Abstract

These are the slides I presented.

I was flattered (on behalf of the Ultraversity team) when John Naughton made the point that on the evidence I presented, Ultraversity had got the online community right, whereas the Open University so far had not. I found this ironic since my own enthusiasm for online community for learning had begun with experiments reported by the Open University dating back fifteen years before!

‘Curriculum Now’ was an online community tool commissioned by QCA and developed by Core Education UK.

The aim was to encourage dialogue within mutually supportive groups at the cutting edge of curriculum improvement - a place to share achievements and challenges with others. In addition to making a difference in schools, this national programme offered the potential for practitioners to influence curriculum policy and practice across the system - an online network with direct access to its members allowing a viral exchange of ideas, resources and knowledge both explicit and tacit.

Plone was chosen by Core Education UK as a cost effective solution to trial the online community model in the curriculum co-development context. It was also envisaged that the membership would be encouraged to explore Plone and other Web 2.0 technologies in support of ‘Curriculum Now’ objectives and their own professional activities.

There were three communities, All Co-Developers, Creative Partnerships and Consultants.

Aim: To research and develop the script and present a television programme discussing well-being in school education.

Link to video: SCHOOL MATTERS – Happiest Days?

( www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Teachers-TV-Happiest-Days-6049143/ )

Script:

Parents often ask their children “What did you do at school today? Nothing?” How much does it matter for pupils and staff to enjoy school? In a recent report, Lord Layard claims that 1 in 3 families are affected by depression and that this costs the economy billions of pounds. The failure of well-being in the population at large is critical. Can the foundations of happiness be laid in schools?

This programme looks at a range of strategies for developing well-being: We visit a primary school in Norfolk which has turned around behaviour and performance by adopting nurture principles … In Essex we see how self-assessment tools are helping pupils to analyze their capabilities and share responsibility for improvement … We look at new initiatives in the States that deal directly with issues of personal fulfilment … And we go to Liverpool where confidence and self-esteem humour are being developed through performance and humour.

Reflection: Responding to the challenge posed by the programme's researcher - 'What do you mean by delight?' - led me to clarify the foundations of my thinking about affect in education which had tacitly influenced the design practice I was carrying out. It later led to the development of my 'Analysis of Delight' poster, based on John Heron's work and my own ideas. (Heron, 1992)

Contribution: I provided a design practitioner's perspective to the programme maker's research, and articulated the ideas by editing the script and acting as presenter for the programme. My part: 25%

Originality, impact and importance: This television program was a new synthesis of ideas about well-being in schools - it was published on Teachers' TV and viewed and reviewed by many teachers. Its importance is in the way it links well-being with effectiveness in learning.

Our first example is of leadership throughout the school organizing explicit opportunities for convivial social experiences and creative teamwork. These opportunities need just as much planning, know-how and commitment as any subject in the National Curriculum. It is the creation of a space for children to take responsibility and find their fulfilment which marks out this ‘nurture school’ approach.

5 years ago, St. Andrew’s Primary in North Pickenham was a problem school. Although located in a small village in rural Norfolk, St. Andrew’s pupils exhibited all the symptoms of urban deprivation. They were disruptive, and had low esteem and low expectations.

Newly appointed Headteacher Jeni Barnacle realised she had to address the problems at a fundamental level.

Jeni’s approach was based on the principles of Nurture Groups, which were originally designed as an intervention strategy. A basic nurture tenet is that education can only take place in the context of positive, human relationships. Jeni decided to take the bold step of applying nurture principles across her whole school.

Nurture is essentially about creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and positive values. One of the most visible examples of that occurs at 1030 everyday, when lessons stop and all the classes sit down to a late breakfast.

Much of the teaching at St. Andrew’s is centred on themes, rather than individual subjects, with lots of emphasis on a hands-on approach. Teachers and children are given the freedom to develop to the extent of their imaginations.

And parents have noticed the beneficial affects of the nurture scheme as well.

So a ‘nurture school’ approach helps children understand each other. But what about making sense of themselves? In our next example, secondary age pupils are identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and with that self-knowledge taking control of finding a balanced whole. In this way they share responsibility for their learning, and may develop capability to maintain a balanced attitude for the rest of their lives.

