on education for democracy

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on education for democracy

While the importance of education in a democratic society is quite obviously, the specifics of an education that contributes to the development of a healthy democracy are subtler. We immediately recognize that citizens need a sound and meaningful education to be able to participate effectively in democratic life. But, when we think about what learning is required, we soon realize that this can’t be entirely described by knowledge and skills—the way we usually think about educational outcomes. What’s more, much of the learning required for active democratic citizenship does not really fit within the framework of existing subject disciplines. How, within our current curricula, are we expected to cultivate civic virtues such as autonomy, justice, and mutual respect? Where, within the context math, or science, or even social studies, do we meaningfully contribute to students’ engagement with civic life?

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reorienting the hidden curriculum

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reorienting the hidden curriculum

The hidden curriculum as a concept was a good starting point, but it's also a dead end. The value is in what it is looking at, and the constraint is how it does that. The hidden curriculum refers to the various things that students learn in school that are not part of the formal or explicit curricula. The idea is almost always presented in a negative or critical light, stressing the way in which tacit aspects of the schooling experience serve to condition students into accepting the status quo and internalizing hegemonic structures. 

The important revelation in this idea is that there is a lot being learned in school which is not directly linked to teacher talk and textbooks. The hidden curriculum was called hidden because it is not always easy to spot. It exists somewhere beneath the surface of what we are used to paying attention to in classrooms. It relates to the assumptions we

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deconstructing play

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deconstructing play

The Basic Idea

When we say play, we're actually talking about a whole variety of different things. The term encompasses activities which range from manual to mental, from tangible to imaginary, from closed to open, from individual to group, from competitive to cooperative, and from silent all the way to rowdy. Basically, play refers to the enjoyable and purposeful activities of babies, old folks, and everyone in between. Play is often centred around some kind of game, or toy, or scenario—but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a pretty open category. 

Functional Importance

Play is one of the most natural human behaviours. It is among the precious few innate human functions which are not immediately necessary for survival. Children are born

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deconstructing curriculum

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deconstructing curriculum

The Basic Concept 

Curriculum design, at its essence, is social engineering. The concept of curriculum is used in a variety of different ways, but is generally understood to refer to the scope of what is taught and learned in an educational setting. Because this meaning is so broad, distinctions have been drawn, for instance, between the taught curriculum and the learned curriculum, or between the formal curriculum and the informal curriculum. Formal curricula provide the authorized encoding of what the educational institution deems to be important.

In most institutionalized educational settings, the curriculum is defined operationally by some kind of formal body of material, a course syllabus, a set of required readings, a document outlining standards and outcomes of the learning experience etc. Whatever

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deconstructing school architecture

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deconstructing school architecture

The Basic Concept

At the fundamental level, school architecture is as simple as it sounds. The basic assumption, of course, is that we need some kind of building to house students. We should not take that for granted because there are plenty of examples around the world where that is not the case, either out of choice or necessity. In addition, online learning is becoming more common, which has the potential to transform the way we understand the concept of school just as it has done with our concept of community. But for the time being, we can acknowledge that most formal education takes place in a building of some sort.

Functional Importance

School architecture has a strong functionalist element. First and foremost, we expect that

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implementing education for democracy

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implementing education for democracy

With the understanding that democratic citizenship is cultivated through experience, the operational question becomes one of how to create this experience. To embrace democracy in this manner is not to subjugate adult authority in the school to the masses of children surrounding them. Rather, it is to provide students, each passing year, with incrementally more sophisticated opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills and cultivate their character and dispositions, through appropriate activities, with adult supervision and guidance. 

With reflection, it is possible to see opportunities for mainstreaming democratic principles into students' daily experiences in school. This section provides a number of potentially high impact entry points for infusing democracy into school life. Other possibilities abound, as almost all contextual factors affecting students' experiences--

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deconstructing assessment

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deconstructing assessment

The Basic Concept

Student assessment is prominent in most education systems, and its prominence is only increasing in the age of market-based education development, comparative rankings under the guise of accountability, and "scientific" reform. But assessment is implemented in a huge variety of ways.

