Have chance, will learn

EdSurge reported this great story from Ethiopia that demonstrates further the power of the motivated learner:

HAVE CHANCE, WILL LEARN: Amazing preliminary results reported by One Laptop Per Child around a bold experiment happening in rural Ethiopia. Several months after dropping off solar-powered Motorola Xoom tablets, 20 first grade-age children have managed their way from finding the on/off switch to hacking the preventative software installed by OLPC. No instructions. No guidelines. No teachers. Just a single technician to retrieve data from the devices each week. "Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android," reported OLPC’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte at the recent EmTech Conference. Results are hardly conclusive, but the development raises interesting questions around how and why we plan learning objectives (teacher control group anyone?). The story reminds us, too, of Sugata Mitra's experiment of giving village children in India access to a computer via a hole in the wall. For now we'll simply smile about the new learning opportunities enabled by technology.

I'm sure Negroponte will be referring to this again when he keynotes at Learning Technologies Conference, London in January 2013.

No pain, more gain? Research supports "less learning more often"

Many years back, I coined a phrase that neatly summarised my view on how to change current training design and delivery practice so that it can dramatically improve effective learning and performance. My phrase?

"Less learning more often" 

(click to read the full article)

Is it happening? Well, it's beginning to it seems. We are clearly recognising that the concentrated, content-heavy course delivery model often fails to transfer effectively to competent performance in the workplace. A new approach that favours little and often, campaign over course, interwoven activities is, counter to many people's current beliefs, far more effective. Not only that, new research at Northwestern University suggests this new way of training could reduce by at least half the effort previously thought necessary to make learning gains.

The research also may be the first behavioral demonstration of meta-plasticity, the idea that experiences that on their own do not generate learning can influence how effective later experiences are at generating learning.

"Prior to our work much of the research into perceptual learning could be summed up as 'no pain, no gain,'" says Beverly Wright, first author of a study in the Sept. 22 Journal of Neuroscience and communication sciences and disorders professor at Northwestern. "Our work suggests that you can have the same gain in learning with substantially less pain."

The Northwestern researchers found that robust learning occurred when they combined periods of practice that alone were too brief to cause learning with periods of mere exposure to perceptual stimuli. "To our surprise, we found that two 'wrongs' actually can make a right when it comes to perceptual learning," says Wright. What's more, they found that the combination led to perceptual learning gains that were equal to the learning gains made by participants who performed twice as much continuous task training (training which by nature of its repetition and length often is onerous).

The findings hold potential for members of the general population with an interest in enhancing perceptual abilities -- for musicians seeking to sharpen their sensitivity to sound, people studying a second language or physicians learning to tell the difference between regular and irregular heartbeats.

This is great news for my me and my son as it means our intuitive, supposedly "lazy" approach to guitar practice, appears to be pretty effective!

 In my own article I referred to some earlier research which supports this further:

Back in 2001, the American Psychological Association published (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 2001, Vol. 27, No. 4) some interesting research. It concluded that practicing different skills in concentrated blocks is not the most efficient way to learn. While focusing on a particular skill leads to a short term boost in performance during the period of training, this leads people to over-estimate how well they learned the skill they practiced and results in poorer long term learning. This has the potential to fool trainers and trainees into believing that the apparent progress made during the training will be sustained in future performance back in the job. In fact, for long-term retention, practicing skills that are mixed with other tasks (contextual-interference practice as the researchers call it) results in better learning.

This has far reaching implications for most training design. It clearly points away from focused training on single skills and concentrated repetitive practice and suggests we design learning experiences that are deliberately interwoven among other tasks, requiring people to actively recall and then practice the new skill over longer time intervals.

As we acquire a better understanding of these learning processes perhaps the wider L & D world will be able to bite the bullet and accept that a more fundamental change in approach is needed. And hey, it looks like learning these new ways may be less effort than you first thought.

12 years of your life for 4 years of knowledge - a good deal?

Michael Feldstein has written a thought-provoking post on Xplana.com which "provides direct-to-student productivity tools that enhance the student learning experience". Xplana is an attempt to support individuals in their learning, which is a broad trend that will be highly disruptive to current educational models, certainly in Higher Education. The economic climate and availability of access to internet resources (while still not universal) sits in stark contrast with the student experience on offer in most educational institutions (and even corporate training for that matter).

