From aspirations to reality: challenges for a new ‘21st Century' secondary school

Dr Graham McPhail g.mcphail@auckland.ac.nz

“stimulating, inclusive learning environment where learners enjoy innovative personalised learning, engage through powerful partnerships and are inspired through deep challenge and inquiry to achieve academic and personal excellence” (School Website).

The curriculum is conceptualised thematically.

research agenda• What is different about this school is the thematic,

modular and interdisciplinary formats for curriculum conception and delivery.

• What is the relationship between curriculum design and the potential for student conceptual progression in a 21st century school setting?

• How are the aspirational goals of 21st century learning actually going to enable learning growth and access to ‘powerful knowledge’ from project to project, from module to module?

• Could this be a Future 3 school?

school structures• Learning Hubs (17% of curriculum

time)Pastoral and academic tracking• SPIN (90 minute special interest classes,

students choose three per term, each 1x per week) (17%)

• My Time (11%)• SLM (Small Modules) (44%, interdisciplinary,

two teachers, 90 minutes x3 per week) • (Bombs Away, The Science of Delicious, The Mechanics of Me,

Welcome to the Danger Zone, Collision Course, Horror in Hotel)

• Big Projects (11%, 1 extended block per week)

The NZ vision – six principles

Supporting future-oriented learning & teaching —

a New Zealand perspective 

Report to the Ministry of Education R Bolstad & J Gilbert

with S McDowall, A Bull, S Boyd & R HipkinsNew Zealand Council for Educational Research

The NZ vision – six principles• (i) personalising learning • (ii) equity, diversity, and inclusivity • (iii) using knowledge to develop learning

capacity – “Knowledge is the process of creating new

knowledge. It is a product of “networks and flows” coming into being through interactions and intersections on a “just-in-time” basis to solve specific problems as they emerge.” (Bolstad et al., 2012, p. 13)

The NZ vision – six principles

• (iv) rethinking learners’ and teachers’ roles • (v) a culture of continuous learning for

teachers and educational leaders • (vi) new kinds of partnerships and

relationships: schools no longer siloed from the community.

The research draws on SR theory

in theorising aProgressive Knowledge Approach

drawing on key ideas such as

Knowledge differentiation (powerful knowledge)

The curricular implications of knowledge structures

The curriculum pedagogy distinction

Conceptual Progression

some methodological procedures and the initial data analysis

• Sociological concepts for analysis – – regulative/instructional discourse (Bernstein)

– faith, stuttering, and awkwardness (Lourie & Rata) as indicators of alignment/misalignment and clarity/contradiction

– we settled on the key concepts of clarity and contradiction, alignment and misalignment, and dissonance as analytical tools

Alignment and misalignment: Mindset and teacher development

• Mindset (Dweck, 2006)– the regulative discourse

• “a willingness to be innovative, a willingness to expose your practice to critique, a willingness to be happy in an environment where you’re always looking and testing to see if what you’re doing was the right way and perhaps look for other ways to do it, to be content in a state of unknown” (Principal Interview 1).

Alignment and misalignment: Mindset and teacher development

• “If you are critical of a particular aspect of the school I think you are seen as not really buying into it. You don’t have a growth mindset …whereas I would have thought that actually is the very definition of a growth mindset; the questioning and challenging” (Teacher D, I1).

• “I think we all took different times to go through that and come back out and I think it’s something that obviously we’ve got to look out for this year and forever onwards as new staff come in and try to find their place within things” (Teacher C, I1).

Clarity and contradiction: challenges in the curriculum design process

• “I don’t know of a school that can tell me that it’s tracking, say Year 9 kids through the curriculum - developing kids’ teamwork, their interpersonal skills and their problem solving as well as their reading, writing, arithmetic. And I don’t think the traditional school model is doing that” (P,I1).

Clarity and contradiction: challenges in the curriculum design process• Identity, Place and Space, Citizenship, Systems – How things

work.

• “We need to develop in kids for the world that is theirs now and in the future, their ability to critically search for information and critically analyse it so they can help create some knowledge to work with others who are doing something similar to solve a problem. That’s what we need. And school has got to prepare people for that. And I don’t think you’d do that by looking at disciplines as separated” (PI1).

Dissonance: Thematic curriculum and cognitive increase

• Teachers’ strong disciplinary identities can create a tension apparent in this first set of teacher interview data between retaining what could be described as a ‘conceptual core’ (what one teacher described as ‘cognitive ascent’) within the thematic-based learning approach. How are the aspirational and feel-good goals of 21st century learning actually going to enable learning growth from project to project, from module to module?

• It is telling that by the middle of the year a unified and meaningful tracking system had not been developed suggesting the schools priorities lay elsewhere.

next steps

• In the next stage of the research we are going to look in more detail at the curriculum coverage and delivery in the hope of find conceptual progression. The students are now in their second year and are moving towards national assessments for qualifications in 2016.

• The Principal and staff display a courageous approach to their work and an open approach to sharing their experiences. As this research evolves we aim to continue to critically engage with that vision for the benefit of the teachers, students and their families, and those watching with interest as this school enacts its vision.

references• Bolstad, R., & Gilbert, J., with McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins,

R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning & teaching – A New Zealand perspective. NZ: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

• Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.

• Lourie, M. (2013). Symbolic policy: a study of biculturalism and Maori language education in New Zealand. (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Auckland, New Zealand.

• Lourie, M. & Rata, E. (forthcoming). Developing a Realist Research Methodology.