One fundamental distinction in assessment is that of intent. We can differentiate between assessment for learning, which is formative and ongoing, and assessment of learning, which is usually just summative. Generally, summative assessment will tend towards the formal, whereas formative assessment can include formal testing or be as informal as teacher observation. While most assessment is carried out by some kind of adult authority figure, we should also give consideration to students' involvement as co-assessors, through

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conceptualizing education for democracy

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conceptualizing education for democracy

Education's role in democracy is simple to understand, but the mechanism for fulfilling this role is harder to conceptualize. On the one hand, we recognize that citizens need a sound education to participate effectively in democratic life. But on the other hand, the specific learning required cannot be fully elaborated in terms of knowledge and skills in the existing subject disciplines. How, within our current curricula, are we expected to cultivate the requisite civic virtues, things like autonomy, justice, and civic respect? Where, within the framework of our current subject disciplines, do we acknowledge the importance of students becoming engaged critically with issues of democratic importance?

Most contemporary approaches to education mask the political concern over how we are cultivating our citizens, with a technical concern over efficiency in teaching content.

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good pedagogy.. large classes?

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good pedagogy.. large classes?

Many teachers in many countries do not have the luxury of small class sizes. When access to education is a priority, and the system is constrained by human and financial resources, something has to give. But I've seen plenty of evidence that good pedagogy is possible even with large class sizes. 

The following was originally written in 2005 in the context of the bilateral Strengthening Capacity in Basic Education in Western China project, reposted here (English/Chinese) for the benefit of my colleagues in the RRU MAELM program. 

Strategies for Using SCI with Large Class Sizes

Working with large classes can be challenging no matter what strategies are used.  However, using SCI strategies with large groups can be particularly challenging.  The following are some strategies to help deal with common issues encountered when

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islands of inspiration

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islands of inspiration

Below is the text of my presentation to the 18CCEM Ministerial Roundtable on Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Practice in Education for Sustainable Development.  

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Greetings, honorable ministers and esteemed delegates. I am honoured to have the opportunity to speak with you. 

I was invited here to share with you a report I worked on earlier this year, funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat. The report analyzed the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development, or ESD, in Small Island Developing States. This study originated from discussions around the impacts of climate change, to which small states are particularly vulnerable.  Recognizing that small states comprise a significant proportion of the member countries of the

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for what are we preparing our young people?

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for what are we preparing our young people?

The current preoccupation in educational reform seems to be with trying to do the same things we've always done, but better. I'm thrilled to have been invited to speak in a couple of sessions at the 18th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Mauritius, on the topic of education's role in sustainable development. Below is the text from the first session, a panel presentatation at the Stakeholders' Forum, looking at skills for the future: "Education for Tomorrow's World: For what are we preparing our young people?" My thesis was that we need to adjust our view of education's relationship to the future. We should not think about education as "preparation for" and try to come up with a list of knowledge and skills for the future (which are destined to be obsolete), but rather, to focus on education as the cultivation of more deeply held dispositions which will help students respond to

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deconstructing pedagogy

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deconstructing pedagogy

The Basic Concept

Pedagogy refers to the method or practice of teaching. In education circles the term is used in reference to things like instructional strategies and classroom management, essentially, the performance that the teacher puts on each day. But the idea need not be limited to these kind of direct behaviours. Many things which teachers do that don't involve direct interaction with students also have immense pedagogic potential. Montessori, for one, saw the pedagogic role of the students' learning environment, and devised an educational method which leveraged that potential through careful preparation of the environment to allow students freedom of choice while ensuring that those choices would result in meaningful experiential learning.