Charles Jennings commented questioning the content-centric view of learning rather than an experience-centric view.

I suspect we need to redefine what “content” is. Certainly, the emphasis on complex, pre-packaged content (textbooks, e-learning tutorials etc) must shift to a more fluid, flow based model of content. In many respects, this is what informal, social learning embodies – the short comment, prompted reflection, trying things out, taking action – all intertwined with your daily life experience. Tools that can help nudge, structure, catalyse that experience will come to the forefront as we genuinely take more individual responsibility for our learning – as we won’t be able to rely on traditional institutions to provide the right support in the immediate future. Here in the UK, it’s reported that we will have 200,000 students not getting access to University education despite appearing to have the right grades and while the integrity of that process is an another debate, it looks like a growing contingent of students will avoid fees and the relatively glacial pace of learning on offer within the traditional route, and will take a very different path that is much more under their control and personalised to their needs.

As David Mitchell, a comedian, in the UK reflected (I paraphrase), “The education system provides 4 years of knowledge taking a leisurely 12 years to give it to you.” To which I might add, by which time you’ve forgotten most of it and with the remainder you’re still left unclear how to apply it in a useful and productive way.

Things can only get better…in the end.

Education As We Know It Is Finished

So says Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn in Forbes magazine. As authors of Disrupting Class, a useful manifesto on how innovation will change "the way the world learns".

There is a growing head of steam around changes to education systems around the world, largely driven by budget cuts. My hope is that the opportunity is grabbed to more deeply re-think how we use learning technology to fundamentally shape the learning experiences that we give children, students and trainees alike. Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence to show that existing institutions are simply trying to keep their operational models in tact and cut back rather than transform.

As Christensen and Horn put it:

Many schools have framed the looming cuts as a threat to how they operate--even though the teaching force has grown by 10% since 2000, while student enrollment increased by only 5%. But others are seeing the hardship of the moment as an opportunity to transform what they do with the implementation of online learning. Pressured by not only widespread cuts but also increasing demands for accountability, these innovative leaders recognize that online learning is a key reform for doing more with less.

On a similar vein, in the Independent today the UK Government is announcing a wider adoption of two year degrees. This is, I think, a good thing and long overdue. As the article points out:

Dr Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of the private Buckingham University, the first in the UK to offer a standard two-year academic degree, said: "Many more people are suited to two-year courses than realise it. In future, instead of a gap year, people may work for two years and then take a two-year degree when they are a bit older. The advantage is that they are earning in year three. We should allow people to choose what they want. But two years is a very cost-effective option."

He cited new research by the University of Staffordshire suggesting that two-year students achieved an average grade increase of 0.75 of a point, turning a 2:2 degree into a 2:1. "The normal argument for a three-year degree is that you need a long, four-month summer break for deep thoughts. No other human activity requires that. On a two-year course at Buckingham, you still have 12 weeks holiday a year and you don't lose your train of thought," he said.

I have to agree. It's not appropriate for all areas of study - particularly where access to specialist equipment is needed - but huge savings can be made to both students and institutions by properly re-thinking how this learning experience is delivered in a more flexible, accessible and genuinely meaningful way.

Now, the reactions that accompany this news seem to think this is a bad idea. Baroness Greenfield is quoted as saying:

My own view is that university courses are about developing the ability to criticise, think and put things in a wider context and to apply what you are learning to other aspects of life. If you are focussed on ticking boxes, you may not be able to see the wood from the trees.

Someone who is not an academic might resent this but academic study is not a nine-to-five job. All the best ideas come from reading around a subject, reflecting and bouncing ideas about. If university education is about inspiring the next generation, then I believe two-year degrees will prove to be a false economy.

While she makes a good point about developing critical thinking, context and reflection skills, her conclusion that this can't happen in a shorter period than three years misses the point. Everyone has - through the internet - better access to knowledge and skills development than ever before. We have accelerated our abilities to make intellectual connections and so already have the tools in front of us to learn what we want faster and more effectively, both through digital content and access to peers/experts where-ever they are in the world. By fundamentally reformulating university education around this reality I actually believe you can achieve MORE in less time. And in an austere climate, students will also be pleased to hear it doesn't need to cost them anywhere near the level of debt they are being asked to take on.