At King Harold School, in Waltham Abbey on the outskirts of London, Year-10 students are undergoing a process known as ‘brain mapping’.

The questionnaire and subsequent analysis is based on principles developed at a university in South Africa for applications in the business community. Its use in schools however is a novel development.

Brain mapping attempts to associate a student’s thought processes with different functional areas of the brain. The ultimate purpose of the analysis is to find out which particular areas dominate.  The idea being that self-knowledge is an important route to personal fulfilment.

As this practice develops, school teachers will begin to note the pupils’ self-analysis and use it to plan the curriculum. At Strath Haven School in the United States, the curriculum is being developed to affirm young peoples’ lives and help them celebrate positive experiences. This recognises that being young does not prevent you from enjoying life and that learning is also about the self.

At Strath Haven, experimental positive psychology courses have been on the agenda for the last three years.

Today, teacher Kevin Haney is running a refresher session with students he first taught 3 years ago, when they were in 9th Grade. He is developing optimism skills – encouraging students to respond to adversity in a positive way. He starts by exploring the theme of gratitude.

Kevin’s English class is just one example of how positive psychology can be introduced into the curriculum. Psychologist Jane Gillham explains what it is all about.

Next year Jane and her team will be bringing positive psychology to some schools on Tyneside, as part of a pioneering, resiliency programme.

This responsibility – to take charge – has been taken to the limit in Liverpool, where everyone has the chance to stand up in front of the class and perform.

At Alsop High School in Liverpool something rather remarkable is about to take place. A select audience of parents, teachers and friends has been invited to an evening of stand-up comedy. The show is compered by professional comedian Steph Davies.

But the evening is really about 8 pupils that Steph has been mentoring for the last term.

Alan and his fellow comedians are undergoing an experience which Deputy Headteacher Paul Dickinson believes will have a profound, lasting effect.

The project is supported by Creative Partnerships and the Liverpool Comedy Trust, with the aim of building confidence among pupils.

Liverpool lays claim to being the home of English comedy, so it is no surprise that a Liverpudlian school should be the centre of this education experiment.

… which is why, 8 weeks ago, comedy tutor Steph Davies was invited to become a temporary member of staff.

Over the course of her workshops, Steph’s aim was to bring out the best in everyone.

And that confidence is there for everyone in the audience to see.

For the comics and their families the evening is a huge success and Alison is delighted.

It is not just pupils who have come under Steph’s influence. She is working with selected members of staff to help them develop comedy techniques for use in their lessons. But there is a serious side to the project.

My view is that a knowing happiness is key to intellectual fulfilment.  But happiness is also an entitlement – it relieves the anxiety around taking risks with big ideas, which is at the root of creative learning. In this way, in the examples we have seen of schools deliberately planning for well-being, happiness can be seen as central to effective learning. This should become a responsibility for all schools and executed with all the rigour offered to planning subject knowledge. Happy with that? I am!

BECTa ‘Innovative approaches’ content quality principle – work to review the principle and produce advice for practitioners and developers

Richard Millwood and John Davitt

March 2007

Response to Quality Principles surrounding the Innovative Approaches principle

In considering this principle, we read around the other principles and have these five observations to make:

1 It is not clear how the practitioner audience can directly relate to the principles, in one sense there is an ambivalence of audience.

2 The principles are often couched in an 'admonishing' style - what not to do, rather than more inspirational and positive statements of what is hoped for or might be achieved. There is an underlying sense of fear that technology will be abused rather than exploited successfully as if the principles were gate-keeping rather than signposting in nature and intent.

3 The principles suffer from an embedded and unspoken belief that the technology is in control, or that the learner 'experiences' learning rather than actively participates in it. This is at its worst in the principle on 'Assessment to support learning', which seems to imply that the technology should be the judge of human performance, but in fact capitulates in the bullet points to describe the learners', peers' and teachers' rôles in this regard. We would contend that the learners cannot be guided and measured by designed systems, although feedback on the accuracy of factual answers is useful evidence for learners and teachers to make proper judgements.

