 
its trousers down, for manipulating 'quality,' up and down to political 
ends, instead of letting the measures measure. There's egg on every face, 
top to bottom, yet most faces were saved. Low-yield classrom learning is 
the norm and no-one wants to work any harder

But that was just a Government-scale example of what goes on in every 
school here. The bigger system is now so interdependent, founded on 
easily sustained low-interest rates and regardless of output, that true 
measurement of the performance of a  part of the system is not really 
possible. All have too much to lose, and this is more realpolitik than 
conspiracy theory. However, a shakedown clearly ought to be coming: to be 
blunt an economy founded on an inflated and inflating housing market and 
outward investment  can't go on for ever if fuelled by an increasingly 
ill-educated workforce. I don't want to think like this; but the forces 
ranged against real improvement in the educational system are 
substantial.  Of course with political convergence we no longer *have* 
shakedowns - but it will be interesting to see how the system adapts 
itself to accommodate the obvious need.

I'd be interested to hear of any parts of the Quality literature, dealing 
with the practical process of improving big,  intransigent and corrupt 
systems, like the above. I don't personally see a way of working with the 
existing hierarchy that can lead to a change in a system that hierarchy 
is designed to protect. 

For the measurement of learning, FWIW, my personal benchmark is just to 
look for an increase, or at least continuity, in the student's *desire* 
to learn generally, irrespective of what they are supposed to be learning 
in particular. . Measuring this is wholly subjective, yet also obvious to 
anyone, and can be fuelled and informed by structured feedback from 
parents, at least when it comes to the education of young children. I've 
done this, but many other teachers object most violently to any parental 
input in any educational matter.

cheers

Paul Ingram
Shropshire, England