The power is finally shifting towards the consumers of education. Students can - and I think will - vote with their mouse (or touchscreen gesture) in favour of learning experiences that genuinely support their work and learning aspirations. And they should be able to take as long or as little time as they like to achieve it without unnecessary millstones of debt clouding their future.

"Online trainings not so successful" - lively debate on LinkedIn

Apparently, the log might be the most effective learning technology ever invented. Read on to find out why...

There is a discussion in the group Learning, Education and Training Professionals Group on Linkedin which appears to have taken on a life of its own. With nearly 600 posts, it represents an interesting cross section of what can be quite polarised views on the success (or otherwise) of learning technology as compared to classroom methods.

Some interesting points have been made on the way, and I've also weighed in with some views along the way. Given that you have to be on Linkedin and a member of this particular group to see it, I thought I'd share my last response to a comment posted that said:

No matter how hi-tech we are or how good the CBT/Online Training is, nothing replaces the "real time" of a live instructor who interacts with the student. The relationships fostered in the classroom training session for exceeds the few dollars saved by not contracting with a live person. In the 90's, at Lifeway Resources, we spent millions on then hi-tech video training through satellite transmission. In the end, all we did was spend millions on no training. 

In the words of a great Greek teacher, "the best classroom is me seating on one side of the log with you siting on the other exchanging ideas".

Here's my response:

One-to-one tutoring and support can be highly effective. But it doesn't scale very easily. With new technologies that enable wider interactive access to expertise it is feasible for one good teacher to effectively reach a wider audience than "one". As soon as the numbers of students rise, a teacher/trainer has to juggle attention and that leads to compromise - mainly in depersonalising the learning experience.

As a result a great deal of classroom teaching/training is simply ineffective even with a good quality instructor. Unfortunately there is a shortage of good instructors, so many students' experience is reduced to just making it through the session either in a state of boredom, confusion or anxiety. That can't be right.

With the technology now at hand to many (but by no means all) of us in the world, we can reach more people with a consistent learning experience, even if it lacks some level of personalisation. That too though is changing. A well designed CBT/e-learning experience can be highly engaging, impactful and result in behavioural change, just like a well designed face to face lesson. The key is the quality of the design, not the technology or medium used.

So, yes, it is easy to waste millions on technology when the case for deployment has failed to be made. But we waste billions on a now outdated model of education/training that is hugely inefficient, de-personalises the learning experience and results in unintended behaviour changes that are of suboptimal worth to employers and society as a whole.

We can - and should - think more deeply about how we change. As change we must if learning and development professionals (and educators for that matter) are to remain relevant in the future.

While a log would do for the Greeks centuries ago, I'd say the internet - and all the great array of interaction and collaboration it brings us - is the long overdue upgrade. Indeed the great teacher of the future might say:

"the best classroom is me sitting on one side of the blog with you sitting on the other exchanging ideas. In fact, why sit? We can exchange ideas any time, any where."

Actually, they probably wouldn't even use the word classroom at all...

What do you think?

Waiting for Superman: calling the education crisis

The people who brought us An Inconvenient Truth – raising awareness of the environmental challenges ahead of – have turned their attention to the US education system. The documentary ‘Waiting for “Superman”’ directed by Davis Guggenheim intends to pack some powerful punches about the state of the public school system while providing a call to action.

Below is a neat little animation that trails some of the desperate statistics underlying the problem that the film brings out:

TakePart: Participant Media - Waiting For 'Superman' - Infographic from Jr.canest on Vimeo.

While this focuses on the US, there are clearly parallels with many of the problems we face here in the UK. I’d like to say we should view this as an early warning of things to come, but that time has clearly passed. 

Just today the Guardian has highlighted how Higher Education is beginning to seriously face up to its deep structural flaws. The Open University is attracting many more young students than ever before. While the trigger might be avoiding what will be hefty debts by choosing a cheaper, more flexible option that allows them to balance work and study, they are pleasantly surprised to find it is a more conducive and supportive learning environment. They shouldn’t be surprised. The OU has pioneered a model that will dominate in the future (see Donald Clark’s posting for more on this). The good news is not only will it deliver a better education for our students, it can be achieved on significantly LESS public funds. A real win-win which if only this was whole-heartedly embraced could simultaneously work to reduce our national debt while also producing a more confident and productive generation that knows that work and learning go hand in hand in a future where accelerating change is the new normal. They can all be Super(wo)man.