Functional Importance

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doing well by doing good

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doing well by doing good

Aroundsquare is pleased to announce that it has just been recertified by B Labs for its second term as a B Corporation. Not only that, but we've increased our score substantially on the rigorous B Corporation Impact Assessment. In our first two-year term, we sat at 88.6 out of a possible 200 points. The standard is high, companies need to be doing real things to earn each point.. green-washing does not count for anything.. and only those above 80 are eligible for certification. This year, we've jumped up to 112.5, through an ongoing effort to get better at what we do. This puts us up very high on the B Corp index itself. In addition, AO2 achieved the standard of excellence in all three applicable areas, governance, community, and environment. As Aroundsquare continues to learn and refine its processes, more good will come. To this end, the B Corps community, and the

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the educative context of a pluralist democracy

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the educative context of a pluralist democracy

A fair bit has been written about political aspects of mainstream schooling in the west.  Most of this is critical, exploring aspects of the hidden curriculum which undermine democratic participation and social justice by teaching students to be complacent, by priviledging certain knowledge over others etc.  This is an important body of work, and I agree with most of it.  But I've been frustrated by the overwhelming focus on critical over constructive perspectives.  We need both.  We need to acknowledge the shortcomings, but to envision a better way of doing things, we also need to step back and look at why things are the way they are.  In theory, our educational policy and legal context have been established to underpin a certain approach to education which was deamed appropriate to the kind of country we wanted.  I think it's time to revisit some of these underlying principles, especially in light of issues

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dead ends and possibilities

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dead ends and possibilities

I grew up playing with yo-yos.  I learned the basics on a fixed axel, and it was pretty mind blowing for me when I found out about sleeping yo-yos, with the string looped around the axel to allow it to spin at the bottom.  Around that time, the world started to open up.. Tom Kuhn started making precision yo-yos out of aircraft aluminum, with ball-bearing axels.. Duncan took things forward with the freehand embodiment which uses a counterweight that the player can release, rather than having the thing tied to the finger. And it just keeps going.. now there are a whole bunch of small batch yo-yo makers which have introduced side-cap bearings--bearings on the outside of the yo-yo which let the player basically hold the yo-yo in their hand while it's still spinning.. there are off-string yo-yos which aren't even attached at the end of the string.. and micro-diablos which are basically a yo-yo that can

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the problem with curriculum

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the problem with curriculum

I'm becoming increasingly aware of the problem with how we understand curriculum.  There was probably a time when curriculum related more clearly to the sum of experiences in schooling, but that time has passed.  Back when I was doing my pre-service teacher education, I learned that curriculum referred to a set of documents.. the outline of what we were supposed to teach.  I heard whispers every now and then about this thing called a hidden curriculum as well, but as exciting as that idea was at the time, I've come to think that both concepts are equally problematic--though for different reasons.  These days the best we seem to be able to come up with is the idea of standards. 

The problem with curricula, or standards, or syllabuses, is that they almost always reduce education to a set of things that students are supposed to learn.  This then gets flipped

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who gets to decide?

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who gets to decide?

Who Gets to Decide? Social Transformation and the Free School Movement 

While many alternative schools, including Montessori schools, may afford students relative freedom compared to the mainstream, those considered part of the free school movement have adopted a much more libertarian approach, emphasizing freedom from coercion and participatory governance.  While these schools do not have a single ideological or theoretical base (Gribble, 1998), they tend to share belief that the mainstream school system is unfit to meet the needs of children and society, or is even harmful to them (Graubard, 1972; Greenberg, 1995; Gribble, 1998), along with an earnest faith in the innate developmental potential of children (Greenberg, 1995; Gribble, 1998; Neill, 1992).  

In general, free schools seek to remove artificial barriers to the natural development of

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soft skulls, edutainment, slow play, and critical design

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soft skulls, edutainment, slow play, and critical design

Children are born with soft skulls--literally and figuratively.  Politically incorrect, huh.  But face it, children are designed, biologically, to come into the world prepared to absorb all sorts of stimuli and begin to make sense of it as information.  They're not doing this through language.. it's much more like osmosis.  In the early stages, they have no real cognitive filters.  Their perception is pure and unstructured. 

Slowly, their universe begins to coalesce, and take shape.  They begin to recognize and make sense of things.  But this is personal.  It does not happen according to some universal law of human nature.  Their cognitive infrastructure takes shape in relation to the world around them.  It is their specific experiences which give it form.  And since at this stage, children are not yet able to reflect critically on those experiences, it is important for adults to give some

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