4 Only one principle starts with an adjective - 'Robust summative assessment' which helps to summarise the principle, rather than see it as a place name - should not others do the same? If all the titles where more informative in this way, it might make them more memorable and useful. In general, language used was passive and uninspiring.

5 The core design principles make specific reference to 'digital learning resources' and how they should be. In the core pedagogic principles, the subject of each principle varies between 'digital learning resources', 'teaching and learning' and 'technology-enhanced learning'. This needs a bit of tidying up so that the practitioner or developer can make sense of what exactly is being referred to here - practice or artefact?

Response to the Innovative Approaches principle

"Digital learning resources may be innovative in their design and use of technology and/or innovative in the approach to teaching and learning that they offer."

We feel this is an observation rather than a principle and it does not explain the characteristics of innovative approaches. The "and/or" leaves so much open and uncertain without providing any clarification of the nature and range of innovative approaches.

A replacement principle could be:

"Innovative approaches are rooted in imagination and creativity but are nurtured by a supportive environment, provide surprise and may involve risk. Digital learning resources benefit from innovative approaches which occur both in their design and deployment. It is important to recognise the role of ownership and progression in innovative approaches. Teaching and learning is refreshed and energised by innovative approaches, especially where there is evidence, reflection and communication to others."

This principle could then be expanded both for practitioner and  developers be as shown below:

Influence of Cybernetics

Influence of CETIS and TenCompetence

Challenge of institutional change

Aim: To design and develop a whole university framework for work focussed learning.

Reflection: Developing the IDIBL project meant taking a successful project, Ultraversity, and attempting to make it a whole university development – a huge challenge. Explaining the various aspects of this challenge meant exploring new theoretical perspectives and articulating the rationale for the model we designed for peer-review. This included learning about cybernetic theory, patchwork media, organisational analysis, change processes and disruptive innovation and analysing the findings of the project in this light. The approach was of participant action research and methods of survey, interview and interpretive phenomenological analysis were applied to the evaluation phases of the cyclical inquiry.

Contribution: My role was of co-developer, working closely to establish aims & values, design the curriculum, seek validation, organise, teach & mark work, operate quality mechanisms. I also designed the web site and fliers for marketing, sought meetings with stakeholders to market the course directly, worked with staff to disseminate ideas within the university, undertook research to establish evidence and co-wrote academic papers and made presentations at conferences. My part: 25% (with Stephen Powell and others)

Originality, impact and importance: The project was based on the experience of Ultraversity, but broke new ground by taking a whole university framework approach. It led to wholehearted adoption by some colleagues, whilst others appropriated parts of it for other courses. Its importance was in recognising the conditions under which work-focussed learning could prosper.

The rationale offered for validation of the framework in 2008

The inter-disciplinary inquiry-based learning framework (IDIBL) provides a pedagogic, organisational and assessment structure which can be used as a basis for course approval through modification of appropriate sections in this document by departments who identify an opportunity for an inquiry-based, work-focussed programme.

This should provide an agile procedure for introducing new courses, which intend using the innovative approaches developed for IDIBL. It remains for each course validation to identify a rationale for professional engagement, viability and delivery.

The framework is designed to offer a combination of pedagogical approaches, which together provide a different route for academic study and appeal to people who are committed to their.  The course will widen participation by satisfying learners' whose need is for flexibility with time, place and pedagogy.  More specifically this could be because:

1. They need to continue in full-time paid employment whilst they study;
2. They wish to make their study directly relevant to their work;
3. Family commitments prevent their on-campus attendance;
4. Geographical location or poor transport links makes campus attendance difficult;
5. They seek to develop further their communicative creativity and technological understanding as a complete professional;
6. Traditional examinations and academic essay writing are either intimidating or uninviting;
7. They seek the company, support and intellectual challenge of fellow students rather than studying alone;
8. They seek the advantage offered by technology to enjoy the possibility of work on joint ventures and studying collaboratively.