KnowHow to KnowNow

What a difference one letter change makes to that old term “knowhow”. KnowHow meant retaining knowledge in your head so you could apply it at some undefined point in time in the future. While clearly there are basic skills and knowledge that we need to retain internally it is often a fallacy to think that short term, event driven training will be retained long enough, and in a good enough state, to be actioned confidently and competently at the point of need.

As we firmly move into an always online world our old assumptions of having to carry everything in our heads can and is being fundamentally challenged. Knowhow shifts emphasis from retaining facts and more to knowing how to find and fetch what you need when you need it. I call that “KnowNow”. That “N” that makes all the difference is the Network: the network of knowledge sources, people and tools that enable us to perform more reliably at precisely the time we need to. It represents a firm shift towards real time ubiquitous performance support.

Is this science fiction? Not really. Just look at the behaviour of anyone with an iPhone loaded with apps. On the immediate horizon is Augmented Reality – which in real time adds digital support to the immediate location you are in. All driven through your smartphone, which if you don’t have one now, you will do within 2 years.
KnowNow also represents a deeper understanding of how our memories really work and how technology can be used to support better long term recall. By simply bringing learning closer to the point of action and acquisition of experience, then it inherently becomes more memorable. Harnessing the spacing effect also helps cement the key learning drawn from that experience.

While much of education and training still dwells on digitising traditional practices, the real prize is in fundamentally reinventing the way in which we support learning. Rather than get in the way with our “learning interventions” (a descriptive phrase that is all too true for all the wrong reasons) we should be building ways to nurture natural learning. This can only be done economically by putting available technology at the heart of our education and training systems, and not as some digital appendage to longstanding, unchallenged, habitual methods.

KnowNow – spread the word.

The Evidence on Online Education

Clive Shepherd tweeted a link to this research report: The Evidence on Online Education

The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all.

The US Department of Education noted that this new meta-analysis differs from previous such studies, which generally found that online education and face-to-face instruction were similarly effective on issues of learning, but didn't give an edge to online learning that may now exist.

While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the relative success (or lack thereof) of various teaching techniques used in online courses. The use of video or online quizzes -- frequently encouraged for online education -- "does not appear to enhance learning," the report says.

That is something to think about - I wonder what the quality of these video and quizzes were like?

Using technology to give students "control of their interactions" has a positive effect on student learning, however. "Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning as individuals," the report says.

Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. "Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning," the report says.

That's an interesting statement - taking the time to learn is a critical factor, which is a clearly central to genuine self reflection and ensuring understanding. Having control over that time is crucial too. Many classroom situations are not conducive to this at all. So your learning environment is critical. Actual learning time in these situations may be minimal compared to the more effective time spent learning in a more concentrated, but spaced fashion (or virtually collaborating) online. This supports my own cry for less learning, more often.

Accountability and orientation

Here's a great comment on this report from "SL" who appears to be at the front line in offering students online learning opportunities and tells it like it is - give the right motivational support and guidance on online learning tools and students will respond positively:

Yes, I may have to spend a little extra time at the beginning of the term making sure my students understand how to navigate the LMS and point them to the online course resources, activities and communications tools, but they don't get the option of NOT learning how to use them, even in my F2F classes, which I would term all blended to a great er or lesser degree! In some EVERYTHING for the course is in our LMS and it is taught in a computer classroom.
The results are always the same:

1) An early steep learning curve, with a fair amount of "I can't" and "You're making us do all the work!" whining.

2) A period of "Well yeah, maybe I can" when a lot of the tech-forward students start helping their tech-phobic classmates (with my encouragement because I am into the subject matter content phase at that point(although I will always help students one on one with tech issues outside of class) which fosters group interaction and interdependence.

3)What I like to call "the quiet time" from about three weeks into the term until near the end, when my blended courses are firing on all cylinders (meaning the students have finally accepted that I am NOT going to do this for them- it is up to THEM, individually and collectively), right through me attending meetings, "lost" class time from snow days, athletics trips (all our teams travel with a laptop), students having to go home for family or health emergencies (including one having to miss the last month of a term for major surgery), etc. My "class" is always in session, 24-7, rain or shine, internet-willing. "All" I have to do during this period is put out tech brush-fires (people suddenly locked out of their account, etc) and serve as guide on the side, spending parts of each class meeting as a "cheerleader", answering questions,doing demonstrations, reviewing 3D models (often in a "game" format), giving new topic overviews,leading (or just listening to) discussions, advising on group projects, and of course my "real job":, assessing learning (A LOT) with regular online quizzes and exams. A fair amount of classtime is "free" for them to work, alone or together, on class assignments and online learning activities. Then all I do is walk around to keep them on task and off Facebook.

