leadership | Network.Ed

In dependence

Posted by José Picardo on March 3, 2013

The quest for independent learning is schools has always appeared to me to be intrinsically paradoxical. Like flying in birds or swimming in fish, it seems to me that dependence is in a school’s nature.

The culture in schools is one of dependence. Students need to attend school; they need to come to our lessons; they need to do as we say; and they need to pass the exams we set. Students are dependent. On us.

The odd teacher will, on occasion, notice that not all is well and will strive to inject some independence into their ailing students in order to slow down the onset of the chronic dependence. At this stage school committees might be set up in order to find out more about this devastating condition and teachers will spend hours discussing what they need do to fight the problem of dependence amongst their students.

But this reminds me the often quoted story of the drunk man looking for his lost keys at night under a street light. When a helpful passer-by enquires, the drunk tells him he that, in fact, he lost his keys further down the street. Puzzled by his response, the passer-by suggests that he might have better luck if he looked for the keys further down the street, where he lost them. But the drunk, convinced by his own logic, shakes his head and says “but here is where the light is”.

Vantage Point

Posted by José Picardo on December 15, 2012

I remember my introduction to Astronomy was an artist’s impression of the solar system which hung modestly in the corridor outside my classroom. It was a large poster with jagged crumple lines which traversed it like a lightning strike, revealing the white paper beneath the printed layer and culminating in a big tear in one of its corners which someone, long ago, had tried to fix with sticky tape.

When it came to the solar system, I remember my teacher was only interested in making me recite the names of all the planets in order, according to their distance from the Sun. Mercury was first and Pluto, which in those days was a fully fledged planet, was last. If it weren’t for that old poster, my interest in our Solar System would have dissipated immediately after the test.

Alternative reality

Posted by José Picardo on December 8, 2012

Earlier this week I led a seminar for PGCE students at Nottingham University on the use of the internet and its potential for encouraging pupils’ creativity. To start, I asked those present to put their hands up if they used the internet daily. All hands went up. I then asked them to keep their hands up if their pupils used the internet on a daily basis. After a moment’s thought, all hands stayed up.

However, when I asked the PGCE students – who had all finished their first teaching placement – to keep their hands up if they had planned or been encouraged to plan lessons, sequences of lessons or homework that required the use of the internet, all hands went down. Isn’t it curious, I asked them, that all of you and and all of your students use the internet daily but none of you exploit its potential for teaching, learning and creativity? Isn’t it curious that schools force their students to inhabit this alternative reality for six or seven hours every day where the internet doesn’t exist?

Rethinking professional development

Posted by José Picardo on October 3, 2012

The work of a teacher is both challenging and complex and requires high standards of professional competence and commitment. However, research shows that formal professional development may not be the optimum means by which such high standards of professional competence can be achieved. The principal reason for this is that traditional CPD tends to be based on one-off events¹ that can often be a solitary activity and can seem remote from colleagues, students and classroom practice in general².

Many teachers have begun to diverge from only using traditional CPD provision and started to address their individual and collective professional learning needs – which can often be perceived as being different by management – effectively by seeking informal professional development opportunities. An alternative model of regular peer-to-peer professional learning meetings – sometimes referred to as TeachMeets or Show and Tell sessions – is beginning to emerge as a more successful, supportive and motivating way of sharing best teaching practice with the aim of improving overall teaching and learning. Such bottom-up professional learning is more likely to be followed up and to result in innovative practices that are successfully embedded and sustained³.

We are all fortunate to teach alongside excellent teachers whose expert practice could benefit the wider school but often remains confined to their classrooms due to the relative inefficacy and limited opportunities offered by lesson observations. Thus, we would benefit from exploring ways to share highly relevant expertise amongst our colleagues that are not tinged with the negative connotations often associated with lesson observations and other “institutionalised” means of professional development.

Generating ICT

Posted by José Picardo on August 15, 2012

In the early 1950s, my grandparents leased a humble patch of farming land in rural Andalucía where they were able to grow crops and graze their modest herd of dairy cows. There they built a house and raised their children.

In those days if you needed water, you had to dig a well. So they did. Incredibly they managed with a well and without electricity – using butane and paraffin lamps – for another 20 years.

By the time my dad was a young man, my grandparents had invested in a diesel generator that would allow them to run some electric appliances and watch TV or listen to the radio in the evenings. Eventually, round about the time my mum and dad got married and I came to being in the mid seventies, civilisation arrived and they were able to connect to the mains for both water and electricity.

As you can imagine, the well and the generator, which had so faithfully served the needs of my family all those years, quickly fell into disuse.