The modules contained within the framework focus on process, and generic concepts and outcomes rather than subject content.  Through a process of negotiation between the individual learner and the course staff, a personalised inquiry will be developed to include learning activities and assessment products that meet the module requirements and informed by the learners’ professional practice. All learners in a cohort will be carrying out their inquiries and develop assessment products to the same set of milestones. Thus they are expected to provide support and challenge to each other and travel a common path in spite of the personalisation of their study. The design encourages different perspectives from diverse professional and academic disciplines to be exchanged.

Learners will align and defend their attainment against module learning outcomes and with reference to competencies or national standards relevant to their work context.  Learners are expected to look critically at their work setting as a source of knowledge and experience from their own experience, colleagues’ experience and reference documents. This approach puts responsibility on the learner to maximise their effectiveness and efficiency through reflection on their work practice scaffolded by module requirements that are intentionally directed to enhance the quality and outcomes of work.

The framework is designed to enable progression by learners from a Foundation Certificate of CPD at level 3 through to level 7 Masters course.  Common throughout the framework is an inquiry-led, work-based approach to learning that meets students’ progression and continuity needs throughout.

There is a growing realisation that practitioner knowledge can inform academic knowledge.  This proposal recognises and supports a realignment of knowledge acquisition and sharing and a re-alignment of roles for staff in higher education and the practitioner in society.

As a backdrop, the 2006 Leitch report examines the UK's long-term skills needs and identifies increasing employer investment in higher level qualifications to meet the target of more than 40% of adults skilled to graduate level up from 29% in 2005. The approach outlined in this document is one route that should be attractive to employers and employees alike in that it offers a cost effective approach for students as they can gain their qualification at a full-time rate of study.  It is attractive to employers as the focus of student study is directly related to improving their work performance.

Module framework

The development and outcomes of this work are more fully reported on the Work Focussed Learning web site.

These are the slides I presented.

These are the presentation slides.

These are my slides, and this is my paper.

At the 2007 Owers Lecture titled 'Making a Future?', Jeff Roche described his school career and influences leading to a course in Innovative Manufacturing at Loughborough University, Dr Raj Rajagopal, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology responded.

These were the notes I presented based on:

"In from the cold- the rise of vocational education"

Professor Sir Graham Hills

project champion of the RSA's Visions of a Capable Society programme

November 2004

In 1985, an RSA report entitled 'Education for Capability' concluded that:

• "A well balanced education should, of course, embrace analysis and acquisition of knowledge. But it must also include the exercise of creative skills, the competence to undertake and complete tasks and the ability to cope with everyday life; and also doing all these in co-operation with others.'
• "The collective will of the universities, old and new, to reproduce their kind, has meant the perpetuation of the single-subject honours degree, its A-level precursors, the academic criteria of the Research Assessment Exercise, indeed every aspect of the tradition of knowledge over everything - to the detriment, of course of skills, training, work experience and all the other components of capability."
• "Flaws in the Academic Ethos:
  1 Fragmentation of knowledge
  2 Internal referencing, peer review, cronyism and social corruption
  3 Absence of context, flight from reality
  4 Objectivity taken to extremes, dehumanisation of science
  5 Authoritarian attitudes to knowledge and behaviour
  6 Competition between knowledge bases leading to internal uniformity and external conformity"
• "The World of Reality and Technology, outside Academia"
  1 Holistic, not reductionist
  2 Context driven, not subject driven
  3 Mission-oriented research, not blue skies
  4 Teamwork, not individual scholar
  5 Multi-authored publications, heteregeneous knowledge bases
  6 Divergent not convergent thinking
  7 Reflexive philosophy rather than objective statements
  8 Decisive criterion: does it work?"
• "... capability, the ability to act effectively in the face of new circumstances, is as epistemologically respectable as any other kind of knowledge."
• "The best way to connect the world of industry to  academia is to people it with students"
• "The idea that learning can only take place in a school or university is absurd."

Can't we aspire to earlier university entrance rather than raising the school leaving age?

These are the slides I presented.

The slides I presented.

These are the slides I presented.

The slides I presented.

These are the slides I presented.

These are the slides including the programme.