4) And lastly, what I term the celebratory "We did it!!!" phase, when the students look up, realize the term is almost over and that they have accomplished a BUTTLOAD of work and learned a great deal and that they did it (mostly) all THEMSELVES. Sometimes they do accuse me of having "tricked them into learning stuff". For that I do not apologize!? ;-) >95% excellent course evaluations ensue, students ask what other courses I teach the same way and sign up for "extra" courses in my discipline, tests of retention in later classes and our program assessments show great retention for my blended students, and the students beg other faculty to use the LMS for course materials, the calendar, etc. and sometimes even show them how to do so. Students come back and report that the class made them a better, more responsible student in other classes, regardless of delivery method.

And no, these are not upper level or grad courses (which actually turn out to be a bit more comfortable taught in a more traditional Socratic style) however in those we still use the LMS for all sorts of course material exchange and communication. Its just a great way to put everything in one place, for faculty and students alike! The courses I teach as most strongly blended are a freshman-level non-majors class and a 200-level service course.

You just have to get past that Phase 1 with a determined and positive "Yes you CAN!" attitude ...

We need more people in education like this. What a difference that would make...

The Future of Learning Institutions

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about how organisations adapt to a world which is now profoundly affected by communications technology. The early hype of the internet is starting to make a fundamental impact to our lives both at work and at play. We shop differently, we work differently, we take part in world events like never before. It's a "real time" experience in the virtual online world (how ironic?).

Yet the way we learn has not really kept pace. I've grown up with computers and networks and made a career out of harnessing these to aid and improve learning effectiveness and workplace performance. Yet, it is only now that some of the fundamental assumptions around learning pedagogy and the structures of our learning organisations - both in education and in business - are being truly challenged.

Don Tapscott has recently written a piece on The Impending Demise of the University. Here he suggests:

"Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning.There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn."

This gap has been gaping for some considerable time - I would suggest since well before the birth of digital communication and the internet. Technology has been a catalyst to reveal the core difficiencies and inefficiencies of our assumptions about learning best practice.

To add to the growing number of calls for change is a report - an impending book - by Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg on The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. In it they ask:

If we face a future where every person has (easy access to) a laptop or networked mobile device, what will it mean? What will it mean for institutionally advocated, mediated, and activated learning? How will educators use these tools and this moment? How will users—learners—adapt them to learning functionality, access, and productive learning possibilities? Will what is learned and the new methods of learning alter as a consequence, becoming quicker but shallower, more instrumental and less reflective? Or will the social networking possibilities prompt greater reflexivity, a more sustained sociality in which the positions and concerns of the otherwise remote are more readily taken into consideration in decision making? How can we use these tools to inspire our most traditional institutions of learning to change?

Lots of questions - and they also present some answers, well findings, that will help institutions start to change to support an audience who have - to a large extent - changed already and will look elsewhere for their learning needs.

Bravely they put forward ten principles for the future of learning:

Self learning

Learning through making your own connections and links - massively accelerated through the use of a browser and tools such as RSS, Twitter and note collecting tools such as Evernote.

Horizontal structures

Moving away from top down, authoritative, standardised education - which is by far the dominant model still - to one where collaboration dominates and you focus on learning how (process) rather than learning that (content).

Collective credibility

What is an authoritative and trusted source of information? Is it text books (long out of date usually)? Lecturers (ditto)? Wikipedia/blogs (who wrote it?) Learning what and who to trust is key to surviving in a fast changing sea of information where everyone is a publisher and voices an opinion.

De-centred pedagogy

Unclear phrase but essentially means learning institutions need to move away from "expert" authorised curricula and their current restrictive practices on the use of alternative learning sources (such as Wikipedia etc) and promote a more collective model where incremental learning comes from lots of sources and reliability and trust is managed in a very distributive manner.

Networked learning

Essntially collaborative learning, where working together is more effective than working alone as an individual. Technology makes this easier than ever before and requires team-based skills that are currently peripheral (rather than core) to a lot of higher education assessment and evaluation.

Open source education

Removal of intellectual property restrictions and open sharing of new content of learning purposes. Pioneered by MIT and now increasingly popular there is much to be said for this to reduce the huge amount of duplication of effort in learning institutions around the world. With a more commercial hat on, it's hard to see how this can be made sustainable in the longer term as the wider internet community is debating how long the "free" culture can actually last.

Learning as connectivity and interactivity

This says the same thing really as the earlier principles but with a statement that technology is the core enabler here, at the heart of the model, not on the periphery.

Lifelong learning

We are having to take more responsibility for our learning and development, so that we stay relevant, employable, and engaged with what is an increasingly digitally driven society. The Digital Britain report published this week demonstrates the importance of providing both the right infrastructure, policies and priorities to ensure we capitalise on the opportunities available.

Learning institutions as mobilising networks

Traditionally, institutions represent rules, governance, control of production and distribution of standardised content and learning practices. As mobilising force, the emphasis is on flexibility, interactivity, collaboration and crucially outcomes. This means institutions need to radically change in structure in order to rebalance their cost and revenue models to focus on new areas of value.

Flexible scalability and simulation

This makes similar points to those earlier again emphasising the potential of technology to connect groups, large and small, and to provide access to simulations/virtual experiences that accelerate learning enormously, making good the vastly unequal distribution of physical resources (for example science labs, access to geographical sites of interest, proximity to valued people etc).

So, not sure if these 10 principles are that profoundly stated but provides a useful platform for reflection on the way in which learning will be shaped, guided and modelled in the future.

We can no longer hang on to old ways - there will simply be no audience left.

A British musical learning experience

Just this past weekend I took my family up to London and the O2 Centre (the rebranded Millenium Dome) to see an interactive installation called the British Music Experience.

It was great to see a modern attempt to create an environment designed to engage an audience of all ages. It had some real lessons in how to provide an effective learning experience in the 21st Century. First of all, technology was at its heart. Each area used clever interactive displays to explore the development of British music from the 1920s to the modern day. Huge screens enabled you to collaborate and comment with others on facts and figures. Memorabilia could be chosen and short audio clips brought them to life. You could twist a dial and move backwards and forwards in visual time to see how the political changes of the Thatcher era influenced musical innovation, fashion and mood. You could explore a large digital map of Britain and discover where bands originated from and where key events in rock and pop history occurred.

You could then get your dancing shoes on and be instructed in various dance styles from the ages, and then watch back your performance to the hilarity of all. Best of all you could use the Interactive Music Studio and sit down and play a guitar, bass, keyboards, drums all while being instructed by a famous musician on video. These were stimulating interactive learning experiences and great fun.

A neat twist is that by wiping your ticket over sensors on each exhibit, you could choose to "clip" that information for reference back at the main web site. You can also save your performances to view/listen back to when you got back at home.

You can see more photos here.

If only school were more like this.

Sir Ken in his element

I have a lot of time for Sir Ken Robinson. Here he is essentially promoting his new book The Element which champions the notion that education should first and foremost be about self discovery and self development, actively supporting us as individuals to discover our talents and passionate interests. He does so with wit and with a quiet persuasion that really needs a wider audience if the changes he calls for are to be realised.

But I share his belief that real, tangible, fundamental change is drawing closer, and the fearful ostrich that is our education system can no longer hide its head in the sands of inertia.

Some of my choice quotes from the video above:

"Education should be about promoting diversity rather than conformance."

"Education is not about standardising, it's about raising standards - something very different."

"People are only transformed when they are engaged."

As he points out, it's a sad endictment of our times when the US state of California will, in 2010,  spend more on its prison system than on education. And perhaps the "epidemic" of kids diagnosed with attention deficiency disorder (8 million) in the US is more a sign of a desperate attempt to hold a broken system together.

Home schooling - the future?

The Financial Times has run a feature - A Class Apart (warning: you may need to register) - which reports on the continuing rise in families opting for home schooling. These statistics caught my eye:

• 17%: The estimated annual increase in children who are home-schooled in the UK (presently 50,000)
• 10%: The proportion of home-educating families in the UK who use textbooks on a frequent basis
• 42%: The proportion of home-educating families in the UK that earn less than the national average wage. Despite perceptions that learning at home is a middle class phenomenon, 17 per cent of families live on incomes of under £10,000 per year
  Source: Mike Fortune-Wood
• 1.1 million: The lowest estimate of the number of children being home-schooled in the US. (17 US presidents were educated at home.)
  Source: Fraser Institute

In the overall scheme of things 50,000 families may not be huge but given that The Guardian reported just last year (2007) that the figure was 16,000 (which represented a three fold increase since 1999) the growth is not linear. Something that was once regarded as fringe and alternative may rapidly become mainstream.

As the FT reports:
Since there is no legal duty on parents to inform local education authorities that they are home schooling their children, the government has no idea how many children are in this position. Only if a child starts school and is then withdrawn is there an official record. But this misses out the thousands of children who never start school in the first place.

School is not compulsory in the UK - which may come as a surprise to many parents.

Section 7 of The Education Act 1996 (England and Wales) states that: "The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable: (a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and (b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

This "otherwise" gives us a surprising amount of freedom as the FT summarises:

They don’t have to follow the national curriculum, enter their children for exams, observe school hours, give formal lessons, or mark work. Local authority inspectors can ask annually for written information on how a child is being educated, but they have no right to meet the child or visit the home. Should a local authority decide a child is not receiving a “suitable” education it does have powers to send him or her back to school. In practice, though, courts rarely rule in the authority’s favour.

This, I feel, may open the flood gates. There is growing pressure and dissatisfaction in the education system from all sides - from parents, students, teachers and education professionals. Like the proverbial boiling frog, the temperature is at a level which is already causing real damage to the very foundations of the system.

Research conducted by the University of Durham looked at the motives for home schooling. Top of the list is disappointment with "education", schools, ideology, school bullying, lack of personal attention. But putting negativity aside, when asked what home education meant to them the breakdown of descriptors was as follows:

These descriptions reflect a lot of current thinking around effective learning strategies at all ages, in education and in the workplace. Technology now enables this model to work far more efficiently than ever before. We can have highly individual learning experiences, be geographically dispersed and yet actually maintain a larger, more diverse set of social connections while simultaneously reinforcing family bonds. Interhigh is just one example of an "internet based school" that provides some structure and support for home-schooled kids.

Of course the key to this working is the shape of the family unit, having parents/carers interested and motivated to support children in their learning experiences. Time and money are issues but with increased mobility and flexibility around how we work and learn, the increasing accessibility of technology, and harnessing of our innate desire to self-learn it starts to become practical to stop "schooling" and instead support learning as a constant activity throughout our lives.

The traditional school experience will inevitably undergo radical change - perhaps sooner than we all expect.

Newsnight - Paxman KOs Brain Gym founder

Just watched Jeremy Paxman do his usual combative stuff interviewing the US founder behind Brain Gym - in the words of the Newsnight blog:

Brain Gym is a programme used in hundreds of schools across Britain - backed by the government. It’s a series of daily physical exercises that are supposed to aid learning - by stimulating the vital organs. Many teachers - and many pupils - are convinced it works. But scientists are worried - believing that it amounts to "pseudo-science" and is misleading young children about the workings of the human body.

The report showing kids and teachers actively using the techniques were more disturbing than heartening. While I believe more awareness of how we think and learn should be part of our curriculum, there should be more care applied to adopting programmes such as these which appear to be largely unproven. The one bit of evidence available showed a link between physical exercise and calmer more focused classes of kids. But this really isn't anything new. I wouldn't be surprised if you replaced these particular Brain Gym exercises ("brain buttons" and "energy yawns" were to examples) with any other set of similar physical activities and you'd get largely the same results.

The other claimed effects were viewed with high sceptism by Colin Blakemore, Neuroscientist at Oxford University. Mr Dennison, the founder, was not at all convincing. Neither were the kids who were interviewed in support of the techniques - they appeared to parroting back phrases that you could see they didn't really understand.

It would be a real shame - and a huge missed opportunity - if we end up confusing neuroscience with pseudoscience. It appears that our education system and much of the training world is still too ready to adopt programmes that lack strong scientific foundations. Let's hope this doesn't obscure some of the geniune progress being made in understanding how our brain works and learns.

Sense about Science will have something to say about this.

You can probably catch a re-run of Newsnight on BBC iPlayer - watch it and let me know if you'd be happy for your own kids' school offering this type of tuition.